X-Message-Number: 20835
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: Blind Faith
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 11:55:18 -0000

> From: 
> > From: Stephen Ritger <>
> >
> > If you believe that there has been "nothing really new"
> > invented/discovered over the last 30-40 years, then you must have been
> > living in a cave in Afghanistan or something.  The advances in medical
> > science alone would fill a library!
>
> TV, VCR, Computers, solid state electronics, cars, air planes including
jets,
> satellite launchers, concrete, plastics, antibiotics, sulfamids, vaccines,
> nature of DNA structure, all that predate your 30 - 40 time frame. Yes,
today
> computers are smaller, more powerfull, air travel more common and
cheaper,...
> This is quantitative technological adjustments, not fundamental progress.

Regretfully, this is correct. It is even correct as far as moletronics is
concerned (an old name for something very like nanotechnology) Anyone who
has not already done so is recommended to read
http://www.alecharleyreeves.com and speed read some of his writings, mainly
from the 1960s. There are some mistakes, but our world of today is
described. It was merely a matter of engineering, not physics, to use
integrated circuits to make mobile telephones, optical fibre telephone
systems etc. Economics and regulation came into it as well -- the PC
revolution was in part due to the fact that the parts were both cheap and
available to anyone with the ability to put them together in the right
order. Also the industry was able to survive and indeed thrive on decades of
amazing deflation. A modern PC costs about the same in money terms as a 4
function calculator in the mid 1960s. Then in money terms two calculators =
one cheap new car. Now a cheap new car = about 16 entry level PCs.
Deregulation of telephony "instruments" helped as well. Had it been
necessary to pass complicated courses and get "prescriptions" for
components, the world of electronics would have been very different -- we'd
probably still have strowger dial telephones, Bakelite disk recordings and
so on.

However physics isn't static, and science seems to move from the simple to
the complex until some new theory simplifies everything and the cycle
continues. Maybe the cosmological observations that are still being done by
NASA will provide the information that will enable a substantial change in
the understanding of reality.

I would like to recommend that Yvan and others similar interested read the
Yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fabric-of-Reality
which as its name suggests discusses these matters. I am sure that Yvan may
get some interesting replies if he posts some of his ideas here.

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, Holistics, de Rivaz genealogy,
Nomad .. and more

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