Isn't the progression of technology weird?

[archcommus]

I sometimes step back and look at the progression of things and find it quite odd. Isn't it mysterious that almost everything seems to progress uniformly over decades? How come we never see one huge breakthrough where all of a sudden we can make CPUs 100x as powerful in the same size chip? How come the progression is always uniform and in small steps? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, how come years never go by with no progress at all simply because no one can figure out what to do next? And does anything enable us to discover new things NOW that people of the past didn't have besides simply the experience that they have today? For example, would it have been possible for someone to come up with the idea of a transistor well before they ever thought of a vaccuum tube, essentially skipping that whole era completely and putting computers 20 years ahead of where we are today?

Just some questions.

 

[Lonyo]

You do realise that ~40 years is a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of development of technologies and civilisation, yes?

~6000 years ago IIRC we entered the bronze age.
In 1/60th of that time we've gone into space, developed many drugs/cures/medical advancements, electricity, computing, internal combustion engine, fission etc etc.
We've had computers for almost no real length of time, so the small steps are not really small steps, they are all the same thread of development and the next real step will come when we make the 100x more powerful on the same size die CPU. IMO.

 

[BriGy86]

im guessing that advancement is goig "slow" because there are people that make money in prolonging the problems

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You do realise that ~40 years is a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of development of technologies and civilisation, yes?

~6000 years ago IIRC we entered the bronze age.
In 1/60th of that time we've gone into space, developed many drugs/cures/medical advancements, electricity, computing, internal combustion engine, fission etc etc.
We've had computers for almost no real length of time, so the small steps are not really small steps, they are all the same thread of development and the next real step will come when we make the 100x more powerful on the same size die CPU. IMO.

Very true, in the grand scheme of things this is all happening very fast. But it still astounds me how everything progresses uniformly. You don't see any one kind of tech getting way ahead of the other kinds, or any industry being stagnant for decades, etc.

 

[jfall]

It's all about money. Companies like Intel and AMD will milk their cores for as long as possible.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You do realise that ~40 years is a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of development of technologies and civilisation, yes?

~6000 years ago IIRC we entered the bronze age.
In 1/60th of that time we've gone into space, developed many drugs/cures/medical advancements, electricity, computing, internal combustion engine, fission etc etc.
We've had computers for almost no real length of time, so the small steps are not really small steps, they are all the same thread of development and the next real step will come when we make the 100x more powerful on the same size die CPU. IMO.

Very true, in the grand scheme of things this is all happening very fast. But it still astounds me how everything progresses uniformly. You don't see any one kind of tech getting way ahead of the other kinds, or any industry being stagnant for decades, etc.

Storage (HDD's) has been pretty stagnant for a fair while, but since there have only been 4 decades, and in a fairly changing world (speed wise at least), delaying for a decade in a fledgling industry means almost certain death.

 

[archcommus]

Bump for the evening.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You do realise that ~40 years is a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of development of technologies and civilisation, yes?

~6000 years ago IIRC we entered the bronze age.
In 1/60th of that time we've gone into space, developed many drugs/cures/medical advancements, electricity, computing, internal combustion engine, fission etc etc.
We've had computers for almost no real length of time, so the small steps are not really small steps, they are all the same thread of development and the next real step will come when we make the 100x more powerful on the same size die CPU. IMO.

Very true, in the grand scheme of things this is all happening very fast. But it still astounds me how everything progresses uniformly. You don't see any one kind of tech getting way ahead of the other kinds, or any industry being stagnant for decades, etc.

Storage (HDD's) has been pretty stagnant for a fair while, but since there have only been 4 decades, and in a fairly changing world (speed wise at least), delaying for a decade in a fledgling industry means almost certain death.

Ugh yes, i feel this one breaking wide open in under 5 years. Solid state HD's FTW.

 

[archcommus]

You think that soon?

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: TallBill
Ugh yes, i feel this one breaking wide open in under 5 years. Solid state HD's FTW.

I read an article that NAND ram (flash) is quickly becoming the memory storage of choice, costs are going down, productiong is going up. One of the laptop manufaturer's is going to start selling laptops with solid state hard drives.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: TallBill
Ugh yes, i feel this one breaking wide open in under 5 years. Solid state HD's FTW.

I read an article that NAND ram (flash) is quickly becoming the memory storage of choice, costs are going down, productiong is going up. One of the laptop manufaturer's is going to start selling laptops with solid state hard drives.

Are we talking really small drives or like 40+ GB?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: archcommus
Very true, in the grand scheme of things this is all happening very fast. But it still astounds me how everything progresses uniformly. You don't see any one kind of tech getting way ahead of the other kinds, or any industry being stagnant for decades, etc.

a) you're probably not paying that much attention to industries
b) many industries that don't seem very connected are interconnected within a couple degrees of each other. fields of research aren't just independent trunks, they're a complex web.

 

[spidey07]

Interesting how people have made laws that describe this very behavior.


Although in the networking field we prefer to make leaps by a factor of 10 instead of slow progression. Bam! 10 times faster.

 

[dighn]

I would call the jump from discreet components to intergrated circuits a pretty large leap. As to why we don't jump entire generations... well knowledge doesn't come from nowhere, it's usually built on previous knowledge and infrastructure.

 

[archcommus]

But it's amazing how it seems to happen so incrementally globally. Of course knowledge builds upon itself over time, but wouldn't you expect more pitfalls/obstacles in certain industries to prevent growth here and there? What if nVidia just reached a point where everything they were trying was failing and they couldn't make a better video card then their current best for the life of them.

 

[spidey07]

read it, live it, learn it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore

Entire industries are driven by it.

 

[JinLien]

Originally posted by: jfall
It's all about money. Companies like Intel and AMD will milk their cores for as long as possible.

Not really, tech companies take risks and sometimes it doesn't pay as in the case of Intel with the Itanium.

To answers the OP, it is difficult to improve a technology when working with inferior/aged tools. All tools have to be improved before progress can be made to a product, therefore it become harder and harder as the complexity of the product grow.

Just look at the automobile industry and the only major changes that we sees are mainly in cosmetic & safety, because nowadays cars hasn?t gone much faster than cars that were made in the 50s.

 

[archcommus]

Funny how our parents and grandparents probably feel like my generation was the one to be born into the technologically revolutionary age, however, I feel that my generation is experiencing just the beginning of technology on this planet. MY kids and grandkids will be the ones living in a completely technological world, making how we live now seem incredibly old-fashioned. Considering what computers could be doing in twenty years, they're still pretty "separate" from normal everyday life right now.

 

[Britboy]

Thats a great point. It depends on the level of competition in an industry, video cards have progressed at a tremendous rate. I'm sure Nvidia would love to be able to sell the same card for several years and cut down R&D spending but while ever ATI is around they cannot afford to do that.

There are many examples of companies that were totally dominant in a market and got lazy, only to find themselves bankrupt a few years later because a new competitor came out of nowhere and wiped the floor with them with superior products.

Also world wars have sped up technological progress far beyond what it would have been otherwise.

 

[DCFife]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Lonyo
You do realise that ~40 years is a VERY small amount of time in the grand scheme of development of technologies and civilisation, yes?

~6000 years ago IIRC we entered the bronze age.
In 1/60th of that time we've gone into space, developed many drugs/cures/medical advancements, electricity, computing, internal combustion engine, fission etc etc.
We've had computers for almost no real length of time, so the small steps are not really small steps, they are all the same thread of development and the next real step will come when we make the 100x more powerful on the same size die CPU. IMO.

Very true, in the grand scheme of things this is all happening very fast. But it still astounds me how everything progresses uniformly. You don't see any one kind of tech getting way ahead of the other kinds, or any industry being stagnant for decades, etc.

Storage (HDD's) has been pretty stagnant for a fair while, but since there have only been 4 decades, and in a fairly changing world (speed wise at least), delaying for a decade in a fledgling industry means almost certain death.

In 1985 the largest "consumer" hard drives were something like 20 MEGAbytes. That is 1/25000 the size of the latest 500GB drive. If you were to take the 7Mhz Motorola 68000 CPU from 1985 and multiply it by 25000 you would get something like a 175Ghz processor. I personally think hard drives have done fine. Hard drive speed is another story...

 

[Zanix]

When's the next dark age due?

 

[TNM93]

I think technology moves really fast. 8 or 9 years ago I was drooling over my 32 megs of EDO Ram and Pentium with MMX technology. LOL

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

You are talking about eveolutionary steps being more comon than revolutionary steps.

And it's quite normal.

3d cards, revolutionary when th first one came out.

We will also see AI chips, phyiscis chips and co-processers (again) in the future.

So, things will happen.

 

[sandorski]

Somewhere an alien has telepathically sent a link to this thread to his friend on Planet X. The 2 will ROFLMAO over it and send another Kindergarten toy to Earth that changes everything! They just playing us for Entertainment!

 

[Rubycon]

Said progression will commence forward at rapid speed upon change of master leadership.