Are we in an age of technological decline?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Are we in an age of technological decline?

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-were.html

quote:

Back in the 1960s there was a briefly popular wave of �futurism,� of books and articles attempting to predict the changes ahead. One of the best-known, and certainly the most detailed, of these works was Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener�s �The Year 2000� (1967), which offered, among other things, a systematic list of technological innovations Kahn and Wiener considered �very likely in the last third of the 20th century.�

Unfortunately, the two authors were mostly wrong. They didn�t miss much, foreseeing developments that recognizably correspond to all the main elements of the information technology revolution, including smartphones and the Internet. But a majority of their predicted innovations (�individual flying platforms�) hadn�t arrived by 2000 � and still haven�t arrived, a decade and a half later.

The truth is that if you step back from the headlines about the latest gadget, it becomes obvious that we�ve made much less progress since 1970 � and experienced much less alteration in the fundamentals of life � than almost anyone expected. Why?

Robert J. Gordon, a distinguished macro�economist and economic historian at Northwestern, has been arguing for a long time against the techno-optimism that saturates our culture, with its constant assertion that we�re in the midst of revolutionary change. Starting at the height of the dot-com frenzy, he has repeatedly called for perspective: Developments in information and communication technology, he has insisted, just don�t measure up to past achievements. Specifically, he has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication.

In �The Rise and Fall of American Growth,� Gordon doubles down on that theme, declaring that the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of those inventions � a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave, and Gordon doesn�t expect us ever to see anything similar.

Is he right? My answer is a definite maybe. But whether or not you end up agreeing with Gordon�s thesis, this is a book well worth reading � a magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life over the past six generations and careful economic analysis. Non-economists may find some of the charts and tables heavy going, but Gordon never loses sight of the real people and real lives behind those charts. This book will challenge your views about the future; it will definitely transform how you see the past.

Indeed, almost half the book is devoted to changes that took place before World War II. Others have covered this ground � most notably Daniel Boorstin in �The Americans: The Democratic Experience.� Even knowing this literature, however, I was fascinated by Gordon�s account of the changes wrought by his Great Inventions. As he says, �Except in the rural South, daily life for every American changed beyond recognition between 1870 and 1940.� Electric lights replaced candles and whale oil, flush toilets replaced outhouses, cars and electric trains replaced horses. (In the 1880s, parts of New York�s financial district were seven feet deep in manure.)

Meanwhile, backbreaking toil both in the workplace and in the home was for the most part replaced by far less onerous employment. This is a point all too often missed by economists, who tend to think only about how much purchasing power people have, not about what they have to do to get it, and Gordon does an important service by reminding us that the conditions under which men and women labor are as important as the amount they get paid.

Aside from its being an interesting story, however, why is it important to study this transformation? Mainly, Gordon suggests � although these are my words, not his � to provide a baseline. What happened between 1870 and 1940, he argues, and I would agree, is what real transformation looks like. Any claims about current progress need to be compared with that baseline to see how they measure up.

And it�s hard not to agree with him that nothing that has happened since is remotely comparable. Urban life in America on the eve of World War II was already recognizably modern; you or I could walk into a 1940s apartment, with its indoor plumbing, gas range, electric lights, refrigerator and telephone, and we�d find it basically functional. We�d be annoyed at the lack of television and Internet � but not horrified or disgusted.

By contrast, urban Americans from 1940 walking into 1870-style accommodations � which they could still do in the rural South � were indeed horrified and disgusted. Life fundamentally improved between 1870 and 1940 in a way it hasn�t since.

Now, in 1940 many Americans were already living in what was recognizably the modern world, but many others weren�t. What happened over the next 30 years was that the further maturing of the Great Inventions led to rapidly rising incomes and a spread of that modern lifestyle to the nation as a whole. But then everything slowed down. And Gordon argues that the slowdown is likely to be permanent: The great age of progress is behind us. But is Gordon just from the wrong generation, unable to fully appreciate the wonders of the latest technology? I suspect that things like social media make a bigger positive difference to people�s lives than he acknowledges. But he makes two really good points that throw quite a lot of cold water on the claims of techno-optimists.

First, he points out that genuinely major innovations normally bring about big changes in business practices, in what workplaces look like and how they function. And there were some changes along those lines between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s � but not much since, which is evidence for Gordon�s claim that the main impact of the I.T. revolution has already happened.

Second, one of the major arguments of techno-optimists is that official measures of economic growth understate the real extent of progress, because they don�t fully account for the benefits of truly new goods. Gordon concedes this point, but notes that it was always thus � and that the understatement of progress was probably bigger during the great prewar transformation than it is today.

So what does this say about the future? Gordon suggests that the future is all too likely to be marked by stagnant living standards for most Americans, because the effects of slowing technological progress will be reinforced by a set of �headwinds�: rising inequality, a plateau in education levels, an aging population and more.

It�s a shocking prediction for a society whose self-image, arguably its very identity, is bound up with the expectation of constant progress. And you have to wonder about the social and political consequences of another generation of stagnation or decline in working-class incomes.

Of course, Gordon could be wrong: Maybe we�re on the cusp of truly transformative change, say from artificial intelligence or radical progress in biology (which would bring their own risks). But he makes a powerful case. Perhaps the future isn�t what it used to be.

The central premise of this argument is that the modern world as we know it was largely invented during or before the early 20th century, giving us more or less everything we see as a contemporary quality of life. The surge of growth that came with this wave of innovation may have passed us by, however. What do you think? Can information technology and modern computing alone pull us as first world societies out of what appears to be declining living conditions for the eroding middle class?

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:18

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# ? May 2, 2024 12:22

Blue Star: Feb 18, 2013; by FactsAreUseless

I can believe it. I'm only in my early 30s but I can still look back to when i was a kid and compare it to today, and I don't see anything all that amazing. Mostly we've changed socially. Gay marriage was unthinkable back when I was in elementary school, when "fag" was the go-to insult. So I think culturally we've changed. But you're asking about technology, and I don't see anything all that impressive. When i look back to when I was a kid in the mid-and-late 90s, it's basically the same as now. There were already cell phones and personal computers back then, they've just gotten a bit better. There was already the internet and websites and email and all that stuff; it's just gotten more ubiquitous and all-encompassing, and again, it's mostly our culture that has changed. We've got more social media, and we can call each other at any time, and do our banking at home, and order stuff online. That's about it.

I don't necessarily think this is a good or bad thing, though. Maybe it's good that we don't have all this whiz-bang whatever stuff. Look at what we do with the internet: we just get into stupid arguments with strangers, doxx each other, harass each other, etc. Women and minorities get death and rape threats. And the climate's going to poo poo because of our technology. So maybe it's good that something is putting the brakes on it.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:31

foobardog: Apr 19, 2007; There, now I can tell when you're posting.

-- A friend

Logistics has seriously improved greatly since 1940, which while seeming like a difference in degree, becomes a difference in kind as it becomes available to more and more "average" people. This causes much quicker delivery of goods, and often opens up small businesses to near global reach. And when the payload is digital, it has become insanely accessible.

It really sounds as if he greatly, greatly underestimates what the tap of information from the Internet has caused, as well as being hyper focused on "average people". It's true that average people haven't done better, but that has vast more to do with neoliberalism and the move to a service economy than a stagnation in technology.

That also does not include increases in medical technology which has caught many diseases much earlier, and provided a more positive prognosis to people.

Your home may not be all that different, but the world outside is very different.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:33

Mofabio: May 15, 2003; (y - mx)*(1/(inf))*(PV/RT)*(2.718)*(V/I)

There is plenty of unhappiness to end, but it mainly has to do with our social relations, such as wage work (which will never end from technological improvements).

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:34

Scrub-Niggurath: Nov 27, 2007

depends on whether or not VR takes off

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:35

Arsonist Daria: Feb 27, 2011; ^{Requiescat in pace.}

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwJ1i5lCw0M

Nope.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:40

foobardog: Apr 19, 2007; There, now I can tell when you're posting.

-- A friend

Blue Star posted:

There was already the internet and websites and email and all that stuff; it's just gotten more ubiquitous and all-encompassing, and again, it's mostly our culture that has changed. We've got more social media, and we can call each other at any time, and do our banking at home, and order stuff online. That's about it.

As I've said in another thread, this is not small potatoes. Ordering stuff online is huge. Being able to produce your own media and reach an audience like youtube "stars" is huge. Platforms like Bandcamp are huge. gently caress, we all have GPS units in our pockets and can be reached at any time. That's huge.

In 1995 Clueless came out. If you look at it today you may be mistaken that it holds up remarkably well with the constant cell phone use. However, the point of the ubiquitous cell phone use in that movie was to satirize the rich! You're supposed to be laughing at these ridiculous people on their cell phones all the time.

Ordering a book from Amazon meant it took a guaranteed week or more to get here in the 90s. At the expedited rate. Now you can often get it in a couple of days, and in many cases, even sooner, for a surcharge.

I'm just about to hit my mid-30s, and the future is not what I expected. Yes, we had much higher expectations for a lot of things, but like how we laughed at the Jetsons, we can laugh at Total Recall, while still living in a greatly changed world.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:41

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

foobardog posted:

Logistics has seriously improved greatly since 1940, which while seeming like a difference in degree, becomes a difference in kind as it becomes available to more and more "average" people. This causes much quicker delivery of goods, and often opens up small businesses to near global reach. And when the payload is digital, it has become insanely accessible.

But on the other hand, cheap shipping has created a global market for manufacturing labor and whoops, there goes the wage-earning basis of the first world middle class!

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:42

Lyapunov Unstable: Nov 20, 2011

I feel like air travel is conspicuously absent from this list.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:44

atomicthumbs: Dec 26, 2010; We're in the business of extending man's senses.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:45

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Lyapunov Unstable posted:

I feel like air travel is conspicuously absent from this list.

I dunno if i would call air travel a driver of economic growth - it's certainly an excellent luxury and convenience, but i wouldn't say either that it's crucial to the modern world.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 03:47

foobardog: Apr 19, 2007; There, now I can tell when you're posting.

-- A friend

Blue Star posted:

I can believe it. I'm only in my early 30s but I can still look back to when i was a kid and compare it to today, and I don't see anything all that amazing. Mostly we've changed socially. Gay marriage was unthinkable back when I was in elementary school, when "fag" was the go-to insult. So I think culturally we've changed. But you're asking about technology, and I don't see anything all that impressive. When i look back to when I was a kid in the mid-and-late 90s, it's basically the same as now. There were already cell phones and personal computers back then, they've just gotten a bit better. There was already the internet and websites and email and all that stuff; it's just gotten more ubiquitous and all-encompassing, and again, it's mostly our culture that has changed. We've got more social media, and we can call each other at any time, and do our banking at home, and order stuff online. That's about it.

I don't necessarily think this is a good or bad thing, though. Maybe it's good that we don't have all this whiz-bang whatever stuff. Look at what we do with the internet: we just get into stupid arguments with strangers, doxx each other, harass each other, etc. Women and minorities get death and rape threats. And the climate's going to poo poo because of our technology. So maybe it's good that something is putting the brakes on it.

"The internet is just sending 1's and 0's and we just send more 1's and 0's now!"

How about we just invent magic so you're astounded?

foobardog posted:

Logistics has seriously improved greatly since 1940, which while seeming like a difference in degree, becomes a difference in kind as it becomes available to more and more "average" people. This causes much quicker delivery of goods, and often opens up small businesses to near global reach. And when the payload is digital, it has become insanely accessible.

It really sounds as if he greatly, greatly underestimates what the tap of information from the Internet has caused, as well as being hyper focused on "average people". It's true that average people haven't done better, but that has vast more to do with neoliberalism and the move to a service economy than a stagnation in technology.

That also does not include increases in medical technology which has caught many diseases much earlier, and provided a more positive prognosis to people.

Your home may not be all that different, but the world outside is very different.

I would say the transformations wrought by the internet have already 'hit' though, you're not going to see massive increases in digital information going forwards

Lumberjack Bonanza posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwJ1i5lCw0M

Nope.

I didn't even click your link and I was going to make a post about anime. Great minds think alike I suppose

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:00

Lyapunov Unstable: Nov 20, 2011

crabcakes66 posted:

Yeah the 50 million jobs and trillions of dollars of global economic activity it generates sure are nothing.

It also fits neatly under the 'stuff that's already happened' category

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:06

silence_kit: Jul 14, 2011; by the sex ghost

foobardog posted:

As I've said in another thread, this is not small potatoes. Ordering stuff online is huge. Being able to produce your own media and reach an audience like youtube "stars" is huge. Platforms like Bandcamp are huge. gently caress, we all have GPS units in our pockets and can be reached at any time. That's huge.

. . .

Ordering a book from Amazon meant it took a guaranteed week or more to get here in the 90s. At the expedited rate. Now you can often get it in a couple of days, and in many cases, even sooner, for a surcharge.

Yeah, I agree, these things are a pretty big deal in society and earlier posters were kind of downplaying them, but are they really as big of a deal as the automobile, or electrification and plumbing? I don't think they are.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:06

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

The omni-directional pallet and intermodal container have had greater impacts on the human race than literally anything else that has been invented since the atomic bomb.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:08

Helsing: Aug 23, 2003; DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU JOE BIDEN

Saying that we're in an age of "technological decline" would seem to imply that we're actually regressing, which I don't think makes a lot of sense.

However, I do think that as time has gone by we've been able to appreciate just how unusual the period between about 1750 and 1950 really was. This period completely transformed human life and even the environment and geology of the planet in ways that we've never seen before. Much of the progress since 1950 has involved refining or improving upon technical advancements from that period.

That having been said, I do think that the accumulation of communications and media technology is pretty significant, and while it's a fools game to predict when it will happen, we may be on the threshold of some pretty significant advancements in medicine and biology.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:15

RuanGacho: Jun 20, 2002; "You're gunna break it!"

Helsing posted:

Saying that we're in an age of "technological decline" would seem to imply that we're actually regressing, which I don't think makes a lot of sense.

However, I do think that as time has gone by we've been able to appreciate just how unusual the period between about 1750 and 1950 really was. This period completely transformed human life and even the environment and geology of the planet in ways that we've never seen before. Much of the progress since 1950 has involved refining or improving upon technical advancements from that period.

That having been said, I do think that the accumulation of communications and media technology is pretty significant, and while it's a fools game to predict when it will happen, we may be on the threshold of some pretty significant advancements in medicine and biology.

Forgetting all the App nonsense, communications tech is still in it's infancy, there's way way way more we can do with it than we have currently developed and people just lack imagination I guess.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:19

LogisticEarth: Mar 28, 2004; Someone once told me, "Time is a flat circle".

The problem with saying "much of the progress since 1950 has been a refinement of old ideas" is that, that's basically been true for every period of human civilization at some point. It's an ongoing process. There's a whole host of ideas out there that could radically change society. From nano-materials, which could be bigger than the widespread use of plastics, to AI, to space-based technologies, and genetically engineered chickens laying pharmaceutically-enhanced eggs. When/if these bear fruit and are economically mundane by 2050, you'll have people looking back and going "well this was refining tech developed in the 1990's, it's not actually new.

I mean, I don't think we'll exponentially increase into a technological utopia, but we're far from hitting the ceiling here. Really, we just need WW III to come along so they can weaponize all this experimental poo poo, so that it can be later turned into consumer products for the ragged remains of humanity.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:28

Noun Verber: Oct 12, 2006; Cool party, guys.

The U.S. Government can place a tomahawk missile anywhere on the planet within six hours. I dream of a future where we can do it in two.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:34

1994 Toyota Celica: Sep 11, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

tech's doing fine, the decadence of this age lies in the rotten core of the human spirit

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:34

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

LogisticEarth posted:

The problem with saying "much of the progress since 1950 has been a refinement of old ideas" is that, that's basically been true for every period of human civilization at some point. It's an ongoing process. There's a whole host of ideas out there that could radically change society. From nano-materials, which could be bigger than the widespread use of plastics, to AI, to space-based technologies, and genetically engineered chickens laying pharmaceutically-enhanced eggs. When/if these bear fruit and are economically mundane by 2050, you'll have people looking back and going "well this was refining tech developed in the 1990's, it's not actually new.

I mean, I don't think we'll exponentially increase into a technological utopia, but we're far from hitting the ceiling here. Really, we just need WW III to come along so they can weaponize all this experimental poo poo, so that it can be later turned into consumer products for the ragged remains of humanity.

Ideas are less important than the structural societal and economic changes that accompany those ideas. Leonardo da Vinci came up the idea of airplanes and tanks in the 1400s, but that ultimately didn't have any effect on society. As Krugman says in literally the first lines of his review popular culture has imagined all sorts of ideas of what the future would be like but they didn't happen. Many of them are even technically possible but simply not economically feasible

I don't know if the implications of this are that awful but it's a very compelling point I think and saying 'boy you'll look stupid when we invent flying cars and sentinent AIs' almost misses the entire point of the book

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:43

foobardog: Apr 19, 2007; There, now I can tell when you're posting.

-- A friend

icantfindaname posted:

I would say the transformations wrought by the internet have already 'hit' though, you're not going to see massive increases in digital information going forwards

Yeah, this I could agree with, but we'll see. The next big areas that are due for a revolution will be AI and biotech (perhaps both through cognitive science), and the sad thing is that while advances have been made, both problems turned out to be much harder than we thought. It's additionally very fair to say that the 50s were a big change in life, but it was not solely because of technology, but also the particular situation at that time, which is likely to not be repeated.

silence_kit posted:

Yeah, I agree, these things are a pretty big deal in society and earlier posters were kind of downplaying them, but are they really as big of a deal as the automobile, or electrification and plumbing? I don't think they are.

I completely think so, I think as adept as we actually are with the Internet, we're just babbys at handling all this information, and it probably has a lot to do with not understanding enough about our own brain trying to synthesize it (cognitive biases are a bitch), as well as not having had gone through the struggles with it all yet. Computers have been popular for 40 years. The Internet for 20. It's like we all own Photoshop, but we only really understand how to use it MS Paint. We're sitting in 1920, saying "well, the lights are nifty, but what will we actually use this electricity for?"

# ? Jan 27, 2016 04:53

Old Kentucky Shark: May 25, 2012; If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.

Rent-A-Cop posted:

The omni-directional pallet and intermodal container have had greater impacts on the human race than literally anything else that has been invented since the atomic bomb.

There's 2 feet of snow on the ground and I am eating a (reasonably) fresh mandarin orange.

The part where no one thinks that is amazing is the part that's loving amazing.

The average Walmart Distribution Center represents a level of gross technological and logistical power greater than the Manhattan Project.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:11

Bates: Jun 15, 2006

The 1870-1940 period was more transformative because a lot of manual labor was replaced with engines and electricity and we can't replicate that because there's not that much manual labor left to replace. In 1900 washing clothes involved stirring a tub full of clothes with a big stick until it was clean. Today you push a button. 99% of the labor in that process has been automated and making it another 99% easier would require a robot butler.

There's not an infinite number of things we can apply technology to that will make your life easier. When transportation, cleaning, washing, eating, gardening and consuming media can be done with the push of a button where do you go from there? This has nothing to do with technological advancement, only the impact it has on your daily boring life and that impact is finite because we do not have infinite basic needs.

The impact the internet has had in terms of communication also can't be overstated and there's still a long way to go.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:22

evilweasel: Aug 24, 2002

Lyapunov Unstable posted:

I feel like air travel is conspicuously absent from this list.

Air travel hasn't gotten all tha much better in decades.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:23

GhostofJohnMuir: Aug 14, 2014; anime is not good

All technology has been going downhill after the invention of the wheel. Everything else has just been derivative refinements since then.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:25

trucutru: Jul 9, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

Noun Verber posted:

The U.S. Government can place a tomahawk missile anywhere on the planet within six hours. I dream of a future where we can do it in two.

The logistics involved in bombing the wrong wedding have indeed progressed by leaps and bounds.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:30

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

I think the concept of payment itself is one ignored. Credit Cards were sort of in use in the 1940s but they were typically limited and on a store only basis. The idea of a payment system other than cash that just works anywhere (more or less) is pretty revolutionary. Especially if it allows you to remove the headache of making sure you have available funds at any given time.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:31

ductonius: Apr 9, 2007; I heard there's a cream for that...

Noun Verber posted:

The U.S. Government can place a tomahawk missile anywhere on the planet within six hours. I dream of a future where we can do it in two.

We can do it in 40 min with an ICBM or 15 with a SLBM. THE FUTURE IS NOW!

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:31

trucutru: Jul 9, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

computer parts posted:

Especially if it allows you to remove the headache of making sure you have available funds at any given time.

It does introduce the headache of not having available funds to pay the interest in the future. To be fair is is like a time machine for your (future) headache. High-tech indeed.

But in any case CCs are merely an off-shot of modern telecommunications. It's just that instead of trusting the letter of credit that the Count of Montecristo is showing you, you can contact his bank directly.

trucutru fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:35

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

trucutru posted:

It does introduce the headache of not having available funds to pay the interest in the future. To be fair is is like a time machine for your (future) headache.

If you pay everything with a card, you get one bill that you can pay off, and (like you said) you don't even need to pay it all off at once, though you do incur interest. That's still better than "oh I need groceries but I don't get paid until friday and I don't have the cash now".

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:37

trucutru: Jul 9, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

computer parts posted:

If you pay everything with a card, you get one bill that you can pay off, and (like you said) you don't even need to pay it all off at once, though you do incur interest. That's still better than "oh I need groceries but I don't get paid until friday and I don't have the cash now".

This is not precisely a new problem, you know. I am pretty sure it was solved in the past, it just took a bit longer (sometimes it is even faster than any technology. I can still go to the mom-and-pop shop right in front of my house and grab anything I want without paying. They have this "tab" technology that works wonders). You could also be helped by good Samaritans, as a bonus you also knew the person who was going to break your legs if you didn't pay personally. Nowadays it is much less intimate.

It's like arranging an in-person meeting nowadays, in some cases you need to coordinate over cellphones up to the last minute or otherwise some idiot won't make it. How did they manage in the past? well, somehow people managed to arrive to the meeting place without them phones. Not as convenient, for sure.

trucutru fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:40

computer parts: Nov 18, 2010; PLEASE CLAP

trucutru posted:

This is not precisely a new problem, you know. I am pretty sure it was solved in the past, it just took a bit longer. You also knew the person who was going to break your legs if you didn't pay personally. Nowadays it is much less personal.

It was solved with checks, which are cumbersome and easier to fake.

I'm not even talking about cheating the mob owned bodega, I just mean that a grocer or whoever just wouldn't sell you food.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:43

trucutru: Jul 9, 2003; by Fluffdaddy

computer parts posted:

It was solved with checks, which are cumbersome and easier to fake.

I'm not even talking about cheating the mob owned bodega, I just mean that a grocer or whoever just wouldn't sell you food.

Sorry, see my edit. It was solved in multiple -and very different- ways. Some much more convenient and secure than CCs. Like, there is a lot of high-tech fetichism and sometimes that makes us forget that those problems are old news and we somehow still managed to do the poo poo we wanted to do.

Wait a minute, I'll tell my brother to bum a coke from the store for me. I don't know when the pencil was invented but that's basically all the tech required to record the debt. (the old lady who runs the store doesn't even need a pencil but her daughter is kind of scatter-brained so its better to write that poo poo down).

Edit: Sometimes I pay for my cokes and cheetos by fixing their computer. My debt just goes away like some kind of tech wizardry.

Edit2: yay! I've been informed that the coke is in the fridge, waiting for me.

vvvv Now, *those* are some real advances vvvvv

trucutru fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:49

Cantorsdust: Aug 10, 2008; Infinitely many points, but zero length.

As someone in the medical field who keeps up with the state of biological research, there's poo poo coming down the pipe that would blow your minds--if had the funding and political will to be made reality. One example that has just recently happened in the past few years is treatment of Hepatitis C. New antiviral drugs have turned it from a chronic disease with a high risk for liver cirrhosis and liver cancer into a 99% curable illness. It's a miracle for the field, and you've never heard about it. Only problem is that the cost of a 3-6 month round of drugs is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to drug companies.

There's so much poo poo that could become reality relatively soon if we focused our nation's resources. Growable organs are getting better--we can already grow skin, bladder, and miniature hearts. Working on kidneys and liver. Organ transplantation is progressing--small bowel and pancreas transplantation are now possibilities. Unlocking finer control of the immune system could bring a whole host of advances. Already immunotherapy is becoming the 4th pillar in cancer treatment along with chemo, radiation, and surgery. Recently Jimmy Carter survived metastatic melanoma thanks to immunotherapy. Immune system control would allow for easy organ transplantation and new treatments for autoimmune disease. We've also undergone a quiet revolution in organ replacement therapy. Not just intermittent dialysis--now ICUs have continuous dialysis, liver replacement therapy like MARS, and updated heart supplementation with LVADs (left ventricular assist devices) and total heart lung substitution with ECMO (extra corporeal membrane oxygenation). Meanwhile advances in computing, robotics, and chemistry have allowed for drug screening on a massive scale, testing thousands of substances at a time assembly line style for biological effect. Further advances in computing would allow for simulation to replace the process, or further advances in biology would allow for "cell/tissue/organ on a chip" devices for rapid experimentation. Vaccines continue to be produced, limited only by the willingness to pay for the extensive FDA testing process.

If our society devoted themselves to it, it's not outside the realm of possibility to eradicate a large portion of disease entirely, virtually eliminate cancer, and provide organ-replacement therapy for most organs until a suitable on-the-spot replacement can be grown and transplanted.

The only question of technological progress is one of political will and funding--there's no shortage of imagination.

# ? Jan 27, 2016 05:56

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# ? May 2, 2024 12:22

silence_kit: Jul 14, 2011; by the sex ghost

LogisticEarth posted:

The problem with saying "much of the progress since 1950 has been a refinement of old ideas" is that, that's basically been true for every period of human civilization at some point. It's an ongoing process.

There used to be way more novel stuff which eventually lead to breakthrough technologies though. If you look at fundamental physics research, they haven't really come up with that much stuff in recent history which could be engineered or which could potentially be relevant to society. In the 19th century we had advances in thermodynamics and electromagnetism which, relatively, pretty quickly gave birth to real technologies like steam engines, the internal combustion engine, electrical power, HVAC, and radio communication. In the early 20th century, we had quantum mechanics, which when applied to the physics of solids, has greatly enabled information technology and lowered the cost and increased the ubiquity of wired and wireless communication.

Not much fundamental physics research from the late 20th century onwards has borne much technological fruit. It's not like electromagnetism and thermodynamics where new technology followed physics advances pretty quickly. Today "high physics" focuses on pretty esoteric stuff which requires enormous billion-dollar instruments and sophisticated statistics to detect the weak effects. This sort of decline of useful physics is why people are looking earnestly towards the more emergent sciences like biology for new technologies in medicine. Physics is kind of dying.

silence_kit fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jan 27, 2016

# ? Jan 27, 2016 06:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Are we in an age of technological decline?

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