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To me this is just another argument for The Great Stagnation. Don't get me wrong, it's fabulous that the lives of Africans are being improved by technology. H

To me this is just another argument for The Great Stagnation. Don't get me wrong, it's fabulous that the lives of Africans are being improved by technology. However, what if Africa catching up with the western world is just a side effect of technological progress slowing down as Peter Thiel and others have commented about? We marvel at our smartphones, but so what. They make them in china for $50.

pfraze 14y ago
The affordable, wide-spread availability technology is not a negative indicator of technological progress. iPhones are less than 5 years old; it's a positive that they've distributed so rapidly.
- warfangle 14y ago
  "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson
InclinedPlane 14y ago
The modern smartphone is a 5 year old product. The fact that it's managed to penetrate into the developing world in such a short amount of time is nothing less than amazing. This has absolutely nothing to do with stagnation.
- ars 14y ago
  5 years? How quickly we forget our history. The Treo 180 was released in 2002. You connected to the internet by essentially dialing a modem over the cell phone network. It had a built in web browser. And GPRS showed up in 2000/2001 and was arguably the real beginning of mobile data.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    This is why I said "modern smartphone". The windows mobile phones were always a niche product for tech-savvy people and the blackberry was always highly optimized for people who cared about being able to access email 24/7 for business reasons.
    - Joeri 14y ago
      Opera mini existed for years before the iphone, and it's what gets used to browse the web on slow networks. I used to run it on a low end j2me phone in 2006, and it browsed the web just fine. I think "the modern smartphone" more than anything is a change in perception of what is possible, no an actual meaningful increase in what is possible.
  - melvinmt 14y ago
    My 2007 Nokia N95 was in many ways way ahead of the 2008 iPhone with a 5mp camera (zeiss), front-facing camera, video calling, MMS, 3.5" headphone jacket, cut&paste "technology", GPS, FM radio, Adobe Flash support (gasp), 8GB storage, and many more things. I was streaming live footage online with Qik and uploading videos to YouTube while the iPhone couldn't even record video! It took Apple several years to catch up with some of these features. This phone was a beast but the only thing it didn't have was a great UI/UX. So yes, the iPhone doesn't even come close to the birth of the smartphone, but it did a whole lot to make it main stream.
    - GFischer 14y ago
      "the only thing it didn't have was a great UI/UX" I have a Nokia N86 (about the same age as the iPhone), and while its specs were great, the software was light-years behind (especially web browsing).
mtgx 14y ago
How can you call people getting access to technology for the first time "stagnation"? It's the exact opposite of that. Here's Ray Kurzweil showing a graph from 1800 till recently that demonstrates how technology has had a direct effect on the wealth of the nations and on the average "conditions of living" for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4&feature=youtu.be&t=50m25s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4&feature=youtu... Also a relevant bit from Louis CK on how we take technology for granted at every step: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_but.php http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_bu... longer audio version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
>We marvel at our smartphones, but so what. They make them in china for $50. look at those stupid roses, I bet they're cheap to produce and they're hardly the best thing I've ever smelled. I've seen award winning roses on the internet, your roses are unimpressive.
dagw 14y ago
They make them in china for $50 Anybody who stops to think about it for a little while probably marvels far more at the technology and innovation that actually makes it possible to build such a device for a mere $50.
- debacle 14y ago
  It's not the technology and innovation. It's the lax environmental regulations and labor arbitrage.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    "labor arbitrage"? You're saying it isn't fair because the middle income country selling phones to the low income country isn't paying money for high income workers instead? I can sort of understand why someone could think that it's good that phones sold in a country are made in that same country, but insisting that all phones sold everywhere be manufactured in the first world just exhibits a breathtaking sense of entitlement.
    - debacle 14y ago
      I'm saying that the real cost of the phone, in human and ecological factors, is much greater than $50.
- dfxm12 14y ago
  And wouldn't they have to make them for much less than $50 if they are selling them for that much?
  - dagw 14y ago
    Yup, I should have written make them for a price where they can sell them for $50.
scanr 14y ago
I'm not sure this is the conclusion that I would draw. It appears you're measuring technological progress by the gap between what is available in the 3rd world vs. what is currently available in the 1st world. I would argue that making $50 phones is an amazing sign of progress as it speaks to just how amazing the technology behind manufacturing has got. In fact, it has almost been a side effect of Moore's Law (almost the de-facto measure of technological progress in the CPU space for a while) that processors have become cheaper as they became faster.

pfraze 14y ago

The affordable, wide-spread availability technology is not a negative indicator of technological progress. iPhones are less than 5 years old; it's a positive that they've distributed so rapidly.

warfangle 14y ago
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

InclinedPlane 14y ago

The modern smartphone is a 5 year old product. The fact that it's managed to penetrate into the developing world in such a short amount of time is nothing less than amazing. This has absolutely nothing to do with stagnation.

ars 14y ago
5 years? How quickly we forget our history. The Treo 180 was released in 2002. You connected to the internet by essentially dialing a modem over the cell phone network. It had a built in web browser. And GPRS showed up in 2000/2001 and was arguably the real beginning of mobile data.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  This is why I said "modern smartphone". The windows mobile phones were always a niche product for tech-savvy people and the blackberry was always highly optimized for people who cared about being able to access email 24/7 for business reasons.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    Opera mini existed for years before the iphone, and it's what gets used to browse the web on slow networks. I used to run it on a low end j2me phone in 2006, and it browsed the web just fine. I think "the modern smartphone" more than anything is a change in perception of what is possible, no an actual meaningful increase in what is possible.
- melvinmt 14y ago
  My 2007 Nokia N95 was in many ways way ahead of the 2008 iPhone with a 5mp camera (zeiss), front-facing camera, video calling, MMS, 3.5" headphone jacket, cut&paste "technology", GPS, FM radio, Adobe Flash support (gasp), 8GB storage, and many more things. I was streaming live footage online with Qik and uploading videos to YouTube while the iPhone couldn't even record video! It took Apple several years to catch up with some of these features. This phone was a beast but the only thing it didn't have was a great UI/UX. So yes, the iPhone doesn't even come close to the birth of the smartphone, but it did a whole lot to make it main stream.
  - GFischer 14y ago
    "the only thing it didn't have was a great UI/UX" I have a Nokia N86 (about the same age as the iPhone), and while its specs were great, the software was light-years behind (especially web browsing).

mtgx 14y ago

How can you call people getting access to technology for the first time "stagnation"? It's the exact opposite of that. Here's Ray Kurzweil showing a graph from 1800 till recently that demonstrates how technology has had a direct effect on the wealth of the nations and on the average "conditions of living" for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4&feature=youtu.be&t=50m25s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4&feature=youtu... Also a relevant bit from Louis CK on how we take technology for granted at every step: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_but.php http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_bu... longer audio version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

>We marvel at our smartphones, but so what. They make them in china for $50. look at those stupid roses, I bet they're cheap to produce and they're hardly the best thing I've ever smelled. I've seen award winning roses on the internet, your roses are unimpressive.

dagw 14y ago

They make them in china for $50 Anybody who stops to think about it for a little while probably marvels far more at the technology and innovation that actually makes it possible to build such a device for a mere $50.

debacle 14y ago
It's not the technology and innovation. It's the lax environmental regulations and labor arbitrage.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  "labor arbitrage"? You're saying it isn't fair because the middle income country selling phones to the low income country isn't paying money for high income workers instead? I can sort of understand why someone could think that it's good that phones sold in a country are made in that same country, but insisting that all phones sold everywhere be manufactured in the first world just exhibits a breathtaking sense of entitlement.
  - debacle 14y ago
    I'm saying that the real cost of the phone, in human and ecological factors, is much greater than $50.
dfxm12 14y ago
And wouldn't they have to make them for much less than $50 if they are selling them for that much?
- dagw 14y ago
  Yup, I should have written make them for a price where they can sell them for $50.

scanr 14y ago

I'm not sure this is the conclusion that I would draw. It appears you're measuring technological progress by the gap between what is available in the 3rd world vs. what is currently available in the 1st world. I would argue that making $50 phones is an amazing sign of progress as it speaks to just how amazing the technology behind manufacturing has got. In fact, it has almost been a side effect of Moore's Law (almost the de-facto measure of technological progress in the CPU space for a while) that processors have become cheaper as they became faster.