Are we in an age of technological decline?

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

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

silence_kit posted:

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.

How do you define discoveries/advances vs. invention? Like, steam engines sorta date back roughly two millennia (though obviously they were basically just toys), but around a thousand years later you began to see slightly more practical versions, though still not useful for real industrial work. Half a millennia later you start to see industrially useful steam engines, and then a century later you have the first commercially viable ones. Depending on whether you count from the more theoretical work being done around 1600, or the commercially viable ones around 1700, steam engines had one or two centuries before they really started to make their mark. Maybe the fundamental physics research from the late 20th century needs a bunch of different fields to get to somewhere they aren't know, before they can produce practical technologies? Just like the steam engine needed improved material sciences to become a proper commercially viable industrial machine.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 11:01

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 19:37

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

MikeCrotch posted:

The big issue is that antibiotics are an extremely risky investment proposition and tend to have low returns, so for 10-15 years pharmaceutical companies have gradually stopped bothering to create new ones. This is the reason that the US and other governments and pumping cash into antibiotic research, since the market is doing the job of funding the research in this instance. There is usually around 12 years before a drug gets to market from start to finish though, so it will be a race to get the new antibiotics out before bacteria develop total resistance to them.

I imagine the other big issue is completely irresponsible use of antibiotics, which practically seems designed to develop resistant bacteria.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 13:15

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

silence_kit posted:

Pointing out cases where the inventors who didn't really know what they were doing discover something, and then later physicists, inspired by the technology, fill in the gaps in understanding only strengthens my point that physics used to be way more useful than it is now.

Well, that probably has something to do with it being much easier to create the very basics of a steam engine than a fusion reactor. After the low-hanging fruits have been picked by random people, and then studied by physicists, physicists now have to develop the tools to pick those fruits themselves because we're now operating on a level of complexity and a scale which simply can't be compared to a machine that could probably be fixed by whacking it with a hammer. In that sense, physics is more useful because it's the only tool we have.

Also, as I pointed out, there was a full century from theory to commercially viable machine. For something more modern, it took a little more than four decades to go from the discovery of radioactivity to the development of the nuclear bomb. Maybe we'll have some crazy Boson Bomb in 2050 which will have made nuclear weapons obsolete?

silence_kit posted:

Physicists today don't do that kind of work and instead the premier physicists spend their entire careers looking for things like the Higgs Boson which requires a billion-dollar apparatus and sophisticated statistical analysis to be able to faintly detect.

And along the way develop a bunch of new or improved poo poo because the old poo poo isn't good enough, which might then have applications in other fields. From what I gather, that is precisely what happens when people try to expand our knowledge, they're forced to create practical poo poo too because that's the only way they can actually measure anything, or make particles do what they want them to do.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 18:12

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

computer parts posted:

I would think GPS alone has been a massive change in the way people do things.

GPS is for people with no sense of direction.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 19:50

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Pedro De Heredia posted:

But if I had to compile a list of benefits brought to us by The Internet, Youtube or Twitter wouldn't be anywhere near the top 50. They're just some websites that aren't anywhere near as important or revolutionary as some of you are claiming, certainly not when compared to other aspects of the internet. You sound as myopic bringing them up as the guy bringing up the car by saying 'well instead of an hour now my commute is 15 minutes'.

I think you'll find that Twitter singlehandedly caused the Arab Spring, the repercussions of which we have yet to fully comprehend.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 16:47

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 19:37

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

QuarkJets posted:

Reducing the time that it takes an individual to wash clothes doesn't usually provide economic value to anyone, so your example fails your sniff test. For the vast majority of washing machine users, it's purely a time-saving device so that they can have more leisure hours. Clearly, using your own examples, the economic value generated by a device should not be the sole criteria by which we should judge its impact on the world.

Washing clothes has economic value, even if you're not directly compensated for it.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2016 16:00

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