ALL INVENTION STOPPED IN 1971 STOP THE PRESSES (which we still use BTW because it's 1971-tech)



  • http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/

    This article kind of reads like, "old man yells at cloud".

    Do you think the guy who claims human progress stopped in 1971 uses a smartphone? Or drives a hybrid car with a Continuously Variable Transmission? (Yes, even innovation in basic mechanical devices like automobile transmissions didn't stop in 1971.) Or has a fiber-optic connection to his home or office? Or uses wifi on an airplane?

    One thing's for sure: he'd be completely comfortable on a Linux computer.

    Today, progress is defined almost entirely by consumer-driven, often banal improvements in information technology.

    Right; like that Continuously Variable Transmission I mentioned, which could save millions of gallons of fuel a year. How banal.

    (Or maybe he's discounting all non-IT innovations entirely?)

    Sure, our phones are great, but that’s not the same as being able to fly across the Atlantic in eight hours or eliminating smallpox.

    I'd put good money on smartphones contributing more to the well-being of humankind than the smallpox vaccine.

    He's getting pissy that we (more or less) perfected air travel-- so we can cross the Atlantic in 8 hours-- but ignores all the different industries, some of which didn't even exist during his made-up "golden age". And even then... do you think for a moment that he would want to fly on a 1958 Boeing 707 instead of a modern 777?

    And yeah, it's true: the 777 doesn't fly much faster than the 1958 707. But it seats, what, three times as many people and consumes something like a third the fuel-per-mile. And is quieter and more comfortable. And much safer*. Ain't that progress? I call that progress.

    * The 777 has a perfect safety record, if you discount pilot error, sabotage and getting caught in a military crossfire. None of those things is poor Boeing's (or for that matter Malaysia Airlines') fault.

    And in 1971, there was one airliner that could do the trip in three hours. Now, Concorde is dead. Our cars are faster, safer and use less fuel than they did in 1971, but there has been no paradigm shift.

    Right; there's been no paradigm shift since 1971, according to the article PUBLISHED ON THE FUCKING INTERNET.

    The Concorde is dead because it was expensive, loud, uncomfortable and unsafe. Like all other airliners of its era. The "advantage" of saving 3 hours on a trip doesn't outweigh the simple fact that the Concorde is inferior to a 777 in literally every other way.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Confirmation bias and a lack of intellectual honesty or imagination.

    I try to emphasize to my kids that "technology" is all around them, even if they don't realize it in all of the banal things around them.



  • Well, from an astrological viewpoint, there hasn't been much change in the last 10000 years.



  • How about feng shui? I'm sure that endeavor is rocketing along.



  • Shit, did I say "astrological"? I meant "astronomical". Why is the illogical one named /logic$/?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    progress is defined almost entirely by consumer-driven

    Anyone who thinks consumer driven progress is a bad thing should be banished to North Korea or something.



  • Most of what has happened since has been merely incremental improvements upon what came before.

    It's almost like that's how it's been always

    Just about everything that defines the modern world either came about, or had its seeds sown, during this time.

    Teenagers.

    TIL People between the ages of 13-19 didn't exist before 1945.

    And in 1971, there was one airliner that could do the trip in three hours. Now, Concorde is dead.

    Gee, maybe because it was expensive as fuck and bleeding money. Who know what a Concorde flight would cost nowadays after the ridiculous fuel surcharges already imposed on regular aircraft leaving from London today.

    In the 1960s, venture capital was willing to take risks, particularly in the emerging electronic technologies. Now it is more conservative, funding start-ups that offer incremental improvements on what has gone before.

    See, this thing happened in the late 90's early 2000's that caused people to remember to think about their investments. Small event, you might not have heard of it, called the Dot Com Bubble.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'd put good money on smartphones contributing more to the well-being of humankind than the smallpox vaccine.

    I'd put "not dying" quite high on my "things that improve my well-being" list.

    Other than that, yeah, that's a load of TDEMSYR.



  • Yea, but c'mon as a pre-71 kid...

    Some part of you pretty much expected there to be several awesome Space Stations, and some moon bases, and SST's zooming all around, underwater cities, Fusion, and sub-saharan Africa irrigated into a lush wonderland by now, right?

    On the plus side:
    Our Dick Tracy 2-way wrist-radios are way cooler than we thought they'd be and fit in our pockets.





  • Half the article seems to be "WHY HAVEN'T WE CURED CANCER YET?!???!!"

    The problem is that people don't notice improvements unless they're sudden. A new magic pill that makes your penis 1% longer would be all over the newspapers, but all the constant, tiny new pieces of scientific and technological knowledge found every day go unnoticed. And they're much more important than any single invention.



  • I think I got it. This article is pointing out the recent examples of the law of diminishing returns, as if that never happened in the past.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @JazzyJosh said:

    TIL People between the ages of 13-19 didn't exist before 1945.

    Teenager as a concept didn't become common usage until the 1920s, and as a word sometime between 1934 and 1961.


  • kills Dumbledore

    What's the bet this guy was a young man through the "golden quarter"? Innovations in your 20s and 30s are incredible and change the world, when you're older they're pointless change for the sake of change.



  • @Jaloopa said:

    when you're older they're pointless change for the sake of change.

    Well crap, I'm not even 30 yet and I'm already in this stage.

    Get off my lawn!



  • I was aware of that, but that makes it hard to be pedantic about it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Continuously Variable Transmission

    Actually, that predates 1971. It was used in mass-produced cars in 1958.



  • @Hanzo said:

    Actually, that predates 1971. It was used in mass-produced cars in 1958.

    But they were shit back then. If we were stuck with 1971 tech, I think I'd rather have a manual.



  • What happened with this is that the perception of progress is driven almost solely by his " consumer-driven, often banal improvements in information technology". In the meantime, the actual progress -- things like the CVT in Blakey's car, for instance -- hums on quietly, hidden under hoods, behind access hatches, and in other places that are inaccessible and invisible to the average consumer.

    Heck, the move to AC traction power in freight rail is the biggest change to locomotives since dieselization, and nobody talks about it outside of the railroad industry -- which is the out-and-out backbone of the US industrial economy. Good luck trucking 737 fuselages from Wichita to Renton!

    Smaller examples include thin-film rechargeable batteries (Cymbet's EnerChip comes to mind), and the nascent developments in next generation NVM technologies (FeRAM is already having an impact in embedded devices, where it provides a much lower-power, longer-lived replacement for EEPROMs used for data logging and configuration storage).



  • @tarunik said:

    What happened with this is that the perception of progress is driven almost solely by his " consumer-driven, often banal improvements in information technology". In the meantime, the actual progress -- things like the CVT in Blakey's car, for instance -- hums on quietly, hidden under hoods, behind access hatches, and in other places that are inaccessible and invisible to the average consumer.

    Heck, the move to AC traction power in freight rail is the biggest change to locomotives since dieselization, and nobody talks about it outside of the railroad industry -- which is the out-and-out backbone of the US industrial economy. Good luck trucking 737 fuselages from Wichita to Renton!

    Smaller examples include thin-film rechargeable batteries (Cymbet's EnerChip comes to mind), and the nascent developments in next generation NVM technologies (FeRAM is already having an impact in embedded devices, where it provides a much lower-power, longer-lived replacement for EEPROMs used for data logging and configuration storage).

    Don't forget this!



  • @Hanzo said:

    Actually, that predates 1971. It was used in mass-produced cars in 1958.

    You get a demerit for starting a post with "actually".

    And yes, while continuously-variable transmissions existed before 1971, the one that allows hybrids to combine power from gasoline and electric driveshafts (you know, the one everybody who isn't a pedantic dickweed means when they say "continuously-variable transmission") is a very recent invention. Actually still under patent, I believe.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    And yes, while continuously-variable transmissions existed before 1971, the one that allows hybrids to combine power from gasoline and electric driveshafts (you know, the one everybody who isn't a pedantic dickweed means when they say "continuously-variable transmission") is a very recent invention. Actually still under patent, I believe.

    That's only needed in parallel hybrid architectures -- series hybrid topologies have been around for much longer, of course.

    Also -- CVTs are relatively common in straight-up IC vehicles nowadays, as well.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    The "advantage" of saving 3 hours on a trip doesn't outweigh the simple fact that the Concorde is inferior to a 777 in literally every other way.

    Don't forget--unless someone mentions it below before I read it--that Concorde tickets were hideously expensive.

    We could make another supersonic plane, and the people who make planes talk about it, but the simple fact is nobody wants to live anywhere near a sonic boom.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @JazzyJosh said:

    TIL People between the ages of 13-19 didn't exist before 1945.

    Some people say that the concept of teenagerness didn't really exist as an intermediate state between childhood and adulthood, but that you basically transitioned from one to the other. The idea is that an increasingly-technological society requires ever more learning and training, and the extended period of time children aren't treated as adults essentially got a new name. I'm not endorsing that view, I don't know that I've explained it as well as could be, and I don't know if Grandpa meant that, either, but there you are.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tarunik said:

    Good luck trucking 737 fuselages from Wichita to Renton!

    Heh. One assumes that without that, you'd see the planes more or less completely built in one place.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    And yes, while continuously-variable transmissions existed before 1971

    Here's your demerit for starting a sentence with "And."



  • @FrostCat said:

    Here's your demerit for starting a sentence with "And."

    Wasn't that rule reversed a decade or so ago?



  • @FrostCat said:

    Don't forget--unless someone mentions it below before I read it--that Concorde tickets were hideously expensive.

    Hey what a shocker, FrostCat hasn't learned to read in the last few weeks:

    @blakeyrat said:

    The Concorde is dead because it was expensive, ...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    Hey what a shocker, FrostCat hasn't learned to read in the last few weeks:

    I don't read the whole thread before replying. It's an endearing quirk, unlike your entire persona.



  • THAT WAS THE SENTENCE DIRECTLY BEFORE THE ONE YOU QUOTED YOU GIGANTIC RETARD DOUCHEASS!

    Christ.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    THAT WAS THE SENTENCE DIRECTLY BEFORE THE ONE YOU QUOTED YOU GIGANTIC RETARD DOUCHEASS!

    Looks like some serious rankling here.

    My, you're easy to troll.



  • I don't believe for one millisecond you did that intentionally.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    I don't believe for one millisecond you did that intentionally.

    Say stuff worth reading, then. What you wrote was not much different than the thing you were griping about, you crank.

    I like to think that trolling you is just subconscious at this point.



  • Pretending to pet-peeve over a style issue could be seen as riposte, but the rest goes over the top.

    Actually still under patent, I believe.

    That would have been a funny-ish ending, had you bothered to look it up. Instead, the only impression you managed to convey is of a fragile mental state.



  • @abarker said:

    If we were stuck with 1971 tech, I think I'd rather have a manual.

    You know that almost everywhere in the world, manual transmissions are the rule and that to get your driving license you must know how to drive a stick, right?


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Eldelshell said:

    to get your driving license you must know how to drive a stick

    Unless you ge an automatic license


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @FrostCat said:

    We could make another supersonic plane, and the people who make planes talk about it, but the simple fact is nobody wants to live anywhere near a sonic boom.

    I remember one time when I was a kid, living in SoCal, and the Space Shuttle landed in California. So we got the double sonic boom experience. At the time, a friend and I were playing outside. We thought a bomb had gone off in the sewers.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @chubertdev said:

    Wasn't that rule reversed a decade or so ago?

    Actually, no one really cares.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Eldelshell said:

    You know that almost everywhere in the world, manual transmissions are the rule and that to get your driving license you must know how to drive a stick, right?

    So you guys are all still stuck in 1971?


  • ♿ (Parody)


  • kills Dumbledore

    Manual transmission lets you feel like you're a racing driver, even in a 1.1 that needs careful planning to overtake on the motorway. This still applies even though motorsport is moving towards flappy paddle gearboxes



  • I guess. Better than being stuck in 1824 though.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Jaloopa said:

    Manual transmission lets you feel like you're a racing driver

    This is the last thing anyone needs driving on the road.

    @Eldelshell said:

    I guess. Better than being stuck in 1824 though.

    Hah, stupid British. We've updated since then, but at least we haven't been fooled into actually using an inferior decimal obsessed system.


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said:

    So you guys are all still stuck in 1971?

    Not me, I'm stuck in the 80ties.



  • Basically the guy probably bought some stock in some flying car in 2000s make believe they were publishing back then.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann said:

    I'm stuck in the 80ties.

    Eight titties? You round @algorythmics'?


  • BINNED

    @PJH said:

    You round @algorythmics'?

    I'm not that obsessed with the human exhaust pipe.



  • @Eldelshell said:

    You know that almost everywhere in the world, manual transmissions are the rule.

    That's because most of the world hasn't yet accepted that automatic transmissions are now more efficient than manuals.

    @Eldelshell said:

    that to get your driving license you must know how to drive a stick, right?

    Did I ever say I don't know how? I only said that I'd prefer to have a manual if we were stuck with 1971 tech. I know how to drive manual transmission.



  • @Luhmann said:

    I'm stuck in the 80ties.

    ATTs? You work a huge American telecom now?


  • FoxDev

    @abarker said:

    ATTs?

    i know it's a company name, but i cannot help but think of these when i see that acronym...


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