X-Message-Number: 20896
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 09:41:08 -0500
From: Daniel Crevier <>
Subject: Re: the apparent slowdown of progress

The explanation for the apparent slowdown in progress may be just that we
have made all the easy inventions. Now we are up against the hard stuff, and
it takes more time. The inventions described in mid-twentieth century
science fiction, like flying cars and weather control, which were expected
to materialize by 1980, were in fact much much harder to develop that we
thought at the time.

Consider the flying car (you know, the 'Back to the Future' gadget that
hovers silently by buildings and flies at hundreds of miles an hour).  There
is considerably more complexity to it than meets the eye. I suppose that, if
they'd really set their minds to it, Boeing or GE could long ago have
developped a car-like vehicle that just flies and lands vertically. I
surmise they didn't do it because if that's all it does, there is no money
in it. Such a gadget would be costlier to make than a helicopter (otherwise
helicopters would be flying cars already), and therefore be priced way out
of the ordinary person's budget. It would also be no easier to fly than a
helicopter,  which requires a highly paid professional pilot. And there is
the environmental issue: if you've ever been under a helicopter hovering
close to the ground, you couldn't help but to notice the downdraft: it
almost flattens you to the gound. A flying car would have to woosh down just
as much air, except it would be concentrated in an area the size of a car.
The darn thing would have a small hurricane under it. Finally, consider air
traffic control: present ATC can barely manage the thousands of airplanes in
our skies. Handling millions of flying cars would be exponentially harder.

It turns out that some recent developments, pertaining mostly to computer
technology, could resolve some of these problems in the not too distant
future. Artificial intelligence could enable the aircar to fly itself, thus
obviating the need for a pilot. Automation, with the possible help of
nanotechnology, could make it affordable. Enough computing power could get
around the traffic control issue. Alas, barring antigravity, I dont see any
way around the environmental problem, so aircars would have to take off and
land at designated sites, and stick to high altitudes elsewhere.

I think we are in the developmental equivalent of what psychologists call a
learning plateau: when you learn a new skill, periods of rapid progress tend
to alternate with episodes of constant performance. This doesn't mean that
learning doesn't go on during a plateau: it just doesn't manifest itself. We
may just be, slowly but surely, accumulating the knowledge that will allow
us to develop the inventions we've dreamed of. And when it happens, things
may go very fast.

Daniel Crevier

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