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30 years ago the internet definitely existed. If the best we've gotten out of the 30 years of technological advances in the automotive space is power locks, I

30 years ago the internet definitely existed. If the best we've gotten out of the 30 years of technological advances in the automotive space is power locks, I think my point is well made. I never said that no advances would occur. 30 years ago jet engines were certainly less efficient and less safe, but not by as much as you'd think. And 25+ years ago I actually used a cell phone. My mother worked for Bell Labs. I'd say that technological progress in integrated circuit manufacturing over the last 30 years has been amazing, and that's driven a bunch of other development but (1) most fields don't progress anywhere near as fast and (2) that burst of progress is not normal even in ICs and is now slowing down.

mseebach 14y ago
> 30 years ago the internet definitely existed. Oh, now you're being disingenuous. The Internet existed, yes, but a total information revolution has certainly happened within the last 30 years. > If the best we've gotten out of the 30 years of technological advances in the automotive space is power locks, I think my point is well made. I never said that no advances would occur. Yeah, that's a bad example. How about the fact that self driving cars, while not commercially available yet, are street legal in two US states? Top of the line cars are available with lane assist and adaptive cruise control which makes them essentially self driving, if not self navigating. > 30 years ago jet engines were certainly less efficient and less safe, but not by as much as you'd think. As stated in another comment, I don't know what the obsession with the development of jet engines is. But you're probably right, they probably haven't come a long way. > And 25+ years ago I actually used a cell phone. My mother worked for Bell Labs. Again, yes, they existed. In fact, they existed quite a while before that. Here's an article on how some of the poorest people in the world use cell phones: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21566022-report-describes-sacrifices-poor-make-keep-mobile-phone-vital http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2156602...
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  The explosion of use of the Internet was driven by both a regulatory change in allowed use of Arpanet / the Internet, and the ubiquitous availability of cheap personal computing devices, driven largely by Moore's Law. Not by fundamental changes in underlying communications and computing technology. In fact the direct and largely similar progenitors of both modern TCP/IP and Linux systems were well established by 1982. Cellular communications is based on principles first established by, of all people, Heddy Lamar (the actress) during WWII. Gas turbine jet engines date to 1928. Recent technology has largely focused around noise abatement, though efficiency has also increased by roughly 50% since 1950. That's hardly the Moore's Law doubling-every-three-years experienced in ICs, and isn't too dissimilar from improvements in reciprocating internal combustion engine efficiency gains. http://eetweb.com/applications/more-efficient-jet-engine-201011/ http://eetweb.com/applications/more-efficient-jet-engine-201... And it turns out that jets are not more efficient than propeller-driven aircraft. The benefits instead are greater speed and higher-altitude flight, as propellers are limited by tip speeds and must operate well under the speed of sound, and perform better at lower altitudes and greater air density. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/piston-powered-aircraft-as-fuel-efficient-as-current-average-jet.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/piston-powered-aircra... In two cases, enablers were principally electronics (Moore's Law) developments enabling latent technologies. In the case of jet aircraft propulsion, the story is more complex, and includes IC-enabled computers in design, manufacture, and avionics systems, but involves incremental improvements on a number of engineering fronts. On an efficiency basis, it's simply returned us to where we were using alternate technologies in the 1950s.

mseebach 14y ago

> 30 years ago the internet definitely existed. Oh, now you're being disingenuous. The Internet existed, yes, but a total information revolution has certainly happened within the last 30 years. > If the best we've gotten out of the 30 years of technological advances in the automotive space is power locks, I think my point is well made. I never said that no advances would occur. Yeah, that's a bad example. How about the fact that self driving cars, while not commercially available yet, are street legal in two US states? Top of the line cars are available with lane assist and adaptive cruise control which makes them essentially self driving, if not self navigating. > 30 years ago jet engines were certainly less efficient and less safe, but not by as much as you'd think. As stated in another comment, I don't know what the obsession with the development of jet engines is. But you're probably right, they probably haven't come a long way. > And 25+ years ago I actually used a cell phone. My mother worked for Bell Labs. Again, yes, they existed. In fact, they existed quite a while before that. Here's an article on how some of the poorest people in the world use cell phones: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21566022-report-describes-sacrifices-poor-make-keep-mobile-phone-vital http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2156602...

dredmorbius 14y ago
The explosion of use of the Internet was driven by both a regulatory change in allowed use of Arpanet / the Internet, and the ubiquitous availability of cheap personal computing devices, driven largely by Moore's Law. Not by fundamental changes in underlying communications and computing technology. In fact the direct and largely similar progenitors of both modern TCP/IP and Linux systems were well established by 1982. Cellular communications is based on principles first established by, of all people, Heddy Lamar (the actress) during WWII. Gas turbine jet engines date to 1928. Recent technology has largely focused around noise abatement, though efficiency has also increased by roughly 50% since 1950. That's hardly the Moore's Law doubling-every-three-years experienced in ICs, and isn't too dissimilar from improvements in reciprocating internal combustion engine efficiency gains. http://eetweb.com/applications/more-efficient-jet-engine-201011/ http://eetweb.com/applications/more-efficient-jet-engine-201... And it turns out that jets are not more efficient than propeller-driven aircraft. The benefits instead are greater speed and higher-altitude flight, as propellers are limited by tip speeds and must operate well under the speed of sound, and perform better at lower altitudes and greater air density. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/piston-powered-aircraft-as-fuel-efficient-as-current-average-jet.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/piston-powered-aircra... In two cases, enablers were principally electronics (Moore's Law) developments enabling latent technologies. In the case of jet aircraft propulsion, the story is more complex, and includes IC-enabled computers in design, manufacture, and avionics systems, but involves incremental improvements on a number of engineering fronts. On an efficiency basis, it's simply returned us to where we were using alternate technologies in the 1950s.