Has technology stagnated

[Texashiker]

From the 1940s - the 1990s it seems that new technology was coming out every few months. In 10 - 20 years after world war II, we went from prop driven planes to jets, and from regular bombs to nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missile.

In the 1990s CPU speeds would double every couple of years. My first computer was a packard bell 75mhz with windows 3.11 and 8 megs of memory in late 1994. In 1999 I was running a 450 mhz cpu.

It seems that vehicle fuel economy has leveled out. Back in the 1980s and 1990s we had cars that got in the high 20, and maybe even the low 30 mpg, and we are still in that range 20+ years later. With gas driven trucks, their gas mileage has really stagnated. The 1/2 ton trucks of today get about the same gas mileage as trucks from the 1990s.

Broadband still has not been brought to rural areas. I live 4 miles from the center of town, and dsl stops about 1/2 mile from my house. The local phone company refuses to extend the lines.

Where is the new technology?

Where are the cars that get double, triple and even quadruple the gas mileage from 20 years ago. Why don't we have a cure for the common cold, or even HIV.

Our space shuttle program has been shutdown. What are the kids of today supposed to look up to?

Our manufacturing base has moved overseas to exploit cheap labor.

It seems to me that progress across the board has stagnated. Everything from cars, to medicine, to computers,,,, new developments seem to be coming to a crawl.

 

[rasczak]

no, it's just becoming smaller. Plus, you were spoiled growing up with the massive technology that came about during your younger years, space shuttles for instance. Now that we're in an age where we want to maximize the space we have, you're seeing the newer technology become smaller and more space friendly while still giving the same or better quality as the products it replaced.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

1990's 1/2 ton pickups get the same mileage as half tons today? Wow.
Let's see the f150 Ecoboost gets 16/22 city/hwy while a 1990 f150 v8 got 12/14 city/hwy according to fueleconomy.gov
Also let's not get into the fact that today's trucks are much heavier due to safety standards being higher and also just being better built also. Today's trucks also can carry and pull substantially more weight than the half tons from the 90's.
Also today's mid size trucks are about the same size as the half tons from the 90's while today's half tons are much bigger.

Cliffs: you are a fool

 

[lxskllr]

no, it's just becoming smaller. Plus, you were spoiled growing up with the massive technology that came about during your younger years, space shuttles for instance. Now that we're in an age where we want to maximize the space we have, you're seeing the newer technology become smaller and more space friendly while still giving the same or better quality as the products it replaced.

Yup. You can carry a full computer in your pocket now, and in addition to computing, it lets you take pictures, and make phone calls(!).

 

[Beev]

*insert lengthy rant blaming shitty corporations and the government for holdings us back as an entire race so they can keep their profits flowing*

We need a new breakthrough of some kind. Then we can work on advancing it instead of what we have now. I vote for holodecks.

 

[ShawnD1]

*insert lengthy rant blaming shitty corporations and the government for holdings us back as an entire race so they can keep their profits flowing*

We need a new breakthrough of some kind. Then we can work on advancing it instead of what we have now. I vote for holodecks.

We should start funding penis pills that actually work. Stupid enzyte scam lies. People behind that should be killed.

 

[rasczak]

We should start funding penis pills that actually work. Stupid enzyte scam lies. People behind that should be killed.

Looks like someone bought some enzyte.

 

[Texashiker]

Let's see the f150 Ecoboost gets 16/22 city/hwy while a 1990 f150 v8 got 12/14 city/hwy according to fueleconomy.gov

There is not that much difference between 12/14 and 16/22, given 20 years for engineers to come up with something.

Yup. You can carry a full computer in your pocket now, and in addition to computing, it lets you take pictures, and make phone calls(!).

Tablets are probably the biggest breakthrough in the past 5 or so years.

Digital camera technology is making leaps and bounds as well. About 5 years ago I bought my wife we first digital camera, it was a 5 megapixel. And today she is using an 18 megapixel.

If we compared digital cameras to trucks, with a tripling every 5 years, the typical truck should be getting well over 50 miles to the gallon.

 

[vi edit]

Smartphones
50" HDTV's for $500
LTE Cell Phone speed
Digital SLR's for $500
WIFI connections& hotspots in homes and across the world
Terrabyte drives for under a $100
32 or 64 gigabyte jump drives for $50
Tivo
Touch Screen GPS for $100

These are things that have come into effect in the last 10 years...if not even last 5 five. 10 years people would have laughed at you for what you can get with your money.

20 years ago it was things of the future.

40 years ago it was unthinkable.

Yeah there's definitely major innovation and technology advancements. It's just that it's affordable to the many of the masses and we take it for granted.

When it comes to cars you have to look at not just how much more efficient they are, but how much cleaner and safer they are to. Fuel economy is a moving target highly impacted by other advancements.

 

[lxskllr]

If we compared digital cameras to trucks, with a tripling every 5 years, the typical truck should be getting well over 50 miles to the gallon.

Internal combustion can only be so efficient. You can thank the politicians, and their puppet masters for that. Petrol is as efficient as it's going to get. To do better we need a different technology. Either fuel cells using petrol, or something altogether different.

 

[Elbryn]

Smartphones
50" HDTV's for $500
LTE Cell Phone speed
Digital SLR's for $500
WIFI connections& hotspots in homes and across the world
Terrabyte drives for under a $100
32 or 64 gigabyte jump drives for $50
Tivo
Touch Screen GPS for $100

These are things that have come into effect in the last 10 years...if not even last 5 five. 10 years people would have laughed at you for what you can get with your money.

20 years ago it was things of the future.

40 years ago it was unthinkable.

Yeah there's definitely major innovation and technology advancements. It's just that it's affordable to the many of the masses and we take it for granted.

When it comes to cars you have to look at not just how much more efficient they are, but how much cleaner and safer they are to. Fuel economy is a moving target highly impacted by other advancements.

laproscopic procedures- a full array of replacement joints, hips, parts. stents.
something like a 2-3x increase in crop productivity.

 

[Texashiker]

Smartphones
<snip>
Touch Screen GPS for $100

These are things that have come into effect in the last 10 years...if not even last 5 five. 10 years people would have laughed at you for what you can get with your money.

In 1998 and 1999 a gig of memory would have cost around $2,000. I remember something about a typhoon wiped out a memory plant in Taiwan in the late 1990s, and the price went to more then $2 a gig.

With the examples being given, I see small electronics being the biggest jumps in technology in the past 5 years.

In the 1990s cpu, and hard drives were jumping by leaps and bounds. Today, it seems that its the compact stuff, like tablets, smart phones, digital cameras,,,,,.

Who would have ever thought that people could browse the net on a phone with a full keypad.

There has been speculation that tablets and smartphone sales will outpace PC sales in the next 1 - 2 years.

Internal combustion can only be so efficient. You can thank the politicians, and their puppet masters for that. Petrol is as efficient as it's going to get. To do better we need a different technology. Either fuel cells using petrol, or something altogether different.

Hopefully automobiles will be making the next big leaps in technology.

 

[vi edit]

laproscopic procedures- a full array of replacement joints, hips, parts. stents.
something like a 2-3x increase in crop productivity.

And then you have the whole electronic thing in healthcare...

Full digital PACS systems including MRI's, CT's, CR's, ultrasounds, and mammo's.

Fully integrated HIS/EMR's

Ect...

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

There is not that much difference between 12/14 and 16/22, given 20 years for engineers to come up with something.




Tablets are probably the biggest breakthrough in the past 5 or so years.

Digital camera technology is making leaps and bounds as well. About 5 years ago I bought my wife we first digital camera, it was a 5 megapixel. And today she is using an 18 megapixel.

If we compared digital cameras to trucks, with a tripling every 5 years, the typical truck should be getting well over 50 miles to the gallon.

Getting 25-30% more mpg and being able to tow 11,000lbs in a new f150 vs around 7,000lbs in a 1990 model seems pretty impressive to me. Also I have tons more room in my truck than they had in a 90 model f150.
I guess according to you we should be using ion drive powered f150's that hover.

 

[Bignate603]

There is not that much difference between 12/14 and 16/22, given 20 years for engineers to come up with something.

If we compared digital cameras to trucks, with a tripling every 5 years, the typical truck should be getting well over 50 miles to the gallon.

It's funny how people that don't understand something assume that it must be easy and the experts just aren't trying hard enough.

 

[Juddog]

As mentioned above, people are holding computers in their pockets now that would have been considered supercomputers a couple decades ago. You have handheld devices that can record & playback 1080p, take pictures in 3d, etc..

Nowadays the big deal is convergence. We already have the tech to do many wonderful things that hasn't been done yet because we have yet to converge many of the technologies that are already out there. Imagine cars of the future with a CPU that drives for you with better precision than a Nascar driver. The capability for something like that is already there. Picture robots in your house that clean up for you when you drop a glass on the floor, like in the 5th element. Having newsfeeds on your bathroom mirror, operated by touchscreen interface.

VR Helmets that you plug into a handheld device that let you play high quality videogames. The tech is already there for everything I have listed, we just have yet to integrate them together. Sony is coming out with a VR headset in Japan in a few months that does 3d and surround sound via HDMI cable. Imagine when we're at the point where handheld cellphones have the graphics capabilities of a PS3 and when you want to play games you can just sit back and plug into your phone.

Even VR gloves was a limit, with the technologies of the XBOX kinect. Once people start incorporating the technology of the Kinect with say, computers driving a car, we'll have cars in a few decades that will drive better than anybody on earth, faster reactions to situations that crop up than is humanly possible.

Also we are just now at the point where we can detect exosolar planets. A few years ago it was all conjecture, now we're actually figuring out how to find them, we're at the point where we've already discovered 599 planets outside of our solar system. We haven't even gotten to the point where we can see the potentially billions of exosolar planets in our galaxy alone.

When you look back at it, the technological leaps we have made over the past decade alone are humongous.

 

[vi edit]

It's funny how people that don't understand something assume that it must be easy and the experts just aren't trying hard enough.

Physics. The only laws that are really hard to break.

 

[Texashiker]

I guess according to you we should be using ion drive powered f150's that hover.

Sure, why not? The automotive industry is probably the most stagnated thing there is.

There was a movie awhile back about a guy that was making a car with seat belts, power brakes,,,,. The people in the automotive industry laughed at the idea of having seat belts in cars. I think the movie was the tucker,,,, something like that.

Back in world war 2 the planes that had fuel injection out preformed the planes that had carburetors. But for some reason chevy, ford and dodge used carburetors in their cars and trucks for the next 30 years. It was not until the 1980s or 1990s that fuel injection became standard. But in the 1940s engineers knew that fuel injection was superior to carburetors.

Why did it take 30+ years for the automotive industry to adopt a proven technology that was known to be superior.

It's funny how people that don't understand something assume that it must be easy and the experts just aren't trying hard enough.

See above post about fuel injection.

Trucks and cars should have been using fuel injection in the 1950s, and not waited for 30 years.

 

[ponyo]

If anything, technology is advancing at breathtaking pace. Yesterday science fiction is quickly becoming today's reality. OP might want to step out from his sheltered backward rural world and open his eyes.

 

[lxskllr]

Why did it take 30+ years for the automotive industry to adopt a proven technology that was known to be superior.

Trucks and cars should have been using fuel injection in the 1950s, and not waited for 30 years.

Because they were invested in carburetor technology, and fuel was artificially cheap. Why improve when you can throw more petrol at a problem to make things better?

 

[Juddog]

Also we're only just now starting to integrate technology into healthcare in a meaningful way in terms of data mining / data analysis. When we have tablets with 16 GB of memory selling for a $100, there is no reason why we can't be using tech like that at the hospital. Imagine having the doctor instantly pull up your medical history on a tablet, and be able to see all of the prescription drugs and see how they interface with each other, or instantly pull up an xray on a big touchscreen and show you minute fractures in your bone.

This is all stuff we already have the technology for that just hasn't been integrated yet. We are only now at the forefront of examining medical procedures in terms of data mining; and the studies are still at the preliminary level. The tech companies now are finally digging into medical records to be able to use advanced data mining to see what procedures actually do in terms of real world success / failures instead of just clinical trials.

A lot of the hospitals are still pretty backwards when it comes to technology, and that's just one example where the cutting edge tech we're using now for videogames / entertainment could be used in a practical way.

 

[Texashiker]

OP might want to step out from his sheltered backward rural world and open his eyes.

I like living in a backward rural area, its peaceful here. Fishing and hunting is just minutes away.

The public boat launch is 10 minutes from my house, and that is only because the speed limit is 45 mph.

The deer lease is only 20 - 30 minutes from my house.

You can keep your big cities, smog, noise pollution and high crime rates. Given the choice between a fishing pole and the newest smart phone, I will take the fishing pole.

 

[Rubycon]

Also we're only just now starting to integrate technology into healthcare in a meaningful way in terms of data mining / data analysis. When we have tablets with 16 GB of memory selling for a $100, there is no reason why we can't be using tech like that at the hospital. Imagine having the doctor instantly pull up your medical history on a tablet, and be able to see all of the prescription drugs and see how they interface with each other, or instantly pull up an xray on a big touchscreen and show you minute fractures in your bone.

This is all stuff we already have the technology for that just hasn't been integrated yet. We are only now at the forefront of examining medical procedures in terms of data mining; and the studies are still at the preliminary level. The tech companies now are finally digging into medical records to be able to use advanced data mining to see what procedures actually do in terms of real world success / failures instead of just clinical trials.

A lot of the hospitals are still pretty backwards when it comes to technology, and that's just one example where the cutting edge tech we're using now for videogames / entertainment could be used in a practical way.

As long as they don't have clear (see through) screens I'm fine with it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I think we've hit a point where there is not really anything new that is major to invent. We are just improving on existing. Companies try to make it look like they're making new things but they're just improving an existing concept. Take apple for example, they make everything seem like it's the first of it's kind but really it's not. The ipod was not the first of it's kind, the iphone, ipad etc either. They are just improvements of existing tech.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

just because you cant detect it doesnt mean its not happening