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The random person element of your thought experiment strikes me as pretty important because cost is one of the only ways I can think of to measure technological

The random person element of your thought experiment strikes me as pretty important because cost is one of the only ways I can think of to measure technological progress. Simply picking two specific technologies from the same sector and then stating an opinion that the progress isn't impressive doesn't persuade me. What could possibly persuade me is answers to questions like these: in present day dollars, how much would it cost to purchase one extra year of life in 1909, 1959, and 2009? For N present day dollars, how long would it take you to travel from New York to London in 1909, 1959, and 2009? For $100 present day dollars, how many copies of a book can you make in those each of years? I think the author is right in that there are physical constraints on what types of things are possible, so any improvements will only be of degree. Once you have weapons that harness nuclear reactions, there aren't a lot of other fundamental forces left to harness. Likewise once you have devices that can reproduce sights and sounds (the two senses used for communication) all you can really do is make those devices cheaper and bigger (or smaller). The author didn't express that very well, choosing instead to cherry pick specific inventions and present opinions as facts.

nate_meurer 17y ago
Yes! Excellent, excellent point. The industrial revolution put a whole raft of the "easiest" inventions within a century's reach. Internal combustion, electricity, telegraphy, etc., these were waiting for just a few pieces of basic core technology (like coke-fired smelting)) to fall into place before they could erupt into mass deployment. It makes perfect sense that refinement of existing technology would overtake invention of new ones. I don't see how it could be otherwise given the physical constraints you speak of; how many radical new sources of energy can we come up with, aside from fusion?

nate_meurer 17y ago

Yes! Excellent, excellent point. The industrial revolution put a whole raft of the "easiest" inventions within a century's reach. Internal combustion, electricity, telegraphy, etc., these were waiting for just a few pieces of basic core technology (like coke-fired smelting)) to fall into place before they could erupt into mass deployment. It makes perfect sense that refinement of existing technology would overtake invention of new ones. I don't see how it could be otherwise given the physical constraints you speak of; how many radical new sources of energy can we come up with, aside from fusion?