4 ms·

You missed out on 3d printers in the last 2 decades apparently. Those have gone leaps and bounds from very rickety prototypes like the og MakerBot to cheap work

You missed out on 3d printers in the last 2 decades apparently. Those have gone leaps and bounds from very rickety prototypes like the og MakerBot to cheap workhorses. Stepper motors used to cost like $75 ea and are now like 4 for $15. Smart phones as well. Many of these things you don't notice till they're everywhere. If I spent more time I could list many other things I think but I don't know your filter

serialNumber 3y ago
Please list more things if you have some time
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  Electric bikes and scooters
echelon 3y ago
The last two decades seemed to have progressed glacially slow. We've had smartphones for fifteen years and they haven't really improved much. Better camera, a few more sensors, more durable glass. Incremental improvements. About the same for laptops and desktops. 3D printing has come a fair way, but we're still not printing cars at home. (I totally would download a car.) Now all of a sudden we have AI/ML, self-driving cars, high fidelity consumer mocap, AR/VR. The types of things coming out now seem way more sci-fi, cutting edge, and optimistic. A return to the imagination and dreams of the 1950's - 1990's. 2000 - 2020 was a speed bump.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xcv123 3y ago
  From 2000 to 2010 we progressed from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    The point is more - today's smartphones are the first iphone with a better camera and faster data connection. That said in other areas there's much more improvement, for example EVs, solar panels, intelligent search engines. Remember the days when we used scripts that would parallelize searches over lycos, yahoo, webcrawler, altavista, alltheweb, ...
    - wddkcs 3y ago
      The counter point is that the innovation never stopped, it just moved down a level. We 'optimized' the hardware (as in gave it sufficient form to fulfill necessary functions) then did the same for the application space. Twitter, Facebook, Google, music streaming, all solidifying their phone presence over the past ten years. Just as the application space has begun to stagnant, suddenly our data is speaking back to us through LLMs. Such models will be the next space we'll 'optimize', but these models will also be optimizing themselves. Strange loop.
      - echelon 3y ago
        > Twitter, Facebook, Google, music streaming, all solidifying their phone presence over the past ten years. I would argue these are all worse outcomes than I'd hoped for. I dreamed we'd have utilities based on RDF and bittorrent that could pull down any data we liked. Track any authors across the internet, highlight all content about topics we liked, pull in all new astronomy photos. Automatic ranking and scoring to fit our preferences. Better collaboration, much higher signal, much less noise. I thought we'd control the data, the pipes, the routing, all of it. We have a product manager internet, not a magical utility knife internet.
  - buescher 3y ago
    In 2001 you could get the Kyocera Palm phone, which is a more valid comparison. But yes.
  - failuser 3y ago
    Nokia also released 9210 about the same time as 3310. From that perspective iPhone was even less of an improvement and a step back in some aspects.
- iamflimflam1 3y ago
  I totally would download a car. Underrated reference. Well done.
- Izkata 3y ago
  > We've had smartphones for fifteen years and they haven't really improved much. Better camera, a few more sensors, more durable glass. Incremental improvements. About the same for laptops and desktops. For the past few years they've been experimenting with foldable screens, with hints of rollable screens maybe coming soon, so that's something at least.
  - jasonjmcghee 3y ago
    I feel like you must be intentionally exaggerating for a reason. Between the processing power, battery life, storage space (100x), ram (50x), screen resolution (20x pixels) and refresh rate, not to mention network speed… I can record 4K video at 60fps. On my phone. How is that an incremental improvement? I consume a huge amount of the web on my phone (and not hate myself or constantly zoom in and out), can type meaningfully fast with swipe/trace, copy/paste to/from my laptop, can use my phone as a webcam (realtime), useful realtime navigation, I pay for the majority of my purchases by holding my phone to a sensor, I put completely wireless incredibly light earbuds that last hours in my ears for listening and talking that actively cancel noise. Today's phones are incredible. On the other end of the spectrum, the cheapest smartphones can be purchased for less than $10.
    - Izkata 3y ago
      Most of what you've listed is "take this number, make it larger", same as the past century. Foldable and rollable screens are actually something new.
harimau777 3y ago
Have the 3D printers that are affordable and available enough for regular people advanced in their material capabilities much? The inability to print high strength materials like high impact polycarbonate or metal was what made early 3D printers mostly a novelty for me. I didn't think that had changed; however, I could very well be wrong.

serialNumber 3y ago

Please list more things if you have some time

dr_dshiv 3y ago
Electric bikes and scooters

echelon 3y ago

The last two decades seemed to have progressed glacially slow. We've had smartphones for fifteen years and they haven't really improved much. Better camera, a few more sensors, more durable glass. Incremental improvements. About the same for laptops and desktops. 3D printing has come a fair way, but we're still not printing cars at home. (I totally would download a car.) Now all of a sudden we have AI/ML, self-driving cars, high fidelity consumer mocap, AR/VR. The types of things coming out now seem way more sci-fi, cutting edge, and optimistic. A return to the imagination and dreams of the 1950's - 1990's. 2000 - 2020 was a speed bump.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xcv123 3y ago
From 2000 to 2010 we progressed from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  The point is more - today's smartphones are the first iphone with a better camera and faster data connection. That said in other areas there's much more improvement, for example EVs, solar panels, intelligent search engines. Remember the days when we used scripts that would parallelize searches over lycos, yahoo, webcrawler, altavista, alltheweb, ...
  - wddkcs 3y ago
    The counter point is that the innovation never stopped, it just moved down a level. We 'optimized' the hardware (as in gave it sufficient form to fulfill necessary functions) then did the same for the application space. Twitter, Facebook, Google, music streaming, all solidifying their phone presence over the past ten years. Just as the application space has begun to stagnant, suddenly our data is speaking back to us through LLMs. Such models will be the next space we'll 'optimize', but these models will also be optimizing themselves. Strange loop.
    - echelon 3y ago
      > Twitter, Facebook, Google, music streaming, all solidifying their phone presence over the past ten years. I would argue these are all worse outcomes than I'd hoped for. I dreamed we'd have utilities based on RDF and bittorrent that could pull down any data we liked. Track any authors across the internet, highlight all content about topics we liked, pull in all new astronomy photos. Automatic ranking and scoring to fit our preferences. Better collaboration, much higher signal, much less noise. I thought we'd control the data, the pipes, the routing, all of it. We have a product manager internet, not a magical utility knife internet.
- buescher 3y ago
  In 2001 you could get the Kyocera Palm phone, which is a more valid comparison. But yes.
- failuser 3y ago
  Nokia also released 9210 about the same time as 3310. From that perspective iPhone was even less of an improvement and a step back in some aspects.
iamflimflam1 3y ago
I totally would download a car. Underrated reference. Well done.
Izkata 3y ago
> We've had smartphones for fifteen years and they haven't really improved much. Better camera, a few more sensors, more durable glass. Incremental improvements. About the same for laptops and desktops. For the past few years they've been experimenting with foldable screens, with hints of rollable screens maybe coming soon, so that's something at least.
- jasonjmcghee 3y ago
  I feel like you must be intentionally exaggerating for a reason. Between the processing power, battery life, storage space (100x), ram (50x), screen resolution (20x pixels) and refresh rate, not to mention network speed… I can record 4K video at 60fps. On my phone. How is that an incremental improvement? I consume a huge amount of the web on my phone (and not hate myself or constantly zoom in and out), can type meaningfully fast with swipe/trace, copy/paste to/from my laptop, can use my phone as a webcam (realtime), useful realtime navigation, I pay for the majority of my purchases by holding my phone to a sensor, I put completely wireless incredibly light earbuds that last hours in my ears for listening and talking that actively cancel noise. Today's phones are incredible. On the other end of the spectrum, the cheapest smartphones can be purchased for less than $10.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    Most of what you've listed is "take this number, make it larger", same as the past century. Foldable and rollable screens are actually something new.

harimau777 3y ago

Have the 3D printers that are affordable and available enough for regular people advanced in their material capabilities much? The inability to print high strength materials like high impact polycarbonate or metal was what made early 3D printers mostly a novelty for me. I didn't think that had changed; however, I could very well be wrong.