Technology in this century progressing slowly?

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I would like to know do you think that technology in this century is going slowly? I was expecting when I was in the year 2001 we would see flying cars and robots and lazer beams but that is not the case as of right now. Why is technology in this century progressing slowly?

Also what do you think that technology would be like in the future?

Instead we have totally artificial life, courtesy of Craig Ventor.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter

You read too much science fiction. Real science is much more interesting and useful.

Technology has never moves so fast in prior times.

ruveyn

You dont see the contradiction?

You are lamenting the "slow progress of technology"-and doing it on a global public forum made possible by the digital information superhighway of the internet which didnt exist 20 years ago. Youve gotten so blase about your ability to send your thoughts around the globe that youve forgetten how unthinkable that was only a few years ago!

Yes, the 2001 of the Jetsons never came to pass but other technological revolutions have occured that were not dreamed of. Thats how history goes.

No we don't. Venter has done some impressive things, but "totally artificial life" still remains firmly in the realm of science fiction.

But for something truly badass going on in the biological world, I point you to the Japanese researchers who are cloning a woolly mammoth. That is going to be freaking awesome.

I blame the delay on copyrights, modern marketing schemes, fallback in general people knowledge in general society, short-term thinking and investing, economic difficulties, empathizing feeling above thinking in the last three decades and overstretched feminism. Just to name a few.

I can't really tell what the future will be like in terms of technology, it's getting very unstable out there right now - forwards? backwards? More in the Eastern countries? Who really knowns?

EDIT: Robots and lazers are actually being developed and used on daily bases. Maybe not the droids you might hope for though . Lazers aren't yet the handpacking kind you see in the movies .

Flying cars as in levetating vehicles are in experimental phases, not in car format persé.

I think ever since the Internet came around that we have seen more progress in a shorter period of time than any other in prior human existence.

'Progress' is such a difficult thing to measure. I, personally, think it's been about the same as it ever has. Plenty of technologies have become rapidly obsolete and been replaced. CRT monitors look ridiculous to me now, but I have a pile in the closet that aren't that old. As for flying cars -- they've been expecting them 'within the next ten years' since the 1920s.

Technologies for better batteries seems the only thing that hasn't increased in leaps and bounds. It seems they're still trying to squeeze most possible efficiency out of very old-fashioned devices.

Taking this century as post 2000, not much change from Windows 95, with a CD drive and dial up.

The internet was worldwide back then, and content was just as shallow.

Fifteen years ago people were saying that the technology had outrun the people. The new phones are techno wonders, but the people talking on them are saying the same thing.

Our technology has taken our jobs, and taken the profit out of what is left.

The Internet is no longer an option, I shop there, I sell there. I sell worldwide, and never a single customer in the city where I live.

Factories have become robots, and lasers cut steel, engrave, and mass market products have become cheaper than I could buy the materials.

I had a 96 Gateway, it cost $2200, now I run a 2004 Dell, $500, bought used for $50. There is no money left in computers. The flat screen I wanted, $1200, is now $249. I replaced my 21" CRT.

My use has not changed. 2002 technology keeps up. Most of the machines I use have not changed. Laserjets are a bit faster.

As for flying cars, we do not have pilots, so are waiting on computers, which will first drive cars. I would go for crawling in my bunk and saying "Houston." This will unemploy truck drivers. It will speed up and reduce the cost of shipping.

Personal robots are here, in Japan, and expensive. Mass produced, they will replace people. Right now it is the sex toy industry investing, but they could drive, shop, and pilot space craft.

The future problem is what we produce does it better than we do, and costs more than most could afford. The consumer phone credit card, locater, will be cheap, but not the machine that makes them.

Functional robots have the battery problem. I was smitten with Dorothy from Big O, but she weighs close to 500 pounds. Our best battery tech, maybe a few hours max. Same as the electric car problem.

Most of our want list is unreasonable, faster than light drive, anti gravity, time travel, That was in science fiction for a hundred years.

We make slow progress, robots all looked like Bender, the ones being built look like the girls of anime.

In general our technology makes us less productive, and reduces our earning power. Meanwhile flying cars and robots cost as much as a house, and no thirty year fixed rates.

Everyone at the seven eleven should be making $100,000 a year, just to cover the national debt and my social security. As a Nation, State, City, and Person, we are broke and unemployed. You can sell them a $150 phone, and air time, but little else. The young are not buying cars.

As for the technology of the future, I would like an anime robot that can pull a plow and some chickens.

The point I was trying to make is that progress in biology, particularly molecular biology and genetic biology has been dazzling. No slow down. The biggest area of progress in this, the 21 st century will be in the biological sciences and molecular chemistry.

The physics underlying most of the technology we are enjoying was laid down between 1900 and 1970, with the Standard Model of Fields and Particles being the most advanced physics supported by laboratory confirmation. String theory and brane theory are still mathematical speculations with no empirical verification.

The biggest breakthrough in computers, if it happens at all, will be practical quantum q-bit computers. This remains to be seen. The decoherence problem is yet to be solved.

There has been no slowdown in applied science (mostly chemistry and physics) since the end of WW2. It proceeds at a blazing pace.

Forget about people going wearing capes and driving flying cars. It is not going to happen. Also forget about controlled nuclear fusion as an energy source to generate heat and electrical power. It is not going to happen. Controlled fusion has been 30 years in the future for the last 60 years and 100 years from now it will still be 30 years in the future.

ruveyn

The internet goes all the way back to 1866 when the first transatlantic telegraphic cable was laid. The two ships that laid the first successful cable (there had been two failed attempts prior) communicated with each other over the horizon using the very cable they were laying down. That is the first time in human history that two ships out of sight of each other communicated instantaneously (at near light speed). The was a huge hinge on which history turned. 1866, which was 145 years ago, two human lifetimes. The United States was wired by 1920. We had telegraph, telephone, radio and an early version of t.v.

Wire photos transmitted by telegraphic code go back to 1900.

Your expectation are based on childish fiction, not real progress in the science and technology.

ruveyn

Real progress in mechanics would have doubled gas mileage.

Real progress in Physics would have produced a better battery.

The Green Revolution was 1960, more food at the cost of making it dependant on chemical companies. A lot of expermental land poison over a large area, now a mono culture of genetic engineered crops, built in pesticides. .

The price of failure of one thing has become large.

Technology is applied to consumer goods, what the old economy was built on, which is what ended that.

With Quarks and String Theory, we are still burning coal for power.

Rather than turning food into Ethanol, we should have lighter cars, Carbon Fiber, and not be importing oil or burning food.

With the people existing to support the markets, it is backwards. Technology has not been our friend.

The first order of business is seeing to the health, education, and welfare of the people. Worldwide we rank very low.

We pay for the technology that feeds the war machine, corporations taking over, and the university system produces Anthrax. Biological Weapons Systems are the next wave.

Our standard of living is falling, education is failing, real wages are falling, as a by product of technology.

Our savings are gone, we are 14 Trillion in debt, one in five unemployed, facing a grim future of more of the same. The misuse of technology got us here.

I think it appears that technology is moving ahead slower because the most revolutionary things catch our attention. Computers are nothing new, but until they can do something truly revolutionary from the prior generation, nobody notices how they've improved year after year without taking a detailed look at yearly changes.

Prosthetic limb improvements = barely noticeable.
Full "bionic" limb = revolutionary.

To go from one to the other happens in stages, but until we see the true first-gen bionic limb, people don't pay that much attention.

Actually technology has been developing faster in the last 50 years than in the preceding 2000.

ruveyn

@Inventor

Your posts are always full of useful information and easily to follow. Thanks man!

I have a phone which has double the processing power of a computer from 2000. I'd say we're moving quite fast.

Actually there is one massive leap in tech that has happened in the last 10 years. In two different fields.

Up until 2000 our technology, regardless of its application, had been completely based on electrical and mechanical interactions. Aka electricity powers a motor, the motor is composed of moving parts which in turn moved other parts which made the machine do something. Even computer chips work in this manner.

Then nanotechnology begun to change that. Rather than work with the mechanical properties of matter it begun to use the intrinsic properties of matter itself to perform tasks. The best example of an old use for a quasi-form of nanotechnology is the Quartz crystal found in handwatches: Rather than use a mechanical system to 'tick' time the makers discovered that quartz vibrates at a certain frequency when an electrical current is passed through it. What was once took a complex system miniaturized gears to do was replaced by one little crystal.

Post 2000 there has been an increasing amount of tech being developed using nanotech to replace mechanical functions with those of intrinsic properties of matter.

The second biggest leap is biotechnology. Using the same principle above, the tech is trying to develop biological replacements for current mechanical/electrical devices. Israeli scientists a while back made a prototype of a DNA-based processor, others have been developing biological batteries.. some even are trying to make buildings built by complex organic components similar to those found in insect skeletons (harder than steel) which can be 'grown' on site... the basic tech is already discovered its just a matter of learning how to harness biotech.


...and if they do find the higgs-boson ... holy cow O.o