3 ms·
I have to agree with jaclaz: The advances you mention are "refinements and betterings of existing rather than revolutionary". slightly better antibiotics and sl
by o-o- 4y ago
I have to agree with jaclaz: The advances you mention are "refinements and betterings of existing rather than revolutionary". slightly better antibiotics and slightly better phones, but all in all not near the impact of its predecessors.
There's a thread on this very topic that I've bookmarked as I think it's one of HN's best and most insightful discussions ever. It's top comment goes:
"'Innovation' in the internet age, say the last 30 years has mostly been limited to enable hedonistic digital consumption with very little impact on how we fundamentally move through the world. The difference between a car right now and a car 30 years ago is that you can now play angry birds on a tablet. A 100 years ago to 50 years ago meant going from horse carriages to trains and from weeks on a ship to hours on a plane. Today the average person crosses the Atlantic no faster than we did decades ago."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31494671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31494671
- jaclaz 4y agoAnd - as a side note - my grandfather (born 1885 and dead prematurely in 1936) was originally from a village that in the 1930's was reachable from my city by public transport (train) in around 6-7 hours. When I was a kid (think of the 60's and 70's) we went there in the summer, and it took us ... the same 6-7 hours, if we used the car it took something less than 3 hours. Nowadays, that is respectively almost 100 years or 50 years later, guess how much it takes? I just checked, 6:15 by train, 2:30 by car. I do know that it is probably an edge case, but one has to think how advancements in technology are actually applied to real world cases.