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> It is a real privilege to watch the ever-quickening march of science in the 21st century. Although these inventions seem to rarely get much actual use. Altho
by fouric 5y ago
> It is a real privilege to watch the ever-quickening march of science in the 21st century.
Although these inventions seem to rarely get much actual use. Although I can't find it, I saw an HN comment a few months ago about how ~dozens of interesting inventions hit the HN frontpage every year...and barely any of them turn into anything resembling a product.
So, beyond "overlooking" them, there's a cynicism that comes from seeing hundreds of new developments announced and then never deployed.
- lazide 5y agoThink of it like startups that get off the ground and never find market fit/fold. We have many many startups announce, very few significant successes. It is often for similar reasons - seems promising, but once you really dig into it there is a more economical alternative, or there is some difficulty in scaling/productionizing the process somewhere, or no one involved is able to connect with the right manufacturer/funder/customer/sales person because life. It does open up new ‘hmm, what if’ options for further research though (as unlike many startups the things learned are often written up and eventually shared in a way that can be used by others later). If patents are acquired, in 20-30 years that may make it a now solvable problem for someone else as they can leverage the work without paying the cost. But yes, if you’re looking at any of these announcements as something useful to you in the future instead of like a startup talking about the cool product they’ll eventually build - it’s going to be a rough ride.