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Cars are vastly different than they were in 1980. Fuel injection, aerodynamics, airbags, driver assist, hybrid and electric drivetrains, etc… the difference bet

Cars are vastly different than they were in 1980. Fuel injection, aerodynamics, airbags, driver assist, hybrid and electric drivetrains, etc… the difference between a 1980 Honda Civic and a 2020 civic is massive. In 1980 we weren’t landing self piloting rocket stages on drone ships and reusing them a month later. The engines powering our rockets were completely different chemistry and metallurgy. We weren’t building hyper efficient carbon fiber airframes with high bypass turbofans (Dreamliner). Even my washing machine is using about half the energy compared to a washing machine in 1989. Composites, manufacturing, and design are all completely different to how things were in the 80s Just because something has a similar form factor doesn’t mean it is the same. There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it comes to making things.

goatlover 5y ago
> There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it comes to making things. I still think somewhere between the late 19th century to the middle 20th century had the most impactful change in human history, and things have slowed somewhat in term of overall impact since then, with more gradual improvements. 1881-1951 saw more transformative changes than 1951-2021. As in the world changed more in the previous 70 years. There's still a lot of change going on, and some of it is transformative. But not to the extent of the radical transformations from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, with revolutions in science, technology, economics, trade, transportation, communication and political structures. This might be more true of the developed world than the developing, which probably has seen those transformative changes more in the last 70 years. But in terms of what came to exist, it's hard to beat that period of time.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"We weren’t building hyper efficient carbon fiber airframes with high bypass turbofans (Dreamliner)." Sir Joseph Wilson Swan first created carbon fiber in 1860. Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1950's. If Dreamliner was built out of carbon nanotube, then I would concede. Like this, meh. "There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it comes to making things." to test this hypothesis, let's stop arguing about somewhat subjective things, like whether fuel injection is more significant than invention of a nuclear reactor, and think about things we can measure objectively. Think about things we can measure, in the developed world, anything all, from wage growth to energy production to production of steel, by every metric that I have seen, their rate of increase was higher in year 1955 than in year 2015. Feel free to take your pick and show any statistics that disagrees with me.
- supernovae 5y ago
  now you're just being silly Let's just get back to tech. In the 1980s a 4mhz computer with 360k floppy disks and cga monitor cost about 2500 bucks... Today, you have a phone in your pocket exponentially faster and smaller - all in a few decades. The apple watch - has 100s of times more compute/storage and resolution than that computer... and some of those watches have 4g / gps and things we could have only dreamed about. In the late 90s, we used to watch "videos" in "realplayer" in a 1" block.. 20 years later, we're streaming 4k on demand on ever device in a home across wifi networks and gigabit connections to our homes. It wasn't that long ago most of the world was excited about 56k The only thing that's happening, is you seem hellbent on taking the science/engineering marvels of our generation for granted. We could go on and on but nothing would change your apparent disdain for the future
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    And what has all that computational improvement bought? Modest improvements in communications (the bulk of which are taken up by ... decidedly non-critical messages). Adtech. Another few days on the long-term weather forecast. Pervasive Panopticon surveillance, both capitalist and state, largely symbiotic. Random death from the sky if you happen to be brown-skinned. For millionsfold increases in CPU power, and billionsfold increases in the actual number of CPUs available.
    - dghlsakjg 5y ago
      "Modest improvements in communications" You are using a platform that can distribute that sentence to a majority of the human population, at a marginal cost that rounds to 0, in less time than it would take a human to type it. Another few days on the weather forecast for heavily populated areas that already have a team of forecasters on staff. For the rest of the earth, we have enabled forecasts to exist at all. in 1980, if I wanted the forecast for a remote spot on earth the answer was "hire a meteorologist". Now I can have a reasonably accurate forecast sent to me hourly via a satellite constellation for a single digit percentage of the cost of hiring a meteorologist. This has HUGE implications for logistics, agriculture scientific research, etc... Surveillance and death from the sky? The west has had no problem spying on citizens since the 1930s, and randomly killing people in less developed civilizations is a centuries long tradition for the west. All technologies have their downsides. Much like computing, metallurgy is one of the core technologies behind warfare (modern guns don't exist without steel, planes without aluminum, etc...). Niche artists and businesses can find an audience using the internet (using ad tech, I'll note). Lives are so routinely saved by cell phone technology, that we don't even bother noting the role that technology plays. I can use google translate to have a real time conversation with a stranger on the other side of the earth without having to worry about language. I taught myself how to design PCBs and had a prototype run made by a factory in a country that I've never been to, in less than a month. The effects of computer technology are so ubiquitous that I think they are almost invisible

goatlover 5y ago

> There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it comes to making things. I still think somewhere between the late 19th century to the middle 20th century had the most impactful change in human history, and things have slowed somewhat in term of overall impact since then, with more gradual improvements. 1881-1951 saw more transformative changes than 1951-2021. As in the world changed more in the previous 70 years. There's still a lot of change going on, and some of it is transformative. But not to the extent of the radical transformations from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, with revolutions in science, technology, economics, trade, transportation, communication and political structures. This might be more true of the developed world than the developing, which probably has seen those transformative changes more in the last 70 years. But in terms of what came to exist, it's hard to beat that period of time.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"We weren’t building hyper efficient carbon fiber airframes with high bypass turbofans (Dreamliner)." Sir Joseph Wilson Swan first created carbon fiber in 1860. Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1950's. If Dreamliner was built out of carbon nanotube, then I would concede. Like this, meh. "There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it comes to making things." to test this hypothesis, let's stop arguing about somewhat subjective things, like whether fuel injection is more significant than invention of a nuclear reactor, and think about things we can measure objectively. Think about things we can measure, in the developed world, anything all, from wage growth to energy production to production of steel, by every metric that I have seen, their rate of increase was higher in year 1955 than in year 2015. Feel free to take your pick and show any statistics that disagrees with me.

supernovae 5y ago
now you're just being silly Let's just get back to tech. In the 1980s a 4mhz computer with 360k floppy disks and cga monitor cost about 2500 bucks... Today, you have a phone in your pocket exponentially faster and smaller - all in a few decades. The apple watch - has 100s of times more compute/storage and resolution than that computer... and some of those watches have 4g / gps and things we could have only dreamed about. In the late 90s, we used to watch "videos" in "realplayer" in a 1" block.. 20 years later, we're streaming 4k on demand on ever device in a home across wifi networks and gigabit connections to our homes. It wasn't that long ago most of the world was excited about 56k The only thing that's happening, is you seem hellbent on taking the science/engineering marvels of our generation for granted. We could go on and on but nothing would change your apparent disdain for the future
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  And what has all that computational improvement bought? Modest improvements in communications (the bulk of which are taken up by ... decidedly non-critical messages). Adtech. Another few days on the long-term weather forecast. Pervasive Panopticon surveillance, both capitalist and state, largely symbiotic. Random death from the sky if you happen to be brown-skinned. For millionsfold increases in CPU power, and billionsfold increases in the actual number of CPUs available.
  - dghlsakjg 5y ago
    "Modest improvements in communications" You are using a platform that can distribute that sentence to a majority of the human population, at a marginal cost that rounds to 0, in less time than it would take a human to type it. Another few days on the weather forecast for heavily populated areas that already have a team of forecasters on staff. For the rest of the earth, we have enabled forecasts to exist at all. in 1980, if I wanted the forecast for a remote spot on earth the answer was "hire a meteorologist". Now I can have a reasonably accurate forecast sent to me hourly via a satellite constellation for a single digit percentage of the cost of hiring a meteorologist. This has HUGE implications for logistics, agriculture scientific research, etc... Surveillance and death from the sky? The west has had no problem spying on citizens since the 1930s, and randomly killing people in less developed civilizations is a centuries long tradition for the west. All technologies have their downsides. Much like computing, metallurgy is one of the core technologies behind warfare (modern guns don't exist without steel, planes without aluminum, etc...). Niche artists and businesses can find an audience using the internet (using ad tech, I'll note). Lives are so routinely saved by cell phone technology, that we don't even bother noting the role that technology plays. I can use google translate to have a real time conversation with a stranger on the other side of the earth without having to worry about language. I taught myself how to design PCBs and had a prototype run made by a factory in a country that I've never been to, in less than a month. The effects of computer technology are so ubiquitous that I think they are almost invisible