I don't think it's reasonable to equate 'technologies that existed since the 60s' with 'technologies that are ubiquitous today'.
I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income and I have access to things like: near-instantaneous hot water at all times, affordable next-day delivery services from a pocket-sized device I carry around with me, international air travel that is affordable for me, efficient fridge/freezer technology, fresh groceries from around the world at every local convenience store.
And yes things look a lot less impressive if you filter out information-technology related things. But advancements will always look less impressive if you filter out the most impressive advancements. The fact that we are close to permanently connected across geographical boundaries now isn't something to be dismissed out of hand. The level of effectiveness and miniaturisation of communications devices (e.g. 'true wireless' earphones with mobile internet) is really approaching the point of being practical telepathy insofar as it can be used.
Almost everything you listed there already started becoming common by the 1960's.
Step back and forget about informational technology. Look at the world of atoms, not at the world of bits.
Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Man hasn't reached farther out in space than the moon missions of the 1960s. The first half the of the 20th century brought us: antibiotics, electricity, automobiles, air travel, rockets, space travel, satellites, radio, reliable clean drinking water, indoor heating, laundry machines, diswashers, widespread indoor plumbing, and massive improvements in sanitation / literacy.
The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth.
Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster.
Recent decades might a disappointment compared with the millenialist interpretation of exponential curves, but that's only the same as the disappointment a Victorian idealist might feel with the lack of stuff that happened in the twentieth century as a whole given that neither utopian socialism nor the Second Coming has occurred yet.
>Not sure I'd consider stuff like the vast majority of human knowledge sitting in my pocket to be less useful than the dishwasher because it has fewer moving parts or most people can afford to fly to be less of an achievement than the megarich can fly 50% faster.
Not sure anybody told you to consider that.
What they did ask you to consider is that technological progress, outside of the digital realm, has been slowed down.
Consider cameras that can shoot 10000 frames a second at ultra high definition resolutions; in the 1970s we had shitty auto developing film as the height of consumer tech.
Battery tech has gotten so advanced you're literally carrying around a firestorm's worth of energy in your pocket and only notice in the rare case that things go spectacularly wrong; compare that to the heavy inefficient NiCds of your parent's age.
Semiconductors are 14nm. That's not for scientists, that's not for researchers, that's for any joe that has 300 bucks. 70 years ago the idea that a pace described by Moore's law could even exist was seen with skepticism (remember it's a marketing "law" not a physical one).
We have rockets that can land themselves, cars that weigh half as much as they did 70 years ago and are twice as safe, a logistic network such that exotic foods are available year round world wide.
It just kills me to watch people post on the Internet using more than likely their mobile super computers, saying tech clearly has slown down because "they've got a feeling".
1. The important point to emphasize here is deceleration does not mean that progress isn't happening. It simply means that the groundbreaking progress we witnessed in the first half of the 20th century is not being replicated as quickly anymore.
2. Technological progress is based on the outcomes they bring with them. Easy or hard to achieve -- doesn't matter in terms of this measurement. Insane advancements in physics is not technological progress unless it enables us to vastly improve our existing capabilities to do things as humans.
Thiel argues this by pointing to a tech were all excited about: self-driving cars.
Thiel argues the original invention of the car was still a bigger innovation.
electricity -> cars -> airplanes -> rockets -> space travel
radio -> tv
laundry machines -> dishwashers
antibiotics -> vaccines
^^^All first 3/4 of 20th century. Self-driving cars would be merely a close match to any one of them. For the next 50 years to match what we saw in the start of the 20th century, we are going to need at least 4 or 5 other technological revolutions in the world of atoms for the comparison to be even similar.
>Technological progress, as long as you don't count all of this massive technological progress (which when left out conveniently makes my point), has been slowed down.
Edit: I should be less combative and provide some actual content. Take a look at semiconductors from the 60s vs now. They are clearly related to 'the digital realm' but are purely physical technology. The fast computers we have now (which enable our digital realm) are at the tip of a screaming bullet train of physical technological progress.
The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace.
While 'slowed down' or 'sped up' are difficult to quantify, the fact that 3 billion human beings have gained access to smartphone technology over the last decade seems to support the idea that technological progress has in fact sped up.
Increasing air transportation speed is a very narrow application of technology and hardly constitutes a meaningful gauge of technical innovation.
>The fact that a relatively low income individual has access to a large number of goods and services which were once considered exclusive to the wealthy is a clear indication that technological progress has continued at a steady pace.
No, it's just a clear indication of market efficiencies and/or better engineering.
It doesn't say anything about what the grandparent asked for: the rate and magnitude of new scientific/technologic discoveries.
One era (early 20th) is the industrial revolution; one era (approx. 1960-now) is the information revolution. It is true that the industrial revolution has slowed down and mostly focused on incremental improvements, but it seems strange to discount the information revolution gains completely. There's been a lot of information revolution gains.
That said, I would argue that medicine too has made some pretty significant advances in the 2nd half of the 20th century... mostly in surgery techniques (transplants are 2nd half 20th century), scanning techniques (NMR and CT both were 2nd half 20th century), and pharmaceuticals. Significant vaccines (polio, measles, mumps) were 2nd half of the 20th century developments. Genetic science has made huge gains as of late. Etc.
But half of the "world of atoms" things the grandparent listed were also market efficiencies or better engineering. Trading average speed for vast improvements in energy efficiency in aircraft in order to make flight accessible to the masses certainly involved vastly more progress of a technical and scientific nature in the late twentieth century than the cited early twentieth century example of wider replication of well-understood principles of plumbing to give the masses indoor toilets.
"Market efficiencies and/or better engineering" are often enabled by technological breakthroughs.
Consider the efficiencies generated by Amazon's highly automated warehouses; their level of automation wouldn't have been feasible in, say, the 60's. Substantial technological progress on multiple fronts has been required.
Actually it isn't. As Peter Thiel would say, globalization is the copying of existing technology, it is not the manufacture of new ones.
One reason we have stagnated can be revealed in the bias of our new language. Where we once used the terms "1st World" and "3rd World" we now use "Developed" and "Developing" -- language that is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology.
It may be, but there isn't a real good metric for societal improvement. And it seems like progress would always have ebbs and flows as different technologies have new opportunities that are squeezed -- and then other technologies look plumper, so they are squeezed, and so on.
And that's fine. I don't think anyone is complaining today about timepieces not keeping even more accurate time. Clocks today (in whatever device they are embedded in), while not 100% accurate are pretty good. The ROI in improving them further just isn't there -- in part because the good they'd serve humanity isn't there.
I think there are several quality metrics for gauging societal improvement:
- healthcare access and outcome statistics
- poverty & homelessness statistics
- education levels
- access to clean water in sufficient quantity
- access to healthful foods in sufficient quantity
- levels of environmental contaminants
- delta in income of top and bottom economic tiers
And so on. Toss in a few bullet points intended to flag totalitarian/authoritarian/fascist tendencies, worker exploitation, and the like and I think that while likely not a comprehensive blueprint that's more than enough to get started. Especially considering how poorly so many industrialized, first world, "democratic" countries in the world do on so many of these basics.
That said I agree there's no ROI on improving household items like clocks. The problem is there's also no obvious ROI on resolving homelessness.
What needs to happen is for VC and other sources of investment to stop chasing easy wins and realize huge money can be made by moving more out into the world of atoms.
How do you know moving into the world of atoms will lead to huge economic wins? Its easy for you to say someone should chase less risky investments when its not your money being invested.
Would you know a few VCs who have lost several million or more on an investment. Do it sometime and then express your optimism for the future.
Oil prices are essentially capped at $60/barrel for the foreseeable future due to unconventional extraction techniques -> was not long ago oil production was thought to have peaked. Solar power can be economical without subsidy. Robotic and minimally invasive surgery. Battery cost becoming viable for mass-market cars. Gene sequencing. Sensors for pennies. New materials (cheaper carbon fibre, metal alloys, semiconductors, graphine/carbon nanotubes). Most of the things mentioned as 'first half of 20th century' coming to the next 5 billion people.
For aerospace, how about affordability of a ticket over time (Ryanair vs Concorde)? Space travel: number of journeys per vehicle or time astronauts are able to spend in space (was minutes in early space flight, unlimited now). Transportation speed is a straw-man, the industry optimises for cost not speed.
No, because you're failing to distinguish between game-changer tech - transistors, DNA sequencing, operating systems, powered flight, all as classes of original and unexpected inventions - and refinement tech, which is made of game-changer inventions made smaller, cheaper, and more widely avaialable.
Game changer tech changes what can be imagined. Refinement tech changes what can be bought by consumers.
There's been plenty of refinement over the last few decades, but not nearly as much original game changer invention as in the previous decades.
> Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster.
Our means of travel have also gotten vastly more efficient.
Prioritizing progress in average efficiency over speed of a showpiece that is used for a very small share of actual travel isn't the end of progress, and it is very much change in the world of atoms, not bits.
It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now. Also point about concorde - it's more fuel efficient to fly slower (look at drag coefficient [1])
So from point of view of affordability and mobility for general public - it's good progress.
>It has gotten twice as cheap (if you look at average ticket prices adjusted to inflation) from 70 to now.
Which is consistent with the gp's point that progress has slowed down.
It had gotten 100 to 1000 times cheaper, faster, more efficient to e.g. travel intercontinentally between the 1900 to 1970 that it has between 1970 to now.
I learned a lot from researching the topics mentioned in this post, and hopefully someone else can also benefit from the following information.
tl;dr: Indoor heating significantly predates 1900. Though relevant inventions largely predate 1900, widespread adoption was indeed between 1900 and 1950 for electrification, automobiles, air travel, radio, washing machines, and indoor plumbing. The years after 1950 include most of the developments and use of the Concorde, moon missions, antibiotics, rockets, and dishwashers. I can only describe the inclusion of "space travel" and "satellites" in a list of things from the "first half of the 20th century" as trolling. The remainder of my post is what I found for each topic.
The Concorde flew from 1969 to 2003. The last time humans traveled past low-Earth orbit was 1972. (Space exploration itself started in 1957, and since then unmanned space probes have explored no shortage of interesting targets.)
Penicillin was identified in 1928 but first made available to civilians in 1945. Of the ~50 antibiotics on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, I found 7 discovered before 1950: penicillin G, penicillin V, chloramphenicol, dapsone, 4-aminosalicylic acid, streptomycin, and pyrazinamide. The final one was not used until after 1950.
The basics of electricity, including arc lighting (1802), incandescent lightbulbs (1878), motors (1832 or even the 1740s?), telegraphs (1774), power stations, alternating current, etc were all invented and in use before 1900. Of course, the period of electrification in now-developed countries was roughly from the mid-1880s until around 1950.
The basics of automobiles also predate 1900, but mass production began around then. Many major developments in automobiles indeed happened between 1900 and 1950.
Air travel via balloons predates 1900 by more than a century, but both rigid airships and (controlled, powered) heaver-than-air flight developed between 1900 and 1950.
Rockets were first developed by the 13th century, and found significant and widespread military use before 1900 (eg, the Star-Spangled banner was written in 1814). Modern rocketry probably began in 1926 with the first liquid-fueled rocket launched by Goddard. Germany used the V-2 rocket throughout WWII, and this presumably is the reason for inclusion in "the first half of the 20th century".
As mentioned previously, the use of rockets for space exploration (and thus also satellites) did not begin until 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Human spaceflight began in 1961.
Early radio predates 1900, but indeed radio largely developed between 1900 and 1950.
I had difficulty summarizing the history of water treatment; it seems that many inventions predated 1900 but indeed the period between 1900 and 1950 was the main significant period of development in the United States.
Indoor heating predates the invention of writing. Almost every development in the history and widespread use of heating predates 1900.
Washing machines predate 1900, but the development and widespread use of electric washing machines was indeed between 1900 and 1950.
Dishwashers also predate 1900. Significant aspects of their development happened between 1900 and 1950, but their widespread use was after 1950.
Indoor plumbing predated 1900 by millennia, but indeed the widespread period of adoption in the United States was between 1900 and 1950.
I do not know how to summarize the improvements in sanitation, but I would probably say that 1900 to 1950 did not feature particularly notable improvements in literacy.
Very fair points. Peter Thiel actually argues the slowdown began in 1970, which would capture nearly every technology mentioned.
The period of comparison is really the start of the industrial revolution until the 1970's. This 100 year period was dramatic, and arguably, we are not matching it right now with our rate of progress outside of information technology.
> I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income
Dude, no offense, but you're talking about the center of an empire that's literally the biggest that the world has ever seen.
That your country is wealthy and can provide for your basic necessities has more to do with this little historical fact than it does with technological advances.
Former empire. Yes it's still rich, yes the boundary of the bottom 15% of the UK is the same as the top 9.7% of the world, but most of the former empire violently rejected the UK in the second half of the 20th century (and most of the rest before then). This collapse caused economic damage that was solved in part by joining the EU, so yay irony for bringing up the long-gone Empire just as my leaders are trying to get it back. ;P
For the rest of the world… In the last 70 years, Ebloa and HIV were not only discovered but so were partial treatments; Smallpox has gone from "a vaccine exists" to "wiped out"; Rinderpest didn't have a vaccine and has been wiped out; Polio has gone from no-vaccination-possible to almost eradicated (37 cases in 2016); Guinea worm — mostly affecting the poor — has gone from multiple millions of cases per year to 25 individual cases.
For wider medicine: the first organ transplants were kidney in 1950, pancreas in 1966, heart and liver both in 1967, ovary in 2005, penis in 2014; DNA has gone from "???" to fully readable and partially editable; ultrasound, pacemakers and IVF were invented, and antidepressants have improved.
In industry, robotics relies on computer power, so I disagree with anyone who dismisses the development of computing power; likewise, telecommunications have gone from "phone calls within your town are expensive" to "let's have a live video chat across 8-time zones".
The entirety of high-temperature superconductors happened after I was born, never mind going back as far as 70 years; Kevlar, Nomex, and carbon nanomaterials were all made for the first time in the last 70 years.
The poor of the world don't have everything we have, with the exception of vaccines for illnesses we wish to eliminate, but even the stuff we discard often contains things that could not be bought at any price 70 years ago.
excellent perspective. if we take the very narrow computing field, there have been considerable inventions, especially in the field of medical science.
That's a fair point, but it does align with what I was trying to get across.
That being that achieving 'technological progress' with a milestone that applies only to the super wealthy is only one part of technological progress. Bringing it to millions of people at an affordable cost is also something worth considering.
None of the above are new technologies (last decade(s) or so) developments -- except those that concern computers (which is in accordance to what the parent said).
We can consider them "successful new developments" or whatever else we want.
We just can't consider them important new discoveries in the sense that the creation of things like steam engine, air travel, jet engines, etc were (to stay with transportation).
If you wish, the former are basically incremental engineering/efficiency improvements upon the latter.
What the parent observed as lacking/slowing was non-incremental improvements.
Again, that's information technology. That's one area where the past still moved fast like we are now, while the rest of us I am arguing hasn't (in terms of speed).
I'm in the bottom 15% of my country (UK) by income and I have access to things like: near-instantaneous hot water at all times, affordable next-day delivery services from a pocket-sized device I carry around with me, international air travel that is affordable for me, efficient fridge/freezer technology, fresh groceries from around the world at every local convenience store.
And yes things look a lot less impressive if you filter out information-technology related things. But advancements will always look less impressive if you filter out the most impressive advancements. The fact that we are close to permanently connected across geographical boundaries now isn't something to be dismissed out of hand. The level of effectiveness and miniaturisation of communications devices (e.g. 'true wireless' earphones with mobile internet) is really approaching the point of being practical telepathy insofar as it can be used.