Has Scientific Innovation Slowed Down?
Discussion
I think that scientific innovation is clipping along at a fair pace.
Recently ive read about -
aids has been cured in a few people,
a medication has been found that can cure some types
flexible quick recharge batteries
The problem is 3 fold imho, the US patent system can make it more profitable to sit on an invention and wait for someone to breach your patent then sue them, health and safety - the amount of testing that 'things' need in order to deem them safe (not saying this shouldnt happen but it is slowing things down) & finally capitalism (profit) retooling costs and the complex nature of new innovations mean that bringing out a new product would/could be less profitable than rebranding and slightly tweaking an old product (the iphone for example).
Recently ive read about -
aids has been cured in a few people,
a medication has been found that can cure some types
flexible quick recharge batteries
The problem is 3 fold imho, the US patent system can make it more profitable to sit on an invention and wait for someone to breach your patent then sue them, health and safety - the amount of testing that 'things' need in order to deem them safe (not saying this shouldnt happen but it is slowing things down) & finally capitalism (profit) retooling costs and the complex nature of new innovations mean that bringing out a new product would/could be less profitable than rebranding and slightly tweaking an old product (the iphone for example).
Edited by Odie on Thursday 11th July 10:41
compare my phone to NASA
my current phone has 32MB memory, can process several brazillion instruction per second, can store and play videos and most of my music library, can tell me whare I am on the earths surface to with a few metres
Back of envelope calculations make that something like 10^6 more powerful than the computer NASA used to send a man to the moon. thats progress
The fact I use it to hurl cartoon birds around, no so much
my current phone has 32MB memory, can process several brazillion instruction per second, can store and play videos and most of my music library, can tell me whare I am on the earths surface to with a few metres
Back of envelope calculations make that something like 10^6 more powerful than the computer NASA used to send a man to the moon. thats progress
The fact I use it to hurl cartoon birds around, no so much
Russian Rocket said:
compare my phone to NASA
my current phone has 32MB memory, can process several brazillion instruction per second, can store and play videos and most of my music library, can tell me whare I am on the earths surface to with a few metres
Back of envelope calculations make that something like 10^6 more powerful than the computer NASA used to send a man to the moon. thats progress
The fact I use it to hurl cartoon birds around, no so much
A USB memory stick is more powerful than computers that put a man on the moon. But innovation has seen people sending smartphones up and using them as the guts for basic satelites.my current phone has 32MB memory, can process several brazillion instruction per second, can store and play videos and most of my music library, can tell me whare I am on the earths surface to with a few metres
Back of envelope calculations make that something like 10^6 more powerful than the computer NASA used to send a man to the moon. thats progress
The fact I use it to hurl cartoon birds around, no so much
It was a big rocket and team on the ground that got people to the Moon, the on-board computer only served a minor role and didn't need to be able to play Angry Birds.
There's plenty of reasons to go to the Moon, Mars and beyond. All the minerals, heavy metals, elements and whatnot that are present here on the Earth are also out there in space, space is bigger so there's a lot more of it available than there is here, Everything is made out the same material, being able to mine for that in space where pollution isn't an issue and the material in abundance then we wouldn’t ever need to dig stuff out of the ground on Earth again.
There's plenty of reasons to go to the Moon, Mars and beyond. All the minerals, heavy metals, elements and whatnot that are present here on the Earth are also out there in space, space is bigger so there's a lot more of it available than there is here, Everything is made out the same material, being able to mine for that in space where pollution isn't an issue and the material in abundance then we wouldn’t ever need to dig stuff out of the ground on Earth again.
Edited by qube_TA on Thursday 11th July 14:02
I think some people have hit the crux of the problem. We seem to be making advances all the time but the really game changing breakthroughs may be being held back due to politics or profit. We COULD go to Mars but we don't because it will cost too much and doesn't serve a short term purpose (although the long term benefits might be huge). I'm sure we could also crack something like fusion a lot quicker if we made a real concerted effort but we don't because our entire economy is still based on fossil fuels and I'd bet their are similar blockers for all sorts of other advances.
I think the real change between this century and the last is that we've become very mercenary in our search for knowledge. It seems a lot of the time we've stopped thinking about long term goals and doing things just to find out if we can or to further the knowledge of mankind as the people that pay for these innovations can't or won't think about the long term view. I think this more than anything is stopping us from making the really big leaps that we've all been hearing about and waiting for but which haven't materialised.
I think the real change between this century and the last is that we've become very mercenary in our search for knowledge. It seems a lot of the time we've stopped thinking about long term goals and doing things just to find out if we can or to further the knowledge of mankind as the people that pay for these innovations can't or won't think about the long term view. I think this more than anything is stopping us from making the really big leaps that we've all been hearing about and waiting for but which haven't materialised.
prand said:
Instant communication has replaced the need to fly to Australia in 2 hours
I was thinking more of tourism than business meetings (unless the idea of a holiday now is to spend a week looking at photos of Ayers Rock on Google Images!). Many more people would travel to Oz and NZ if it wasn't 20-24 hours.But I was in a hotel in Ely today and was able to see my car advert on PH on somebody's tablet via wifi, which was nice, albeit not really advancing the human race. We can get 'information' to anybody anywhere instantly, OK, but are we adding any new information?
There are a lot of new areas of technology still being found in nanotechnology and biochemistry. One just read I like using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.
Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
davepoth said:
Incorrect. Google The Green Revolution.
That's a 5 fold increase in 50 years. Pretty damn impressive. Scientists think that GMO crops could do the same.
If I have read the graph properly it says yield in kg/ha is circa 2500. In the UK it is probably nearer 7500kg/ha average with highs near 13,000. 2500kg/ha would be poor in Kansas where it is very hot and dry. That's a 5 fold increase in 50 years. Pretty damn impressive. Scientists think that GMO crops could do the same.
Baron Greenback said:
There are a lot of new areas of technology still being found in nanotechnology and biochemistry. One just read I like using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.
Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
WOW!!!Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
(What did he say?)
Eric Mc said:
Baron Greenback said:
There are a lot of new areas of technology still being found in nanotechnology and biochemistry. One just read I like using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.
Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
WOW!!!Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructure.
(What did he say?)
Barron Greenback said:
...which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years...
Simpo Two said:
Lots of scientific words there, and a touch of BS, but all it does is allow you to store still more data in a still smaller space. It's looking inwards not outwards.
Actually, potentially world changing. The ability to pass information to distant future generations is something mankind has never achived.It's too easy to compress history and think everything happened so quickly, people living through those changes didn't see it like that. Smartphones are a cracking example, my family didn't even have a phone in the house until I was about 10, then came mobiles, but that was about 10 years till normal people could afford them, another 5 till everyone had one. Then organisers and now smartphones. The new S4 even knows the local humidity.
And if you think smartphones haven't achived much:
Eric Mc said:
There are plenty of reasons to go the moon, Mars and beyond.
Sadly most are not economically viable so, at least for the foreseeable future, any journey will be motivated only by curiosity.Eric Mc said:
We will be going back to the moon
Serious question: Why?Eric Mc said:
and we will be going to Mars and we will be going further.
It's only a matter of time.
Sadly time is the problem. It's a very long way to go with a very tight supply of everything essential to life.It's only a matter of time.
Perhaps we could make a case for terraforming Mars or Venus, which in turn might make going there a lot easier simply because the destination wouldn't kill you at the slightest hitch so some chance of rescue would exist.
With a propulsion breakthrough the journeys might be a lot more feasible but modern physics has developed a nasty habit of making every type of "warp drive" close to, or actually, impossible.
At the moment we have incredibly long journeys that take an incredibly long time to get to incredibly hostile places for no other reason than increasingly academic curiosity. Sad I know, but I think that is how it is.
PW said:
Those people were explorers/adventurers, not scientists.
It was really in response to, and agreement with, Cymtricks, who said 'At the moment we have incredibly long journeys that take an incredibly long time to get to incredibly hostile places for no other reason than increasingly academic curiosity.'One reason Scott's expedition failed is because he was a scrupulous scientist. Most explorers were scientifically orientated, collecting, observing and adding to man's store of knowledge.
PW said:
You seem to be confusing the two. Scientific innovation is not the same thing as going somewhere far away and planting a flag.
That is true. I was thinking of things that would further man's horizons, not relegate him to spending the rest of his life on a sofa.PW said:
How often did Gallileo, Herschal or Dirac "leave home"? They probably would have warmly welcomed facebook, as it would make research and collaboration significantly easier, and they could have created better theories, faster.
The internet makes almost all information available to everybody in minutes, if they have the brains to understand/interpret/use it. It's great for disseminating information and communication, but it does not add anything new.PW said:
It seems rather unfair to pooh-pooh all scientific achievment simply because the specific advances you wish for haven't been made. There's no obligation for anyone to achieve anything specific on your behalf - people follow their own passions. Their achievments should be respected, whatever they are.
I am simply hoping that one day man will look forwards and out again, not up his own butthole. But perhaps, as I think the OP said, the advances of the last 200 years have been 'low hanging fruit', and because anything greater is too difficult/expensive/impractical, we spend our time inventing playthings. That is not to say there have been major and useful advances, but they are in the minority I fear, and certainly do not capture the public imagination as they once did.PW said:
I think you must be living in some sort of alternative reality
Well this is the internet you know 
But seriously, one reaches a point in life when you can look back a few decades and take a perspective view.
You make a valid point of 'knowing where to look' - so why is all this innovation you talk about hidden? It's a pity the news is always full of politics and war; it should really be full of science and innovation and exciting things. The ISS is a great achievement - when was it last on the news?
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