April 11, 2005

• We can give old men hard dicks The same old men who drove the innovations of the 70s.
• Flight systems have evolved in a major fashion. And the SR-71 was in use for nearly 2 decades before its existance was revealed. Black triangles that people associate with UFOs are most likely highly developed aircraft. God knows what else Boeing skunkworks have under development. There are aircars and jetpacks, plus notice the advances in private spacecraft recently? What we basically lack are air traffic control systems run by AI or highly sophisticated computer systems, because human beings are not bright enough to fly without pranging. The technology is there, but the infrastructure isn't.
• I can definitely see where you're coming from, but real per capita GDP keeps growing, so something must be driving it. Still, I always wanted to be an asteroid miner, and it's just not in the cards.
• here is your flying car.
• I think battery technology is going really slowly and my recurring dreams of sleeping in the backseat of my parents' car as it drove itself to my grandmother's down I-71 300 miles to Louisville are no closer to reality either. /dammit
• I always hoped that within my lifetime humans would at least make it to another solar system. That might have seemed possible given advances in space flight in the 1970s, but recently humans have been venturing into space less and less often. Now it seems like I'll be lucky if I can pay less than 10 thousand dollars to see the Earth from orbit in my lifetime. On the other hand, I think that things are changing about as fast as they always have, and the proof is that the way they continue to change in ways that nobody would have guessed - who, in the 19th century, would have predicted that in the future we could shoot each-other with high-powered rifles in a simulated 3-d environment (1st person shooter video games), and that that would be considered an advancement over a simulated alien invasion in deep space (space invaders). The internet is an advance that simply wouldn't have been understood by people before the advent of computers, and for those who believed there was no market for home computers as recently as the 1960s, the concept of the internet would have seemed pretty lame. The next quantum leaps in technology, probably being developed in somebody's garage right now, are things that most of us would likely scoff at.
• Err, so to answer your questions... I don't know why spaceflight seems to have reached a practical limit somewhere inside the moon's orbit. But as far as flying cars -- they're just not that great of an idea. The whole point of technology is to solve real problems, and flying cars looked great in illustrations but don't solve any real problem.
• Space flight hasn't gone anywhere for the simple reason we haven't spent any money on it. The amount of our resources given to NASA is pitifully--embarrassingly--small, something like .1 of one percent of the budget. (Number pulled outta my ass. It really is quite tiny though--the number, I mean). Beanstalks, or perhaps most promisingly, a combination rail-gun/rocket, would do wonders to advance our reach in space. Even the cancelled DC-X would have been a step forward. The shuttle's an aborted joke--not even a glorified pickup truck for space. It breaks my heart to see us squander our species' only long-term hope. I read once that if we hadn't gotten bored with the moon landings, we could have had a self-sustaining colony on Luna by the middle/end of the 80s. So sad that our budgetary process short-circuits visionary thinking. /end rant. Sorry 'bout that. It's a subject I feel rather strongly about. As for the stagnation, no I don't think so, actually. It just seems we're concentrating on consumer advances as opposed to scientific advances, if that makes any sense--focussed in on ourselves now, as it were.
• Yeah, I don't think we are necessarily stagnating, but rather, we have a much wider base to work on. It also depends on where major focus is put at any given time, depends on the need, too. Certainly, much focus is put on anything that will promote consumerism. At the same time, it seems like improvements are purposefully not made in order to maintain the perpetual need (light bulbs that could last waaaay longer than they do, batteries--as OOS said). And because we are a global economy, many advances are not shared due to competition, or maybe it just slows them down enough that they loose some of their impact. But, I'll bet if any of us were billionaires, we be seeing some massive advances right in our own damn homes.
• How come everybody's talking technological stagnation, and nobody's talking cultural stagnation? Are the simultaneous manifestations of a 'Marriage Amendment' and a Dukes of Hazzard feature film not vastly more alarming than the absence of flying cars?
• Read about what happened after Greek civilization fell. We're stagnating and are entering a 'New Dark Age'. Sorry, but it's a fact. We should have colonies on the moon by now and a few manned flights to Mars in the bag, in addition to many other technological advances (flying cars, etc.). Instead we just sit here on chat boards and play games on the computer and gain a few more pounds around the middle while decrying 'that damn liberal media'. Sorry, we're screwed. Well and truly screwed. Mediocrity and Stagnation will be the words best used to describe this century . . .
• Simply put, the internet has done two things that I am still dumbfounded by: 1) My biggest fear when shopping for music was dealing with snotty clerks who would talk down to me, or recommend some garbage to me that was absolutely awful on account of it "influencing" somebody or other. TGS can use SoulSeek and find music on his own, completely destroying the record store clerk's stranglehold (but not a squiddy stranglehold) on music and perception of music. TGS is listening to Bill Laswell's Imaginary Cuba right now, and loving it. 2) Availability of information. I was assigned a task of writing a geospatial calculator, using only latitude and longitude points and determining areas of political boundaries. Now, the Squid doesn't know a thing about geography, save what he learned as a little squid, and has only cursory knowledge of the mathematics involved. Given availabilty of information on the Internet, plus publicly accessible databases and file formats, I am able to do in two weeks time what would have taken years of education in mathematics, geography, and computer science. Yeah, so the Squid doesn't get a laser (aside from his digital projector's pointer), or a flying car (he drives something sensible and American and midsize), but, technology has improved substantially in the past 5 years, in innumerable ways.
• I would be surprised if we didn't have colonies on the moon by 2050, especially if we figure out how to use He-3 in nuclear reactors. Nice, clean, huggable nuclear reactors are in our future. I hope. Otherwise, once the oil levels get bad enough, we're looking at a Trantorian end to our civilization. Other desired scientific/technological advances in my lifetime: 1. Biological tweaking. I would like to change my skin/hair/eye colour, keep all my data in my bones, regrow teeth, etc., etc. 2. Birthing tanks and designer babies (think: Cyteen Station). 3. Truly pervasive computing. I hope people are working on this stuff already. even if we learn that these are impossible or just too difficult.
• There's no point in space travel for humans because there's nothing out there. Nothing useful within reach, anyway. Now, why would anyone put a base on the moon? There's nothing worth mining, and little or no scientific purpose. The race for the moon was more a political exercise than much else, imho. Mars may be worth it, but it is a long distance and zero-g has deleterious effects on human bones after a while, we need to nail down some medical answers to health problems associated with long-term space travel. Humans evolved on earth and don't really do well in zero-g. We only need robots to explore our solar system. We don't even know if the asteroids contain useful minerals worth exploiting. As for being at the beginning of a new dark age, I don't agree. The first thing that happens in a dark age is the loss of records and information. The internet age is the growth of records and information. We are in a downturn after a horrendous century, but this will pass.
• There's no point in space travel for humans because there's nothing out there. Nothing useful within reach, anyway Excuse me? Are you TOTALLY RETARTED? What about Venus - the "planet of love"? You may not want to travel to the planet where hot alien chicks with three breasts each rub scented oils onto tired astronauts' muscles and peel grapes for them, but only because you are THE WORLD'S STOOPIDEST LUSER EVER.
• Well, I would love to visit the amazon women of venus, but unfortunately I cannot withstand sulfuric acid rain nor endure temperatures of 900 degrees F. This, I admit, is a weakness of mine.
• Sounds like someones got a case of the Moondays.
• unfortunately I cannot withstand sulfuric acid rain nor endure temperatures of 900 degrees F Well just go at night-time and carry an umbrella. GOSH!
• You are wrong that there is nothing to mine on the Moon. Helium-3.
• They have Helium 3! Already! When I were a lad, they were only up to Helium 1.5. We didn't have all of your fancy elements like "mendelevium" and "zinc" - we had to make do with just four, and "fire" was the universal essence. Then Heraclitus drowned in the same river twice, and we all laughed except carbon chemistry hadn't been invented yet so we didn't have mouths. Eeee! I don't know!
• Last time I checked, the moon wasn't zero-gee. It may well turn out that humans don't mind 1/6th gee in the least. But as things are now, we'll never know. As for nothing useful? How 'bout solar cells and 28 days of sunlight? Automated factories? The list is rather long of the useful things we could do up there. And we wouldn't have all our eggs in one basket, either.
• I'd like to see technology go in these directions: Fuel efficiency/Alternative fuels Curing the Fuck out of Type I Diabetes I heard someone on the radio say recently that the kids in America (whoa-OH-oh!) aren't going into tech fields because there's nothing to inspire them there. In the 60s there was the space race, everybody wanted to be a part of it, folks wanted to be astronauts and rocket scientists and widget makers of all stripes. The speaker laid this down to JFK's using the moon shoot to inspire. Anyway, he said that a president today could do the same thing, except instead of "moon shoot" use "energy independence." Make it a patriotic thing, get kids excited about finding out how to run your car on peanut butter and produce only chocolate kisses as waste. Then sit back and wait for your flying peanut car.
• I can definitely see where you're coming from, but real per capita GDP keeps growing, so something must be driving it. "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
• I think the World Wars (and other wars) did move/accelerate technological advances forward, along the lines of "necessity is the mother of invention." As for your aircar, I think that was a fanciful projection of what technology could achieve, but was not practical to implement. You want to explore the galaxy, then you need economical shipyards - a 1/6th G (moon) yard could build and launch those craft far more efficiently; a null G yard (say, in a mineral rich asteroid field) even more. Today's spacecraft are Yesterday's Kitty Hawks.
• Hey fuyugare, I'm with you on the "regrow teeth" bit. Having noticeably lost two teeth to periodontal disease (which should also be eliminated), and having been told that they quit doing the wire-&-"tooth" daily-use bridges my mom had when I was a kid, I checked into dental implants -- and decided I'd rather not even if I'd get it for free (which I won't). And douggles, dude, our species' only hope is to refrain from terminally fucking up the planet we evolved on.
• I completely disagree with the sentiment that anything is slowing down. First of all, you can't just write off computers and the internet and THEN compare. We're talking about a major, huge, serious advancement of humankind. And I don't just mean the WWW as we know it. I mean IT, global communications, cell phones, sattelite TV, the ability to map the genome, manage commerce, automate tasks... the list goes on. On top of that you've got major advancements in biotechnology up the wazoo. Sure, few of them are as flashy as "INVENTING THE TELEPHONE" but they will have a massive impact on lifespan and quality of life, food production, waste management, etc, the list goes on. Add to IT and biotech all the minor improvements that they've made possible. Better airplane designs. Genetic engineering. Blogging. Single-dose, low-radiation cancer treatments. Incredible CG games and movie effects. New ways for the handicapped to communciate. Cloning, age-therapy research, nanotechnolgy, more efficient automatic transmissions for cars... again THE LIST GOES ON There's something a little curmedgeonly about the attitude that things just ain't as good as they used to be. You can make that argument about music and literature with some success, but trying to say that the modern day's advancements in science and technology can't hold up to the early 20th century is absolutely foolhardy and ridiculous. You have to really be a luddite not to appreciate the last 20 years of advancements. Part of the reason they don't seem so dramatic is they're complicated. Your Grandpa may never understand just how important stem cell research can be. He may think it's nothing compared to the transatlantic telegraph. The other reason recent advancements may seem less dramatic is there's so many more of them, so quickly. People were talking about the transatlantic telegraph for 20 years because there weren't big technological advancements every 20 minutes, like there are now. You can also look down on the values with which we charge forward these days, but that's a different story.
• I'd even go a little further and say that the very idea of a flying car is backward and silly. We now understand that flight is not an energy efficient way for a single person to travel to work, and that real solutions for the masses require greater efficiency and smart navigation, not wings and propellers. Give me one of those climb-in-and-take-a-nap cars from Minority Report any day, but a flying car just seems so... retro-futuristic. Doesn't make sense and won't for a long, long time, if ever.
• I'd even go a little further and say that the very idea of a flying car is backward and silly. You take that back right now.
• The US has lost its position as the world's primary engine of technology innovation According to a report by the World Economic Forum, the US is now ranked seventh in the body's league table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations... Denmark is now regarded as the world leader in technological innovation and application, with its Nordic neighbours Sweden, Finland and Norway claiming second, fourth and 10th place respectively.
• Go Viking tech!