Does Anyone Wonder How We Have Came So Far So Quickly?

Does anyone else wonder how man has come so far so quickly? Like how 10 years ago a cell phone was the size of a toaster and now they can fit any where like in a jacket or they are about a thick as a DVD movie case. Or how we are able to make computers so fast and smart when 5 years ago we could barley store one song on a hard drive. I would like to know if any of you had any theories on this.




Mod Edit: Title only.

[edit on 21-6-2006 by UM_Gazz]

I think that part of technology is the easy part of explaining. The odd part is when we first started thinking this way. Seemed to happen all of a sudden around 10,000 years
ago, but the last 100 years have been great to be alive.

Its quite simple really, Technology fuels Technology.
Its a steady accelleration.

A good analogy is,
you use rocks to make a crude cutting device...
You use that to cut and spark a fire.
You use the fire to melt the ore to make crude metals.
You use the metals to build a furnace.
You use the furnace to create steel.
You use steel to create precision instruments.
You use precision instruments to make machines...
It goes on and on...

the better technology gets, the easier it is to make technology better.

It will only get faster.

Kinda scary and exciting when you step back and look at it all.

[edit on 20-6-2006 by johnsky]

What Johnsky said. Using tools to make better tools in an ever accelerating trend. Some Hypothesize that this trend could reach a point where a Technological Singularity forms, technology after that hypothetical point become harder and harder to forecast as the rate with which we're inventing and innovating will become so fast, that literally every time period will undergo a doubling in total capabilites while cutting the time to make that doubling occur, in half.



[edit on 20-6-2006 by sardion2000]

its just extreme exponential growth.

I was basically told in a college class that mankind's knowledge is growing exponentially. That means discoveries etc. are not increasing in a steady straight line but increasing at a faster and faster rate. Many of the technologies you see coming out in consumer products may already be a bit behind the times of what the researchers are working on in my opinion. I believe big industry has things worked out so that they have time to build or rebuild the manufacturing plants and make a profit on a given technology before they have to revamp it for the next generation of technology.

Yeah it's like a chain reaction. You seee we got hold of alien corpses and raped their enormous brains until they spilled the secret behind technodiscjockeys then the music evolution went up with a bang.
It's all pretty simple really. When you think about it.

I believe big industry has things worked out so that they have time to build or rebuild the manufacturing plants and make a profit on a given technology before they have to revamp it for the next generation of technology.

That's the way the business model is right now, but there is a disruptive technology currently in development that could disrupt the whole shebang and render entire companies bankrupt in the process.

The technology is widely in use today and is in just about every home office out there. The tech I'm refering too is called Ink Jet technology.

www.softmachines.org...

Here is a blog post with a quick summary of a conference called "Printing of Functional Materials."

If this technology gets to the point of being able to print intricate and extremely cheap flexible silicon chips, it would render many hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into Chip fabs all across the world obsolete. It may not do so in the imminent future, but from the looks of things, they are getting close to some of their goals.

Inkjet technology is already revolutionizing the Rapid Prototyping industry. I guess it actually created it, on second thought.

[edit on 20-6-2006 by sardion2000]

I may not know exactly how we began a rapid technology advancement in the last century, but I do remember my first computer in 1997, which was a sleek 650mghz! don't remember it's graphic card, I assume an 8 or 16 maybe.. man if I still had a 650mghz I probably would have thrown my computer out the window in two seconds. My parents thought they just might see flying cars in their days, like the jetsons, so maybe if I am lucky when im going through a midlife crisis I will be able to go out and buy a flying car!

Heh, flying cars eh?
Well, dont expect American Antigravity to help with that, theyre still trying to pass off crude air purifiers (ionizers) as anti-gravity devices. heh.

Will we hit a point at which we cannot advance technology any faster? I doubt it.
We may hit a point where our own minds wont be able to produce that fast, but technology will amend that aswell.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
but I do remember my first computer in 1997, which was a sleek 650mghz! don't remember it's graphic card, I assume an 8 or 16 maybe..

Wow your lucky I think I had a 450mghz, lol now I have a 3.1 ghz...So in less than ten years we have seen a HUGE advancement in computers. But I think that eventually we will come to a block where our minds can't conceivably figure out "more stuff". But I figure we are a couple million years away from that

If we're lucky and don't annihilate ourselves first, what if our technology eventually allowed us to shed our feeble bodies and become non-material, energetic forms of pure thought/consciousness. Or maybe non-material forms of pure collective consciousness (millions of individual minds combined into a single, superintelligent, invisible conscious force). Invisible entities capable of creating miraculous and magical material objects and devices out of seemingly nowhere by pure thought alone.

Maybe that's taking it a little far, but then again, I don't know ...

Imagine how far we would be if mankinds development wasn't halted dead in its tracks for nearly 1800 years because of religion.

Add 10 years or so to each of those opening remarks and it'd be a bit more accurate. 10 years ago there were cellphones that fit in your pocket and 5 years ago a person could purchase their own terabyte drive.

We haven't advanced that far.

Complexity has increased, yes, but nothing really paradigm shifting has come of it. The transistor was the last major leap forward, and ever since then the transistor has remained functionally the same. Our use of it has only grown.

What will be the big difference 5 years from now? Not much... probably wont see many CRTs left... cellphones will have realtime video communication capability... hybrid vehicles will have a greater dominance in the market. People will still be complete idiots, driving in their hybrids yacking on their videophones watching movies on their in-dash LCDs. See... if you really want to see some technological improvements, gotta get rid of the people. They just slow things down.

Does Any One Wander How We Have Came So Far So Quickly?


Elementary, my dear Watson. When aliens crashed in Roswell in 1947 we immediatedly started reverse engineering what we found. They had a Palm Pilot, now so do we. Microwaves, computers, etc. We stole it from "them"
Reverse engineering.

Much of the technology eases the discovery of new technologies. Think of how much the discovery and application of electricity has quickened the rate of further discoveries.

In addition, it seems like invention has become the mother of necessity as opposed to necessity being the mother of invention. My buddies didn't need a cell phone until it was invented.

I think we are quickly approaching a time where the challenge will be to control and/or manage our need for discovery. We are not maturing nearly as fast as technological development is maturing. We are loosing site of our own human maturity in the race to the next discovery.

High technology is great, but at what cost.

just a smaller example look at how fast china is growing in terms of industry. this is one reason they do not want 3rd world countries to get heavy into industry because it enhances countries and gives them a boost.

the domino effect is very effective

Technology isn't shunned upon anymore. Don't forget we were in the dark for hundreds of years...now we've got millions of people working on science rather than a select few.

Originally posted by nightwatchers
I would like to know if any of you had any theories on this.

We're smart. At least some of us. And we're very competitive. We made our fastest progress as soon as we were able to get rid of the old notion that the king was holy and necessary and owned everything, and that individuals were just the property of some royal family. Everthing else fell right into place after that.

Personally i think a lot of technology will be (or maybe already has been) suppressed for fear of wrong usage, people where experimenting with (and according to what u believe have already achieved via the philadelphia experiment) invisibility and teleportation a long time ago!! Tesla supposedly had sound theories on free energy and other world changing inventions 100's(?) of years ago, and didnt einstein destroy some theories and ideas saying the world simply isnt ready for them?

What will be possible in 1000 years is frightening imo! Pocket size cloaking devices? Supermarket home cloning kits? Maybe even a smoke alarm that doesnt go off when you cook sausages!!!!