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Post-WWII R&D was vastly different from what R&D is like now. No one is funding research that isn't directly product-related or with an unclear or long-term ROI

Post-WWII R&D was vastly different from what R&D is like now. No one is funding research that isn't directly product-related or with an unclear or long-term ROI like that anymore. There never will be a Bell Labs or PARC every again. Incremental improvements are the future now.

ianai 6y ago
I sometimes wonder how different human culture would have developed without fossil fuels of any kind - it would likely mean no industrial revolution, right? No coal, no gas, etc. I think fossil fuels essentially moved us so far up in a Kardeshev type energy utilization that technological breakthroughs could really snowball exponentially. And fossil fuels only exist because for a hundreds of millions of years bacteria didn’t exist to break down trees or fiber. I could see that being an evolutionary tick being answered as a result of random processes possible to happen much faster. Anyway, without fossil fuels we may still be where we were before them - so dark ages, I think. Without fossil fuels I don’t know whether we’d ever have even the conception to seek out higher concentrations of energy. And it’s that energy concentration that still powers most of our civilization. All of which is to say, we could be on the verge to reduce ourselves to only marginal increments on what is currently available at that sort of power concentration, or worse. Or we could realize things like nuclear power open up still more exponential power concentrations.
- ido 6y ago
  The first industrial revolution (which btw happened long after the dark ages and well into the early modern era) was marked by a transition to waterpower & steam (which can also be generated by burning wood) and of course windmills are even older, so it's possible to have happened without fossil fuels - it would just develop differently. Maybe we'd have massive build out of hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, steam engines powered by wood harvested from artificial forests optimized for fast growth/hot burning trees. You could still have air travel by airships & trains will still be workable albeit slower than our trains. Maybe Iceland would be contentious territory due to geothermal resources, like the middle eastern petrostates in the 20th/21st centuries.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  I read somewhere how the industrial revolution was a consequence of disallowing slave labour/inhumanly hard labour. The greek had invented steam powered machines, but considered them a curiosity,or a way to push open doors 'by the gods' without human labour. The industrial revolution, in that vision, happened when mines still needed a way to push the ore up, but humans didn't do it anymore for a price that made it worthwile. So there was a clear need for an alternative, and that made people look around. steam power was already known, but started to make economic sense. Hence, it got perfected.
SahAssar 6y ago
Isn't Alphabet X somewhat similar?

ianai 6y ago

I sometimes wonder how different human culture would have developed without fossil fuels of any kind - it would likely mean no industrial revolution, right? No coal, no gas, etc. I think fossil fuels essentially moved us so far up in a Kardeshev type energy utilization that technological breakthroughs could really snowball exponentially. And fossil fuels only exist because for a hundreds of millions of years bacteria didn’t exist to break down trees or fiber. I could see that being an evolutionary tick being answered as a result of random processes possible to happen much faster. Anyway, without fossil fuels we may still be where we were before them - so dark ages, I think. Without fossil fuels I don’t know whether we’d ever have even the conception to seek out higher concentrations of energy. And it’s that energy concentration that still powers most of our civilization. All of which is to say, we could be on the verge to reduce ourselves to only marginal increments on what is currently available at that sort of power concentration, or worse. Or we could realize things like nuclear power open up still more exponential power concentrations.

ido 6y ago
The first industrial revolution (which btw happened long after the dark ages and well into the early modern era) was marked by a transition to waterpower & steam (which can also be generated by burning wood) and of course windmills are even older, so it's possible to have happened without fossil fuels - it would just develop differently. Maybe we'd have massive build out of hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, steam engines powered by wood harvested from artificial forests optimized for fast growth/hot burning trees. You could still have air travel by airships & trains will still be workable albeit slower than our trains. Maybe Iceland would be contentious territory due to geothermal resources, like the middle eastern petrostates in the 20th/21st centuries.
hyperman1 6y ago
I read somewhere how the industrial revolution was a consequence of disallowing slave labour/inhumanly hard labour. The greek had invented steam powered machines, but considered them a curiosity,or a way to push open doors 'by the gods' without human labour. The industrial revolution, in that vision, happened when mines still needed a way to push the ore up, but humans didn't do it anymore for a price that made it worthwile. So there was a clear need for an alternative, and that made people look around. steam power was already known, but started to make economic sense. Hence, it got perfected.

SahAssar 6y ago

Isn't Alphabet X somewhat similar?