Is it just me...

[Skipjack]

... or has technological advancement been slower in the last 5 decades or so?
The topic about the railgun made me realize this once more. Railguns are not new. In fact they have been arround for more than 30 years now (thats when I first read about them in a science mag, where they were put side to side with Bulls cannons). The concept is even older. Yet, there wont be any practical gun for the Navy before another 10 years have passed (and then we will see how long it will take from there). 10 years, that is a very long time.
It took the US less than that to make it to the moon, after the first plans were made.
And this is nothing groundbreaking, but it still takes 10 years?
The only thing that is still advancing very fast is the electronics sector. Though alternative technologies (quantum computers) are not really coming about quickly either. Quantum computers have been on the news for decades now too. So far nothing has really materialized. Just experimental devices in some labs.

[MSimon]

Lilenthal (sp?) patented the FET in 1925. We didn't get any until 1950 and not in volume until about 1960 or so.

The electronic world moves fast. Anything that involves bashing metal is slower. If it involves government slower yet.

[EricF]

I wonder if our advancement is slowing down due to a degrading educational system?

[MSimon]

I wonder if our advancement is slowing down due to a degrading educational system?

Advancement depends on the top 10%. we are still OK there.

[blaisepascal]

I wonder if our advancement is slowing down due to a degrading educational system?

That assumes that we are slowing down, which was the question originally asked. It is premature to search for causes for a result which hasn't been verified.

One counterpoint I'll give is Moore's Law. The periodic doubling of integrated circuit density and speed has remained remarkably consistent over the past 4 decades. However, for as long as I can recall, people have been saying that it can't continue, that there's some fundamental limit we would soon run across, and there have always been new developments, techniques, etc which have allowed the progress to continue.

But even in that field, where there is so much money and developmental energy devoted to research, it still takes years for new techniques to go from lab to fab. I don't find the idea that it takes years to develop 32MJ rail gun to be evidence of slowing technologicla development.

[EricF]

I wonder if our advancement is slowing down due to a degrading educational system?

That assumes that we are slowing down, which was the question originally asked. It is premature to search for causes for a result which hasn't been verified.

The only proof I need is that I can't go buy a flying Ford F150 powered by a Mr Fusion

[Skipjack]

One counterpoint I'll give is Moore's Law.

I tried to explicitely cut this one thing out. It is an exception, not the rule.
Look at cars, space vehicles, airplanes, even basic things like clothing.
To me it seems like real innovation is only in the details nowadays and we do not really see any big progress anymore. In terms of airplanes, the biggest news since the Concorde has been the A 380. Other than being incredibly big and a little more fuel efficient, it has not really brought any real innovation to the market. It is not a VTOL plane, e.g. and it is still subsonic.

The railgun, as I said might not have been a great example, but you have to admit that the progress in the last 30 years has been less than exciting.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Given technologies tend to plateau. You get a novel insight in physics, chemistry, whatever type of basic research - it is then engineered into a new technology. That technology tends to take several years to catch on - when it does, there is a rapid period of development. Capitalism is especially good at this, since new innovators get in on the act and make new variants competing with existing products. However, when the technology becomes mature, you can only get incremental returns with ever greater investments - you need new basic research to get to the next step then.

For example:
Aircraft:
1903 - Wright Brothers
1903-1914 - Catching on
1914-1918 - Rapid development driven by WWI
1918-1929 - Military investment wanes, but commercial competition gets going - people see the possibility of using planes to deliver mail, supplies to remote areas, and even carry passengers
1929-1939 - Economy is in the dumps, but the rise of militaristic regimes (USSR, Nazi Germany, etc) drives spending, commercial interests compete for military contracts
1939-1945 - War and commerce cause continued rapid development, prop-driven aircraft pretty much mature, the jump to jets is started
1945-1970 - Cold War and massive commercial competition drive the perfection of jet technologies, by the end of this period your basic Boeing 747 plane is as mature as it gets with industrial-age manufacturing processes
1970 onwards - Incremental improvements; F-4 replaced by F-15, F-16, then F-22 and F-35 - but it is the information technology systems built into them that are making the real difference in effectiveness now.
Similarly, passenger jets get a bit better with innovations in materials, engine tweaking, computer... but no fundamental airframe difference.

Similarly, with rockets you had Tsiolkovsky, Goddard etc. - governments are eventually interested in rocketry for military purposes by the 1930s, then you get massive competition in the 1950s and 1960s. However, there's only so much performance you can squeeze out of hydrogen+oxygen...

Biotech and microelectronics, on the other hand, only really took off in the 50s/60s (Watson and Crick discover DNA; transistor radios appear). They catch on in the 70s, and the 80s, 90s and 00s see rapid advancements. While you see rapid advances in one area, others stagnate.

IMO here are some basic research things that would be needed for various industries to leap ahead again:

Computers - silicon based computers will reach maturity in the next decade or two (can't die shrink further without violating the laws of physics). Quantum computers, photonic computers, or bio-processors will need to become feasible and cost-effective, or we will see decades of stagnation.
Biotech - basic research as well as applications happening vigorously, no plateau in sight.
Aircraft - Basic materials research (ie. nanotech to make carbon sheets) could bring about a generation of aircraft with much better thrust-to-weight ratios. They would also probably be stronger/more durable.
Spacecraft - Again, the nanotech would improve thrust-to-weight and durability. A NASP-type design would become feasible. Launch it up the side of a mountain on a magnetic rail and your GLOW is further reduced.
Aircraft/spacecraft - Basic research succeeds in creating a gravity or inertial drive (ie. Heim/Tajmar or Woodward). The propellantless drive replaces the jet the same way as the jet replaced the propeller. Combine that with nantotech, and you probably have aerospacecraft that can do point-to-point in the atmosphere or fly up to orbit.
Nuclear - Gen IV/V fission systems are an incremental improvement over Gen II/III. A fusion system like Polywell would be the basic research breakthrough which would spawn a new period of rapid development.

One thing that makes history interesting, and the future unpredictable, is that you never know in which field the next breakthrough in basic research will come. I, too, find it frustrating that we are still flying basically the same types of vehicles as we were flying 40 years ago, but technological development is uneven. The advances in computing, communications, imaging, and biotech are as great as the preceding period of advancement in aircraft, rockets and nukes.

[Carl White]

I understand what Skipjack is getting at.

If you took someone from 1900 America and dropped him into 1950 America, he'd be a lot more disoriented than someone taken from 1950 and dropped into 2000.

Some real miracles in biotechnology, medicine, agriculture and even life extension are in the embryonic stages now, though. They'll be unrolling over the next three decades.

[pfrit]

Whether or not you buy into the idea of the technological singularity or not, the pace at which we are increasing our information has not deviated in the last. The rate of acceleration continues on the same curve that it has followed throughout history. If you are against the idea of the technoloogical singularity, the slow down has not yet begun.

[djolds1]

... or has technological advancement been slower in the last 5 decades or so?

You are not the first to note this.

Technologies mature along the logistic curve, just like the emergence of most phyla of life during the Cambrian Explosion.

Arguably, civilizations function similarly, coming to plateaus that Arnold Toynbee called "universal states," which last in flower for a clockwork 500 years, and then either collapse or slowly, pathetically decay. Several Metahistorical models place the modern West on the cusp of the transition from creative "Kultur" to the curatorial "Zivilization" of a universal state.

To me it seems like real innovation is only in the details nowadays and we do not really see any big progress anymore. In terms of airplanes, the biggest news since the Concorde has been the A 380. Other than being incredibly big and a little more fuel efficient, it has not really brought any real innovation to the market. It is not a VTOL plane, e.g. and it is still subsonic.

The logistic curve, aka the diminishing returns curve.

The basic "phyla" of any new field (life itself, aeronautic power systems, etc.) are rapidly identified, either by the largely unguided processes of natural evolution, or by applied human insight. In the case of aeronautic power systems, those phyla would be the propeller, the ramjet, and the turbojet. The basic phyla are relatively rapidly expanded to their subtypes and hybrids - propeller/ helicopter/ ducted fan, ramjet/ pulsejet-PDE/ scramjet, turbojet/ turbofan, and turboramjet. After that diminishing returns kicks in, and every increment of increased efficiency takes longer and longer, costing more and more. Witness how the Incredible Edible Scramjet is still trying for Mach 6, exactly where it was in the early 1960s; or the difficulty of making a functional Pulse Detonation Engine compared to the pristine simplicity of a WW2 era V-1 buzz bomb's pulsejet.

The electronic world moves fast. Anything that involves bashing metal is slower. If it involves government slower yet.

American conservatives and libertarians overestimate the impact of government on slowing down progress. Yes cowardice of the Precautionary Principle type plays its role, but as you imply with "bashing metal," we have hit diminishing returns in many fields. We either need fundamentally new insights and methods (reactionless or nuclear propulsion of some sort for aeronautic power systems), or we are condemned to pay more and more for ever smaller increments of improvement to known models.

Some real miracles in biotechnology, medicine, agriculture and even life extension are in the embryonic stages now, though. They'll be unrolling over the next three decades.

Agreed, these fields are open for several decades of cheap rapid progress, the upward incline on the "S" of the logistic curve, before it tilts over to a plateau. I would add a significant step in industry (tabletop 3D printers/contour crafting - not quite Drexlerian nanotech, but close), and the potential automation of most medical treatment (again, doesn't necessarily require Drexlerian nanotech).

Whether or not you buy into the idea of the technological singularity or not, the pace at which we are increasing our information has not deviated in the least.

1) IMO The Singularity is the technonerd substitute for the Rapture of the 7th Day Adventists.

2) Rate of information acquisition is irrelevant. All that does is add to an archives. What matters is our ability to assimilate and apply that information. IMO one of the things that allowed Western science to so outshine the achievements of Classical Mediterranean Antiquity is the replacement of word problems by symbolic algebra. Hell, Archimedes almost invented calculus (method of progressive approximations) using word problems . The next step in the efficient packaging of information for application has yet to present itself.

[DeltaV]

I would posit that the influence of financiers, MBAs, speculators, accountants, efficiency experts, workplace psychologists, etc. on the realms of technological research, development and engineering has been more negative than positive in recent years.

Go back to the late 1800s. The distinctions between "mathematician", "physicist", "engineer" and "technologist" were much, much fuzzier. Cutting-edge researchers did all of these jobs. Technological overspecialization was still in the future. The money men who funded innovation knew their place, and generally restricted themselves to matters involving finances, marketing, corporate expansion, etc. Once they decided to fund some specific area of R&D, they more or less stayed out of the way and let the nerds do their thing until something marketable appeared.

My observation of the aerospace industry over the last three decades has been that scientific logic and reason and a desire for true innovation are becoming less and less important. Engineers are now expected to be salesmen, account managers, scheduling experts, human resource specialists, market analysts, etc., and are treated as disposable commodities. Near-term profit, corporate image, and the current stock price are the the factors which determine if some project is allowed to flourish or perish. It's all gone Wall Street/Hollywood.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Several Metahistorical models place the modern West on the cusp of the transition from creative "Kultur" to the curatorial "Zivilization" of a universal state.

I would say that has happened a number of times in certain segments of modern western civilization, but fortunately not throughout the whole. For instance, the NASA manned space program has been resistant to change, with entrenched interests ie. the Michoud Assembly plant. The resistant is reinforced by elected officials who represent the workers in Congress and the Senate. Essentially, it wishes to preserve itself as it is and make marginal improvements on the edges.

Some historians have argued that the West is prone to falling into the trap of "trend innovation", where its political and economic interests dictate that only incremental improvements be made (as in the NASA example above). Other examples would include battleships in the late 19th/early 20th century, tanks since WWII, fighter/bomber aircraft since WWII, etc. However, once again our technology is advancing quickly enough to knock us out of any possible trend innovation paradigm - battleships (dreadnought types) ruled the waves from the 1890s to the 1930s, and then got superceded by aircraft carriers.

Agreed, these fields are open for several decades of cheap rapid progress, the upward incline on the "S" of the logistic curve, before it tilts over to a plateau. I would add a significant step in industry (tabletop 3D printers/contour crafting - not quite Drexlerian nanotech, but close), and the potential automation of most medical treatment (again, doesn't necessarily require Drexlerian nanotech).

Fortunately advances in one area can spill over to another to get innovation going again. For instance, you couldn't have designed a stealth bomber without advanced computers. That particular example failed to advance the general level of aircraft design, but I can't think of a better one right now. In the future, life extension and bio-interface computers might have important overlap effects...

1) IMO The Singularity is the technonerd substitute for the Rapture of the 7th Day Adventists.

2) Rate of information acquisition is irrelevant. All that does is add to an archives. What matters is our ability to assimilate and apply that information. IMO one of the things that allowed Western science to so outshine the achievements of Classical Mediterranean Antiquity is the replacement of word problems by symbolic algebra. Hell, Archimedes almost invented calculus (method of progressive approximations) using word problems Shocked . The next step in the efficient packaging of information for application has yet to present itself.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you about the singularity, although I don't completely dismiss it. However, life extension and bio-interface (where you can download new information) will be hugely important precisely because they will allow greatly improved information assimilation. You will be able to assimilate information faster and you'll have longer to assimilate more information. Right now there is so much published material in the archives that people aren't even familiar with much of the work in their own sub-field. Being able to assimilate more information will allow great interdisciplinary insights to resume.

[MSimon]

Government involvement:

Take housing. There are thousands of jurisdictions and hundreds of different or slightly different building codes. This delays advances that do not fit the code.

[MSimon]

Engineers are now expected to be salesmen, account managers, scheduling experts, human resource specialists, market analysts, etc.,

If you can do all or most of those things it comes in handy.