why does technology still suck

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Here we are with computers that can do anything from online banking to play music and everything else . But why can't we find a cure for HIV or cancer. And why aren't we travelling In spaceships. When we going to replace the wheel anytime soon?

One reason is probably economics. A computer startup is cheap to set up and has huge upside potential. Cure for HIV or cancer? Once you cure it, it's gone. You can't make much money off of it even if you patent the cure. That and the huge R&D costs (it takes many years to solve problems so complicated) involved for the little profit to gain makes it almost not worth it. That's why there are a lot more computer programmers than cancer researchers.

As for replacing the wheel, I don't see anything wrong with the wheel. Unless you were to replace it with levitating magnets but that's just too energy inefficient compared to the wheel.

levitation is much more efficient, look at maglev trains,

other than that we are limited by computational power,
something like the cure for aids is very complex but they have made some progress in aids medications.
we have found vaccines that prevent some cancer incidents so we have made progress there as well.

we are also lmited by our power generation and storage abilities,

the only reason we dont have laser rifles is that we dont have any batteries small and light enough to power anything destructive and handheld,

though there are some impressive diy pulse lasers that can pierce thin metal at close range (centimeters)

I like Theo Jansen's alternative to the wheel

Everyone traveling in spaceships would require a fuel we don't have or dont have the technology to make. And some cancers are curable. What you named is just stuff we can achieve becuase of the internet, and music artists.

Different problems are of different difficulties, and the state of research/understanding in different fields can be very different.

I guessing, but I suspect that a CPU is orders of magnitude less complex than a virus, let alone a virus interacting with the immune system. And, since we create CPU's we don't have to backwards engineer them (we already have the manual).

Looks like magnetically levitated cars aren't that far into the future...maybe we will see it in our lifetimes...

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/23 ... ncept.htmlmagnetically levitating car

My iPhone has apps for all of that

Maglev trains, which already exist, make more sense economically.

ruveyn

Because you haven't done anything yet.

For that we would need cheap supraconductors who work on everyday temperature. Don't exist yet.

But for maglev trains we could still get by with liquid nitrogen temperature superconductors. Expensive but still doable. Despite the horrendous cost, I'd still love it if Canada replaced all of its rail-lines with maglev (not going to happen of course, especially with talk of cutting rail service, again). You could travel across the country in a day!