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Humanity seems to overestimate the progress that can be made in years, while grossly underestimating—to the point of not even understanding—the progress that ca

by a4isms 4y ago

Humanity seems to overestimate the progress that can be made in years, while grossly underestimating—to the point of not even understanding—the progress that can be made in decades.

gerad 4y ago
It’s because technological progress happens on an s-curve. Things take longer than you expect in the short-term and less time than you’d expect in the long-term.
megaman821 4y ago
I don't think anyone is going to crack VR in the short term. Watching this tour of Facebook's Reality Labs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc, it seems that they realize the challenges ahead. Looking at these challenges (resolution, brightness, eye tracking, form factor) is there an area where Apple is going to be a generation or more ahead? I think the world will be waiting another decade or so before VR gets anything like phone penetration in the market.
massysett 4y ago
But we also do poorly at guessing the direction or shape of progress. In aviation, there was Concorde and the 747. Back then who would have thought both those are in the dustbin and one of the most popular vehicles for longer-range flight is…the 737? We put men on the moon decades ago, still haven’t been back. In computing, we probably could have voice interfaces like the Star Trek computer, but mostly it seems folks don’t want to be bothered, though maybe the latest chat bot craze is a forerunner to chatty computers.
- a4isms 4y ago
  > we also do poorly at guessing the direction or shape of progress I think this is especially true over longer time frames, because in our hubris, we extrapolate from what we know today, and cannot (by definition) extrapolate from things we haven't discovered yet. In addition, we tend to filter what we know by what is important and what is not important, and we are not good at understanding that sometimes, a breakthrough doesn't just introduce something new, it changes the importance of something else.

by a4isms 4y ago

Humanity seems to overestimate the progress that can be made in years, while grossly underestimating—to the point of not even understanding—the progress that can be made in decades.

gerad 4y ago

It’s because technological progress happens on an s-curve. Things take longer than you expect in the short-term and less time than you’d expect in the long-term.

megaman821 4y ago

I don't think anyone is going to crack VR in the short term. Watching this tour of Facebook's Reality Labs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc, it seems that they realize the challenges ahead. Looking at these challenges (resolution, brightness, eye tracking, form factor) is there an area where Apple is going to be a generation or more ahead? I think the world will be waiting another decade or so before VR gets anything like phone penetration in the market.

massysett 4y ago

But we also do poorly at guessing the direction or shape of progress. In aviation, there was Concorde and the 747. Back then who would have thought both those are in the dustbin and one of the most popular vehicles for longer-range flight is…the 737? We put men on the moon decades ago, still haven’t been back. In computing, we probably could have voice interfaces like the Star Trek computer, but mostly it seems folks don’t want to be bothered, though maybe the latest chat bot craze is a forerunner to chatty computers.

a4isms 4y ago
> we also do poorly at guessing the direction or shape of progress I think this is especially true over longer time frames, because in our hubris, we extrapolate from what we know today, and cannot (by definition) extrapolate from things we haven't discovered yet. In addition, we tend to filter what we know by what is important and what is not important, and we are not good at understanding that sometimes, a breakthrough doesn't just introduce something new, it changes the importance of something else.