Are we in an age of technological decline?

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

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

^^^
Five orders of magnitude better accuracy or not, GPS is just an incremental improvement over using a sextant :colbert:

I went back to scan over the article in case I missed a major point but nope, still seems pretty dumb. Most of the issues have been mentioned already, but I'll try to recap:

Diminishing returns: All the easy, high impact poo poo's been done. It now takes a massive amount of effort to advance technology bit by bit, but but we're loving doing it.
Ignoring actual progress: Robo-prosthetics! Internet! Cheap as poo poo air travel!
Not seeing into near future: Massively cheaper space access. Gene editing. Drones for SAR, monitoring, logistics, etc. Who knows what else.

Sure you can dismiss the carbon-fiber, muscle controlled bionic arm as being just an incremental upgrade over steel hooks but really, we'll soon be at a point where they're as good or better than the real thing.

But if all these incremental upgrades are put together, you get things like massively cheaper air travel, and think the accessibility makes an enormous difference. For a week's salary I can go anywhere in the world tomorrow, should I so desire. Because of modern telecommunications, I could then be working from the beach in Thailand tomorrow without anyone realizing or caring. While sitting on the beach, I could start a new business and sell it for billions to Facebook, then fly home and have the apartment cleaned and some food cooked by tapping a button on my phone. Yes, exactly like 1940 because they had cars and planes too.