Are we hitting a technological plateau? (And do we owe all our recent tech to reverse engineering o

Originally posted by franspeakfree
For those that laugh and sneer at the notion that our technology comes fom back engineered crashed/shot down U.FO'S (Intelligently controlled craft piloted by off world species) should look at the designs of aeroplanes from 1930's to the 1980's, you will see that between the end of the war up to the 70's aircraft design changed rapidly and quite unexpectedly.

I am speaking of course about the planes like the B-29 Superfortress (1939-1960) to the F-117A Nighthawk (1982- ).

Where did the leap in advancement not only in design but in technology come from all of a sudden?

From a better understanding of aerodynamics and an improvement on the materials and component production? Better menas of prototype testing?

I find this difficult to explain as I don't have the skills, but I often suggest looking at UFO - flying saucer / alien ship, I mean - photo's and at their contemporary cars. Look at the Adamski Venusian ships... to me they have the heavy curves of 50's cars; by the late 60's and early 70's the UFO's were slimmer looking, less clunky, with an appearance of looking fast, like the sports cars of the era. By the 80's, when styling changes and the 90's, these UFO's were shinier, smoother, much more sleek looking.

The changes in aircraft over time work in the same way as, say, buildings - compare a Norman church to a 14th Century cathedral (remember these things often took decades to actually build), or cars over the last 40 years, or even mobile phones in the last 10 years. Different companies watching, evaluating, redesigning / stealing ideas, and repackaging, tied in with advances in materials, production and boom-for-the-buck.

I think.

reply to post by JaxonRoberts


most definitely i think we have.. i'll use simple computers as my model.

Remember back in the day, (i've been using a pc since 1988 so...this is quite a while back but im only 35 ) but, every month and year there were upgrades needed..up until i'm guessing about 2007-2009 thats when i started to see everything level off.

Everything is a dual core processor capable of running win7 and playing almost anything. I get asked a lot about "what laptop or pc should i buy" . Honestly, unless they are a hard core gamer, the cheapest one being advertised will do because its most likely a P4 Dual, at least a gig of ram, at least 256mb of video, plenty of storage, dvd-writer..

So in that aspect (when i'm not talking to a gamer, they just want it for the internet, etc, some average games) i always say just pick the cheapest one, it'll suit you fine.

I'm not wrong here either, it's hard not to pick the minimum pc these days (for those that aren't technology obsessed, who just want a good working pc that will last) and not have it meet your needs.

yeah we've reached a technological plateau as you say... im just wondering why virtual reality hasn't come mainstream yet..the technology is there, at your local big arcade but still a bit hard to come by for the home user.

anyhow just my 2cents.

d.

reply to post by franspeakfree


Why do you people have to bring Aliens into EVERY THREAD!

So its just a coincidence that we developed flight and then all of a sudden a UFO crashes and for some reason "the airplane" advances?

No its not. The technological advancements were fueled by war.

You cannot just look at technology and back engineer it. To even bother trying you would need some understanding of the technology. Now this would not be so hard with an Aircraft engine because you can openly learn the tech.

Now take the Roswell UFO (which is not even fact). A craft which has traveled light years to get here. This craft would have technologies which are uncomprehending to the human mind. You cannot back engineer something which you have no understanding of. Also you cannot learn about it! Just imagine a cave man finding an F22... Do you think he could back engineer it?

But then i guess you would say 'Well the governments have been swapping technology with Aliens' You people have an answer for it all and its based on pure speculation!

Anyway no i don't think we have hit a plateau at all. Just look at your computer or laptop for instance. On average the speed and efficiency of the processor for the home user improves once a year. This is compared to every 3 or 4 years back in the 1990's.

Then we have Nano technology which we will see being used by the average person with 10 years. The uses for Nano are absolutely mind boggling!

I think maybe space exploration and tech has hit a plateau but this will improve when other technologies become available and are financially viable.



[edit on 13-7-2010 by tommyb0y]

Originally posted by franspeakfree
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

And the testimonials from the likes of Boylan,Corso,Lazaar and of course David Wilcox?

they all can't be lying can they?

Wilcox and Lazar are complete liars and/or delusionist's..

If you follow the development of technology from the 20's.. you will see the development of computers, and the technology surrounding it during the time of the NAZI's..

Once all those scientists had been shipped to the US after the war along with scientists from every other destroyed part of Europe, made work together and given blanket funding.. Of course there were going to be leaps and advances..

But to say there weren't leaps before that is completely wrong..

We already had basic computers..
NAZI's had fly by wire missiles..
Britain had developed Radar..
Wireless communication was already there..
The NAZI's had developed Rocket boosters and advanced communication for guiding their bombers..
The US had split the atom..

These are all basic components for creating and understanding the basis for modern computing and all the spin offs..

Stick the scientists that developed all these things under one flag in the only place left on earth with any money for investment and there was your 1950's explosion in technology.

Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
Then we seem to discover language, the wheel, building semipermanent shelters and agriculture.

First came speech (200.000 years ago) then symbols appeared 30.000 years ago and writing 7000 years ago, all natural evolution.

For the next 4,000 years not much happens until we get to the nineteenth century and figure out how to harness steam power. Next comes the Industrial Revolution, electricity and the internal combustion engine.

Steam power was based on water- and windmills (appearing in the 1st century), not out of the blue. Those were probably based on man's understanding of harnessing the wind by using sails on boats.

We go from the abacus to the PC in less than 100 years.

While it may appear impressive going from pigeons carrying letters to email on smartphones, I bet people still talk about the same subjects.

But since the begining of the 90's, what have we really 'discovered'??? Sure we have fine tuned things that we previously in existance. Computers have more memory and can run faster, TV's are flatter, cell phones are smaller and 'smarter', but where are the new 'breakthroughs'?

How about scientific breakthroughs, science has yet to succesfully attach some device to some poor individuals brain and see their most private thoughts.

I'm sure there are many scientific breakthroughs which go by unnoticed by the common man either because it is "too much" for the general public, or unethical, or both and it involves a lot of money in which case it is better kept secret.

Have we hit a plateau? Have we reverse engineered the Roswell wreck as much as we can? Are we just out of ideas and way past what our intelligence is capable of achieving?

There is probably just less funding, computer science is not like it used to be where budgets were grand and enough skilled people worked on a project without the need for profit (which was guaranteed). While "science" might never have been ideal, nowadays many scientists have to compete qith eachother instead of working together, this slows down progress.

Not that I share your belief there's a Roswell wreck but I do suspect at times inspiration might originate somewhere else than the human brain.

Why did we hit this rapid growth of technology and why does it seem to be slowing down in the last twenty years?

Because you are witnessing it and become accustomed to it.

[edit on 15/7/2010 by Dragonfly79]

My 2 cents. No, I don't think we have hit a plateau. I just think that a lot of whats brewing is not readily apparent right at the moment in the consumer environment. Scientific breakthroughs are a 1 day news cycle at most (less if a celeb has a haircut) and then forgotten until a product emerges.

-Nano technology is in its infancy and will change things - materials science improvements and nano machines.
-Genetic engineering - Mankind has this year made a new lifeform from a cell. Eventually we'll make those too.
- Hopefully we'll soon start understanding why things have mass. I'm not even going to speculate where that can go.

These things together will have more of a real change on everyday life than fission (imho). Give it a little time.

The specialist nature of things these days makes it hard to see the big picture. Thats one reason detailed predictions are usually wrong :-)


I agree with the stagnation of PCs, i've noticed that too but its market forces I think. At the moment theres no applications screaming out for more power than whats there. Microsoft bloatware can only offset performance so much before people smell a rat :-) As such people are choosing on price and the vendors are responding.

Originally posted by JaxonRoberts

Have we hit a plateau? Have we reverse engineered the Roswell wreck as much as we can? Are we just out of ideas and way past what our intelligence is capable of achieving?

Why did we hit this rapid growth of technology and why does it seem to be slowing down in the last twenty years?

Well, we never reverse engineered the Roswell wreck, because it was ours anyway.

What you're seeing is the engineering tail-off of the last round of physics breakthroughs that happened in the late 30's for the most part.

What happens next is, you have a lull while the physics boys come up with the next enabler. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it happens faster than you'd like. At the risk of invoking IgnoranceIsntBliss, something that you might look to see in the next 10-20 years is a self-aware computer. That might be good, might be Colossus Jr, but when you go to those invitation-only Sandia symposiums and one of the lectures is "Emergent Behavior in Zettaflop Processors" and the topic is completely "what happens if this sob wakes up" then you know you've arrived in the future.

There are a number of military things that are over the rainbow and could easily fuel the development of all you'd want to see. But they're really BIG changes, and if you thought quantum theory, which has pretty much fueled all the development you've seen since the 50's, was a "future shock" inducer, you can't imagine what would happen with the next bit. So I expect that to be doled out really slowly to reduce societal impact.

Originally posted by franspeakfree
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

And the testimonials from the likes of Boylan,Corso,Lazaar and of course David Wilcox?

they all can't be lying can they?

In the case of Lazar and Corso, you bet, one's a fruitcake and the other was assisting in maintaining a secondary cover story on an old old government project. The other two I don't know. Likely as accurate as the guys that talk about Montauk.

Originally posted by franspeakfree
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

In my book anyone that is willing to testify in front of congress about their own personal witnessed experiences holds a high level of authenticity.

Nick Begich stood in front of the EU and swore that HAARP was a death beam mind control device. Oliver North stood in front of Congress and swore all sorts of things he knew were lies. It happens all the time.

All ya got to do is stand in front of some guys and tell a story - it's not like they're the Justice League or something.

I don't believe we hit a plateau at all and that this is actually a much more darker topic than it appears at first glance.

1). We'd be foolish to think exponentially more advanced and new technologies have not been invented and/or discovered. I actually believe they have but are being kept secret by governments and the military industry.

2). We also have to take into consideration the explosive control corporations have taken on industry and science. Those brilliant inventors of centuries past still exist. However, in these times they are under corporate contracts and legal confidentiality agreements that give their employers the rights to their work and discoveries.

Also remember that A LOT of technology is suppressed due to greed. For instance, the conspiracies that suppress free energy technologies in favor of more profitable methods.

So it's a mess. But don't think for a second we hit a plateau. It's simply more of an issue of things being hidden, IMO.

Originally posted by Bedlam

Originally posted by franspeakfree
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

And the testimonials from the likes of Boylan,Corso,Lazaar and of course David Wilcox?

they all can't be lying can they?

In the case of Lazar and Corso, you bet, one's a fruitcake and the other was assisting in maintaining a secondary cover story on an old old government project.

Is the following an accurate paraphrase of your position:

Corso's assertion of 'reverse-engineering' circa 1950's-1980's technology from crashed extraterrestrials is a cover story for "the truth"?

And that "the truth" is that it is all forward-engineered by humans?

What then exactly needs to be "covered"? Please clarify.

Originally posted by AshleyD
Also remember that A LOT of technology is suppressed due to greed. For instance, the conspiracies that suppress free energy technologies in favor of more profitable methods.

"Free" energy technologies would be VERY VERY VERY VERY profitable. Even more profitable than Goldman Sachs.

One wonders however, whether those same hypothetical technologies could also be VERY dangerous.

Exploiting kinetic energy rapidly = cart
Exploiting kinetic energy rapidly = arrow, human extinction
Exploiting chemical energy rapidly = gasoline.
Exploiting chemical energy rapidly = TNT, building extinction
Exploiting nuclear energy rapidly = fission power plant
Exploiting nuclear energy rapidly = H-bomb, city extinction
Exploiting "zero-point/magick-dark-matter" energy rapidly = 'free energy' power plant
Exploiting "zero-point/magick-dark-matter" energy rapidly = 'free energy' bomb, civilization extinction

And what about environmental problems? Suppose it reduces the orbital angular momentum of the Earth? Talk about global warming.


[edit on 16-7-2010 by mbkennel]

Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
Let's take a look at the technological advancement of the human race:

For the first 145,000 to 195,000 years, nothing other than spreading the species around the globe, fire and hunting with sharpened sticks.

Then we seem to discover language, the wheel, building semipermanent shelters and agriculture.

For the next 4,000 years not much happens until we get to the nineteenth century and figure out how to harness steam power. Next comes the Industrial Revolution, electricity and the internal combustion engine.

Then comes what seems to be the biggie, we harness the power of the atom in the mid 1940's.

That's when it really takes off and for the next 40 to 45 years we scream along at warp speed and 'discover' more in that short period of time than had been discovered by our species during the rest of it's very long history. We go from the abacus to the PC in less than 100 years. But since the begining of the 90's, what have we really 'discovered'??? Sure we have fine tuned things that we previously in existance. Computers have more memory and can run faster, TV's are flatter, cell phones are smaller and 'smarter', but where are the new 'breakthroughs'?

Have we hit a plateau? Have we reverse engineered the Roswell wreck as much as we can? Are we just out of ideas and way past what our intelligence is capable of achieving?

Why did we hit this rapid growth of technology and why does it seem to be slowing down in the last twenty years?

yes, i have noticed that computer processing power has sort of stopped about the 3GHz range. And although IBM made a processor capable of 6GHz without a fancy dry ice cooling system, thats overclocked and it normally runs at about 4 GHz. And this particular processor is very expensive and only made for servers.