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I don’t understand this viewpoint unless it’s literally just rose colored glasses. Is your argument that nothing cool has been invented in the past 40 years? D

by soared 5y ago

I don’t understand this viewpoint unless it’s literally just rose colored glasses. Is your argument that nothing cool has been invented in the past 40 years? Dude you can instantly speak face to face (digitally) with someone anywhere in the entire world right now. I play games with a group of people who’ve never met, but chat all the time from all over the world. I can travel the world renting other people’s homes, have a device that translates my speech into theirs, can look up their history in seconds, don’t need to use a map, and it’s all way way cheaper than it was in the 80s. There are dreamers and they are changing the world, you’re just too much of a pessimist to see it yourself.

AussieWog93 5y ago
I understand the sentiment of the parent post. All of the things you've described are cool, but aren't exactly awe-inspiring feats of engineering. I think the fact that Elon actually does take on these high-risk, high-difficulty challenges is what makes people so excited.
eloff 5y ago
While there obviously has been innovation over the last 40 years, the pace of innovation seems to have slowed. We got lots of dubious things like bitcoin and twitter. Not a lot of things that required real world risk and engineering - maybe because that's a harder way to make money and the low hanging fruit has been picked. That's what makes Elon Musk so interesting, he tackled two incredibly hard real engineering challenges and succeeded wildly at both. He changed the world and brought the future closer. That's impressive. I wish there were more entrepreneurs like him.
- new_realist 5y ago
  Elon is willing to go wildly unprofitable, which allows him to be a few years ahead of everyone else on the natural tech. curve. That’s literally all there is to it.
  - eloff 5y ago
    I strongly disagree, if you look at either SpaceX or Tesla, what they've accomplished is far more than a simple willingness to lose money for a number of years while developing the business. Also, that's not how you use the word literally.
    - new_realist 5y ago
      Second definition from MW: literally: used to emphasize the truth and accuracy of a statement or description
  - nickik 5y ago
    This so incredibly wrong and un-informed its mind blowing. SpaceX has been profitable from pretty early on in its history and were until they need massive cash for the Starlink project. Tesla is a attempting to get into a very, very capital intensive industry and during the early growth and again in 2017 they had to be less un-profitable. But the companies consistently showed that if it stopped growing it could be profitable. The idea that it literally all there is to it is insane. Pretty much every startup is willing to make loses for growth, it happens literally all the time. This is simply empirically wrong.
    - new_realist 5y ago
      Musk’s companies continuously raise funds, even SpaceX. Spending money in order to grow is easy, and not necessary given sufficient profitability. Look at Apple, Amazon etc. for examples of successful transitions to profitable hypergrowth. Startups who spend money to grow eventually make it, or die. Musk’s self-promotion, combined with a low interest rate environment, has allowed him to continuously raise enough money to stay in a zombie state, neither dead, nor profitable: only spending.
      - 7e 5y ago
        SpaceX: 39 total funding rounds (missed a few): 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 (4x), 2020 (x2), 2021 Tesla: 35 total funding rounds (missed a few): 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 (3x), 2014, 2015, 2016 (2x), 2017 (4x), 2019, 2020 (2x)
- Mockapapella 5y ago
  In my opinion the perception that the pace of innovation has slowed down is the result of a shift away from the physical to the digital. For the last 25 years or so there have been massive innovations in software. A lot of things that were once largely locked to the physical world (banking, diverse entertainment, catching up with old friends and acquaintances) have now been digitized and implemented at a massive scale. It's great and all, but it's not the same as something you can reach out and touch. Even considering something like Neuralink, the hardware to sense brain signals needs to be there before the software can do anything. Innovation in the physical world is what makes things feel like we're living in the future. There was an article about this that I read years ago that goes into much more depth about this, but I'm having a hard time finding it. If I remember correctly it discussed the job opportunities of people in post world war 2 era, and that many of the (feelings of) innovations were a result of the booming material sciences in response to the cold war, though I'm likely mis-remembering some details.
- rasputnik6502 5y ago
  There are, but you need to remove personal cult from the filter. Musk did not design the rockets or come up with the idea of electric car - he cleverly positions himself as the technology guru running whole factories with his own hands but in fact it's a massive effort to hide the names of people who created his products and avoid giving them any credit.
  - eloff 5y ago
    > he cleverly positions himself as the technology guru running whole factories with his own hands but in fact it's a massive effort to hide the names of people who created his products and avoid giving them any credit. Musk is quick to give credit to his employees if you've actually heard him talk. Also I in no way men to imply that he did anything single handed.
    - rasputnik6502 5y ago
      >Musk is quick to give credit to his employees to whom, for example? And it's true i dont listen to his talks, maybe i missed important details.
      - eloff 5y ago
        Why are so quick to judge someone you don't know anything about?
        rasputnik6502 5y ago
        I don't judge, just state the fact that he will not let any of his employees take even smallest piece of the show. Everything is about Elon Musk and only him, no one else is allowed to speak or show any achievement - anonymous bunch of idiots who can't even run factory without Musk showing everyone how to do their job. And they would apparently be nothing without the self proclaimed genius. Sorry I thought it only happens in North Korea but I was wrong.
        5y ago
- Calzifer 5y ago
  "incredibly hard real engineering challenges" like building a battery powered car? A random list of real world innovations I can think of which are imo more impressive: - Large Hadron Collider - Multicompter. Had you expected 40 years ago the posibilities and commonness of camera drones or having hundreds of multicompter doing light shows? - you mention dubious inovations in software world but why dismiss the hardware development. Chips smaller than what people 40 years ago thought is physically possible, stacking chips onto each other, quantum computer, filling hard drives with helium to make them more dense (something many people where skeptial about when it first came up), using heat to make hard drives store even more data, e-ink displays - jetpacks - improvements in robotics (most popular Boston Dynamics) - nuclear fusion - most recently: flying a helicopter on another planet - maglev trains (but that kind of strech the 40 years range) - mRNA-vaccins - or e-bikes. Electic cars are revolutionary why not electric bicycles or planes. They are far from finished but solar powered planes exist. Is such a plane and the people working on it so much less impressive?
  - eloff 5y ago
    You are vastly underestimating how hard it is to build an electric car that people want to buy. Tesla very likely accelerated the adoption of electric cars by at least a decade.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  When was the last time you got lost and couldn’t navigate your way to safety? For all of human history “getting lost” was one of the most prominent plot devices in all of art and we literally solved that within what, the past 10 years? I think the true problem is that innovations went from solving sensory discomfort (I can’t see in the dark, this chamber pot smells bad) to preventing problems we don’t have yet.
titzer 5y ago
> I don’t understand this viewpoint Well no wonder you don't understand this viewpoint because what follows is a loud attempt to invalidating it by shouting it down with your own. As if people pointing out what's gone wrong with technology aren't aware the internet and AirBnB exist. The oceans are full of garbage and the planet is on the path to runaway global warming. There are bigger problems than expanding your gaming clique and titillating your need for consumption.
shrimpx 5y ago
As Peter Thiel said, we got the Star Trek handheld computer and nothing else from Star Trek.
nickik 5y ago
Its not that technological progress has stalled but that the outlook of people has stalled.

by soared 5y ago

AussieWog93 5y ago

I understand the sentiment of the parent post. All of the things you've described are cool, but aren't exactly awe-inspiring feats of engineering. I think the fact that Elon actually does take on these high-risk, high-difficulty challenges is what makes people so excited.

eloff 5y ago

While there obviously has been innovation over the last 40 years, the pace of innovation seems to have slowed. We got lots of dubious things like bitcoin and twitter. Not a lot of things that required real world risk and engineering - maybe because that's a harder way to make money and the low hanging fruit has been picked. That's what makes Elon Musk so interesting, he tackled two incredibly hard real engineering challenges and succeeded wildly at both. He changed the world and brought the future closer. That's impressive. I wish there were more entrepreneurs like him.

new_realist 5y ago
Elon is willing to go wildly unprofitable, which allows him to be a few years ahead of everyone else on the natural tech. curve. That’s literally all there is to it.
- eloff 5y ago
  I strongly disagree, if you look at either SpaceX or Tesla, what they've accomplished is far more than a simple willingness to lose money for a number of years while developing the business. Also, that's not how you use the word literally.
  - new_realist 5y ago
    Second definition from MW: literally: used to emphasize the truth and accuracy of a statement or description
- nickik 5y ago
  This so incredibly wrong and un-informed its mind blowing. SpaceX has been profitable from pretty early on in its history and were until they need massive cash for the Starlink project. Tesla is a attempting to get into a very, very capital intensive industry and during the early growth and again in 2017 they had to be less un-profitable. But the companies consistently showed that if it stopped growing it could be profitable. The idea that it literally all there is to it is insane. Pretty much every startup is willing to make loses for growth, it happens literally all the time. This is simply empirically wrong.
  - new_realist 5y ago
    Musk’s companies continuously raise funds, even SpaceX. Spending money in order to grow is easy, and not necessary given sufficient profitability. Look at Apple, Amazon etc. for examples of successful transitions to profitable hypergrowth. Startups who spend money to grow eventually make it, or die. Musk’s self-promotion, combined with a low interest rate environment, has allowed him to continuously raise enough money to stay in a zombie state, neither dead, nor profitable: only spending.
    - 7e 5y ago
      SpaceX: 39 total funding rounds (missed a few): 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 (4x), 2020 (x2), 2021 Tesla: 35 total funding rounds (missed a few): 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 (3x), 2014, 2015, 2016 (2x), 2017 (4x), 2019, 2020 (2x)
Mockapapella 5y ago
In my opinion the perception that the pace of innovation has slowed down is the result of a shift away from the physical to the digital. For the last 25 years or so there have been massive innovations in software. A lot of things that were once largely locked to the physical world (banking, diverse entertainment, catching up with old friends and acquaintances) have now been digitized and implemented at a massive scale. It's great and all, but it's not the same as something you can reach out and touch. Even considering something like Neuralink, the hardware to sense brain signals needs to be there before the software can do anything. Innovation in the physical world is what makes things feel like we're living in the future. There was an article about this that I read years ago that goes into much more depth about this, but I'm having a hard time finding it. If I remember correctly it discussed the job opportunities of people in post world war 2 era, and that many of the (feelings of) innovations were a result of the booming material sciences in response to the cold war, though I'm likely mis-remembering some details.
rasputnik6502 5y ago
There are, but you need to remove personal cult from the filter. Musk did not design the rockets or come up with the idea of electric car - he cleverly positions himself as the technology guru running whole factories with his own hands but in fact it's a massive effort to hide the names of people who created his products and avoid giving them any credit.
- eloff 5y ago
  > he cleverly positions himself as the technology guru running whole factories with his own hands but in fact it's a massive effort to hide the names of people who created his products and avoid giving them any credit. Musk is quick to give credit to his employees if you've actually heard him talk. Also I in no way men to imply that he did anything single handed.
  - rasputnik6502 5y ago
    >Musk is quick to give credit to his employees to whom, for example? And it's true i dont listen to his talks, maybe i missed important details.
    - eloff 5y ago
      Why are so quick to judge someone you don't know anything about?
      - rasputnik6502 5y ago
        I don't judge, just state the fact that he will not let any of his employees take even smallest piece of the show. Everything is about Elon Musk and only him, no one else is allowed to speak or show any achievement - anonymous bunch of idiots who can't even run factory without Musk showing everyone how to do their job. And they would apparently be nothing without the self proclaimed genius. Sorry I thought it only happens in North Korea but I was wrong.
        5y ago
Calzifer 5y ago
"incredibly hard real engineering challenges" like building a battery powered car? A random list of real world innovations I can think of which are imo more impressive: - Large Hadron Collider - Multicompter. Had you expected 40 years ago the posibilities and commonness of camera drones or having hundreds of multicompter doing light shows? - you mention dubious inovations in software world but why dismiss the hardware development. Chips smaller than what people 40 years ago thought is physically possible, stacking chips onto each other, quantum computer, filling hard drives with helium to make them more dense (something many people where skeptial about when it first came up), using heat to make hard drives store even more data, e-ink displays - jetpacks - improvements in robotics (most popular Boston Dynamics) - nuclear fusion - most recently: flying a helicopter on another planet - maglev trains (but that kind of strech the 40 years range) - mRNA-vaccins - or e-bikes. Electic cars are revolutionary why not electric bicycles or planes. They are far from finished but solar powered planes exist. Is such a plane and the people working on it so much less impressive?
- eloff 5y ago
  You are vastly underestimating how hard it is to build an electric car that people want to buy. Tesla very likely accelerated the adoption of electric cars by at least a decade.
RC_ITR 5y ago
When was the last time you got lost and couldn’t navigate your way to safety? For all of human history “getting lost” was one of the most prominent plot devices in all of art and we literally solved that within what, the past 10 years? I think the true problem is that innovations went from solving sensory discomfort (I can’t see in the dark, this chamber pot smells bad) to preventing problems we don’t have yet.

titzer 5y ago

> I don’t understand this viewpoint Well no wonder you don't understand this viewpoint because what follows is a loud attempt to invalidating it by shouting it down with your own. As if people pointing out what's gone wrong with technology aren't aware the internet and AirBnB exist. The oceans are full of garbage and the planet is on the path to runaway global warming. There are bigger problems than expanding your gaming clique and titillating your need for consumption.

shrimpx 5y ago

As Peter Thiel said, we got the Star Trek handheld computer and nothing else from Star Trek.

nickik 5y ago

Its not that technological progress has stalled but that the outlook of people has stalled.