Are we: Entering a dark age of innovation"

[Dante]

Entering a dark age of innovation

not my title

Being a skeptic by nature, I side with a "conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California." regarding technological innovation.

It's an unfashionable view. Most futurologists say technology is developing at exponential rates. Moore's law, for example, foresaw chip densities (for which read speed and memory capacity) doubling every 18 months. And the chip makers have lived up to its predictions. Building on this, the less well-known Kurzweil's law says that these faster, smarter chips are leading to even faster growth in the power of computers. Developments in genome sequencing and nanoscale machinery are racing ahead too, and internet connectivity and telecommunications bandwith are growing even faster than computer power, catalysing still further waves of innovation.

But Huebner...has long been struck by the fact that promised advances were not appearing as quickly as predicted. "I wondered if there was a reason for this," he says. "Perhaps there is a limit to what technology can achieve."

Entering a dark age of innovation - science-in-society - 02 July 2005 - New Scientist

http://accelerating.org/articles/InnovationHuebnerTFSC2005.pdf | A possible declining trend for worldwide innovation

 

[xsited1]

He's right. Since Moore's Law was mentioned, let me just say that the physics behind Semiconductors has changed little since the 1950s. I'm hoping there will be a massive explosion in technological innovation soon. Of course, another possibility is that WW-III might start and everything on the planet will be destroyed.

 

[antagon]

i think quite the opposite.

have you heard of junctionless transistors, platypus?

 

[Dante]

Great article on The Singularity Movement and Kurzweil

 

[Dante]

As if to bolster one side of this argument:

A Decade Later, Human Gene Map Yields Few New Cures
By NICHOLAS WADE 6 minutes ago
The primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments — remains largely elusive

A decade later...what were the early predictions?

 

[xsited1]

i think quite the opposite.

have you heard of junctionless transistors, platypus?

Sure, although the technology is anything but new. They might be able to squeeze a few more transistors into a given chip if the manufacturing process is optimized, but it's certainly not innovative. My hunch is that the high-doping levels will render is useless. We'll see. I'm watching the quantum transistors myself, and am anxious to see a replacement for the transistor entirely.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Dont worry scrote

Narrator: As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

 

[antagon]

i think quite the opposite.

have you heard of junctionless transistors, platypus?

Sure, although the technology is anything but new. They might be able to squeeze a few more transistors into a given chip if the manufacturing process is optimized, but it's certainly not innovative. My hunch is that the high-doping levels will render is useless. We'll see. I'm watching the quantum transistors myself, and am anxious to see a replacement for the transistor entirely.

that'll do it. it shouldn't be downplayed: the extent of multi-processor workarounds for the last couple year's stall in processor tech.