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No, I don't think they're a technological leap either. But we haven't had a real technological leap on the scale of those early inventions in a while. (I don't
by jeffreyrogers 6y ago
No, I don't think they're a technological leap either. But we haven't had a real technological leap on the scale of those early inventions in a while. (I don't think smartphones or the internet count... they are commercializations of existing technologies).
Cryptocurrency is actually a technological leap without much precedent (it's sort of similar to bittorrent and some of the ideas were in the air, but no one synthesized them into something useful prior to Satoshi). I think it's still an open question to what extent it matters long-term. It's mainly used for speculation and facilitating illegal transactions currently.
- betwixthewires 6y agoAll of these leaps though were commercializations of existing technologies, or they were novel applications of existing technologies. The automobile was a novel use of combustion, radio was being played with and used in military applications.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoI agree that they took a while to commercialize, but they were new technologies. Smartphones, streaming, etc. are not new technologies. They are extensions of old ones, or in the case of smartphones, a systems integration problem. I think we're talking past each other a bit. I think there are technological leaps and sociological leaps. Most new tech is a sociological leap: it changes society but it does not make use of anything radically new. I think the only real technological leaps in the past twenty years have been maybe crypto, and some things happening in biology. Notably absent is renewable energy, which was largely developed many decades ago but is now being commercialized due to process improvements.