We are witnessing a new scientific 'Golden Age'

A lot of people spend half their time at work checking their phone or messing around on the internet. We wouldn't have to work 40 or even 35 hours a week if there was more productivity.

 

Actually, medical progress is happening too fast if we don't have a dramatically better energy source to sustain a growing population. I don't care that much about the progress of medicine unless it actually makes health care cheaper. Every new advance with medicine just seems to push the price of health care up. Computing has advanced at the same rate for 60 years, so what makes this point in time so special? AI won't be widespread until about 2030-2040, and we have been working on AI since as long as we have had computers and we will continue to have to research a lot of stuff until that happens, so again what makes this point in time so special? I think computers are pretty worthless without AI, so I'd maybe call the 2030's a scientific golden age. Materials science is an important area, but is it really progressing any faster than it has in the past? Nanotechnology hasn't had much of an effect yet, so I would say nanotechnology's golden age will probably be in the 2020's and extend much further than that.

 

Energy is food. If energy is cheaper food is cheaper, and it can be grown in more areas. Materials science will also improve food production. If we can make a strong, light, cheap material, then we can make vertical farming cheap. Artificial intelligence can work on these farms as well making labor cheaper, and genetic engineering will help crops grow better. I don't see a problem with population growth as long as technology keeps improving.

 

That's true, and one of the reasons why I don't necessarily call computers so far progress.

 

If Malthus was correct, we wouldn't have the population we have now.

 

Do you think we've ever had a time when most people didn't know jack (*)(*)(*)(*) about anything other than trivial things? Instead of facebook, it was who was doing what to who in the small town community. Most people are ignorant, and most people have been ignorant. There is nothing new about that.

 

The U.S. is one of the most productive nations per worker despite all of that. There is no way employers would pay the same for a productive 20 hrs a week as they do for a less productive 40 hrs a week.

 

Maybe that is the problem with employers. It's not just about getting rid of unproductive workers, but getting rid of work that provides no benefit. A lot of jobs are worthless for the benefit of society. I don't care where the U.S. is compared to other countries. We should be the best, and then compete with ourselves to get a lot better.

 

Exactly, so how is an iphone actually benefitting society?

 

Population growth has been slowing as well. It'll be in negative territories by 2050 or so. Also, I would point out that just because there is a downside to technological progress does not mean that it isn't happening. Your own argument admits that radical medical technologies are being developed.

It does filter down, eventually. Yes, the high end becomes more expensive, and people tend not to be willing to compromise when it comes to health. But this is not a technical issue--this is a funding issue that won't be resolved until we move to a socialized system.

It's advanced quite a bit faster lately. Moore's law is a very general concept. When it comes to capabilities, computers today are radically more capable and more portable than even five years ago. What makes it different today? Sensors are a lot more capable and a lot less expensive. Everyone's got much more powerful computers in their pockets. Powerful and flexible computing platforms have become the norm on cell phones, as opposed to severely restricted systems like Symbian or the custom platforms of old-style cell phones. High-speed wireless data networks are truly ubiquitous, not just isolated to hot spots. Cloud computing arrived, finally.

You're looking only at performance, not the entire field. Advances in the field today aren't about huge shifts in performance--it's becoming a mature field where new improvements are in how we use the technology, and on mastering the craft already well developed (by making them use less power, generate less heat, fit in smaller spaces, etc), getting costs down even lower so as to expand accessibility. In these matters, we're advancing very quickly.

There's a lot of developments recently that really have changed computing. It's not radical developments in performance; it's radical developments in price, size, deployment, and how we use that performance. We record a lot more data now, and we have much better tools for analyzing that data. It makes data analysis almost trivial, and certainly practical on much larger scales--I.E. national or global scales.

AI isn't really what I'm talking about. Organizational intelligence is what I'm talking about. Computers don't need to think for themselves in order to enhance human decisionmaking. Until recently, computer haven't been very good at doing that. Posthuman intelligence doesn't necessarily have to be artificial self-thinking machines. It can be a form of organizational or collective intelligence brought about by extreme data analysis and ubiquitous communication.

Computers are extremely useful even without genuine AI. They're useful even beyond their initial purpose as computing machines.

Yes, definitely.

Nanotechnology isn't the only place where material science advances; metamaterials alone would justify the claim that material science today is radically improved over what it was 20 years ago.

 

By blending data networks, location-awareness, and flexible general computing. Even the immediate impact of iPhones and Android phones has been to shift development away from large professional software development firms back to individuals and small groups of developers--because it has opened a far more accessible market on a common yet powerful platform.

In other words, you can not only take your computer with you everywhere you go, the computer can know where it is, and can access high speed data networks to keep in contact with other computers. And the price of this is low enough that most people in a developed country (and in quite a few developing countries) can afford them. That is revolutionary, on the level of the original development of the world wide web, or the creation of the first computer networks.

Denying that is silly.

 

It looks like that the big discoveries are the exoplanets and deep oceanic findings and space exploration (rovers on Mars, planetary explorers)
We are not witnessing very much real technological discoveries since the seventies, only in the fields of were the system needs to get control over us (internet, communication devices, computers, that branch has advanced)
Lots of what you see on Discovery/NGC is amusement.
We could already have a golden scientific age end sixties, that was when all the break-throughs came (solar cells, hydrogen engine, digital electronics, all because of the Moon landings), from that point it could go to real advanced things. But JFK was assasinated and the good things faded away, and mass capitalism came)
Most advanced things are gone or blocked by the system, for example the Delorean car, Concorde and the Shuttle, no electric and hydrogen cars/planes/boats.
Science is very far, but lots is hold back, programs are stopped.
The break-through will be new energy sources (geothermical/tidal/nuclear fusion, and from that the electric/hydrogen transporation and high-tech industry (some things in industry are advanced, the most is still the old system, very poluting industry and transporation based on oil)
You can expect a real golden age when this system is becoming an empire like Rome/Germany, then they need that advancement to make the people euforic and need military advancement (this is how it went in Germany)
They wait until they need a scientific golden age, they control when that happens (while it already could have happen decades ago, look at how far science was in the sixties, the Apollo rockets, sr blackbird, space shuttle, stealth technology, hydrogen combustion were already there in the sixties)
The seventies should have been that scientific golden age (even in the ICT, the military/Pentagon already had a communication web network in the sixties)
We will witness another golden age, but also another empire (good things and bad things at the same time, because the elite are planning our world and break-thoughs, they control the system/world)

 

I see a problem with lack of personal space.

 

We have more food now because of advanced farming methods. That doesn't prove anything

 

I don't think the world wide web is very revolutionary or the creation of computer networks. A lot of people say the internet or computer is the greatest invention, but I don't agree with that at all. Half the time, Call of Duty lags so much it is unplayable. Until webpages start loading instantly, computers are probably more of a waste of time than they are good for. What good is taking a computer with you everywhere you go? People spend so much time on their computer and don't even talk to each other face to face. If computers can speed up progress in other areas, why don't we have an energy source to replace fossil fuels yet? Computers are useful in certain situations, but most of the time they aren't used right. Computers will eventually be useful to society, but I think it will require some artificial intelligence.

 

Go to Mars.

 

I'd rather that people just not have kids that they don't have the economic means to support.

 

What if everyone had the economic means to support more kids?

 

Someone call Larry the cable guy. We are in for a whitless protection program.

 

What???????????

 

What if we continually develop better farming methods? That law would be pretty pointless then.

 

That's not gonna happen but if it did, then obviously there wouldn't be anyone to whom this would apply to. So what is your point again?

Refer to this post of mine for your next question (the previous post on this thread)

 

What you said is pointless if it can't be applied to anything. How do you know that is not going to happen? I think it will.

 

Oldjar,

I didn't read all of your posts so forgive me if this was addressed, but its apparent you are equating technology with science. Yes, technology is born form from science but in no way is it indicative of scientific progress.

I believe it is due to my mentioning of the internet. I didnt mean that the internet "was a scientific discovery" I meant that the internet is connecting everyone which allows the sharing of ideas and information. This can only accelerate the advancement of knowledge (Science is just another word for knowledge).

Its also important to differentiate scientific breakthroughs from inventions created from technology that was born from science. Sure the 20th century saw a lot of big inventions, but a good chunk of the community still believed that Mars had canals, Venus swamps and the universe was only the size of our current galaxy.

Take a look at the breakthroughs in quantum, particle and astrophysics. These alone are huge, but also in biology, medicine and oceanography. Big discoveries that you might dismiss because it doesn't make a better cup of coffee, like for example the discovery of arsenic based life forms here on Earth or conformation of particle entanglement.

Any technology that results from the current discoveries will take decades to hit the market place, but capitalism isn't the goal of Science in the first place.

 

I don't care about science unless it will actually provide benefits to society. There really is no point in knowing more if you can't use this knowledge. I think the early to mid 1900's would still be way ahead only by talking about science instead of technological progress. Even though I don't care much about medical advances, there were a lot of major scientific discoveries in medicine such as the polio vaccine and DNA. Quantum mechanics was discovered in the 1900's and there were many improvements in the mid 1900's. I believe nuclear energy is the most important discovery ever, though the full effects haven't been realized yet. Most of this is political rather than technical or scientific. I could have told you that life could probably exist without oxygen or water. There are probably other things beside arsenic that life can use as well.

"Its also important to differentiate scientific breakthroughs from inventions created from technology that was born from science. Sure the 20th century saw a lot of big inventions, but a good chunk of the community still believed that Mars had canals, Venus swamps and the universe was only the size of our current galaxy." Most of these things were discovered to be false in the early 1900's so you are actually saying these things were scientific progress during the 20th century.

Why not go back to learning how to make weapons from smithys, etc. if the goal of science isn't to make things cheaper or easier? I combine science and technology together because they are very similar and related. There has no better time for both science and technology than the mid 20th century. Both science and technology are going relatively slow right now as well.