Comment Innovation continues, problems are harder (Score 2) 278
From reading the article, I tend to agree with the author's contention that the pace of innovation has been slower since 1950. However, I think this has much more to do with the relative difficulty of the problems we face than any "dissipation" of the spirit or intellect of modern culture.
Let us take a few of the examples in the article, starting with the Concorde. Sustained supersonic flight is a very difficult problem requiring exotic and expensive materials, fuels and aerodynamics. The Concorde is a 25 year old hotrod, and was never an economic success. Designed in the early '60s, the all titanium SR-71 Black Bird costs a million plus dollars per mission to fly, and remains the fastest thing on Earth to this day. Speeds above mach 3 require the development of even more amazing materials. CHEAP hypersonic flight (as in non-military, commercial flight) is much more difficult still. These problems are more difficult in principle than those faced by the Wright brothers.
The development of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, as was the invention of modern anesthetics. The microbe has largely been defeated for the moment. Major medical problems that face us now are viruses like HIV, prions (e.g.. Mad Cow disease), fungi, and things like asthma, Alzheimer's etc. These diseases operate on a much smaller, subtler and more fundamental level, and require a qualitatively different knowledge of biology than did Smallpox.
Living and working on the Moon permanently is a different proposition than sending three men there for a few days. One can compare this to the difference between a polar expedition and an oil rig in the Arctic ocean. There is nothing on the Moon right now that justifies the effort.
Modern technology and modern convenieces are unavailable to the majority of humanity not primarily due to politics,but because they are expensive. "Power too cheap to meter" is the concept we are presently in search of. Maybe hydrogen fusion and room temperature superconductors can make this a reality.
These problems are fundamentally more difficult than the major inventions and discoveries of which the author speaks, and can only be accomplished using the technology we now have as a starting point.
So there you go. The problems facing us today are of a fundamentally different quality than the ones already solved in this century, particularly up to 1950. Just as the explosion of technology in the first half of the Twentieth Century depended on advances made during the last half of the Nineteenth, I think we have been building the tools for the explosion of the next 50 to 100 years. Computers and the Internet may not change the human condition as much as the electric light, but I bet they make possible the research that creates the next major breakthrough.
The Phantom
Let us take a few of the examples in the article, starting with the Concorde. Sustained supersonic flight is a very difficult problem requiring exotic and expensive materials, fuels and aerodynamics. The Concorde is a 25 year old hotrod, and was never an economic success. Designed in the early '60s, the all titanium SR-71 Black Bird costs a million plus dollars per mission to fly, and remains the fastest thing on Earth to this day. Speeds above mach 3 require the development of even more amazing materials. CHEAP hypersonic flight (as in non-military, commercial flight) is much more difficult still. These problems are more difficult in principle than those faced by the Wright brothers.
The development of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, as was the invention of modern anesthetics. The microbe has largely been defeated for the moment. Major medical problems that face us now are viruses like HIV, prions (e.g.. Mad Cow disease), fungi, and things like asthma, Alzheimer's etc. These diseases operate on a much smaller, subtler and more fundamental level, and require a qualitatively different knowledge of biology than did Smallpox.
Living and working on the Moon permanently is a different proposition than sending three men there for a few days. One can compare this to the difference between a polar expedition and an oil rig in the Arctic ocean. There is nothing on the Moon right now that justifies the effort.
Modern technology and modern convenieces are unavailable to the majority of humanity not primarily due to politics,but because they are expensive. "Power too cheap to meter" is the concept we are presently in search of. Maybe hydrogen fusion and room temperature superconductors can make this a reality.
These problems are fundamentally more difficult than the major inventions and discoveries of which the author speaks, and can only be accomplished using the technology we now have as a starting point.
So there you go. The problems facing us today are of a fundamentally different quality than the ones already solved in this century, particularly up to 1950. Just as the explosion of technology in the first half of the Twentieth Century depended on advances made during the last half of the Nineteenth, I think we have been building the tools for the explosion of the next 50 to 100 years. Computers and the Internet may not change the human condition as much as the electric light, but I bet they make possible the research that creates the next major breakthrough.
The Phantom
