X-Message-Number: 32963
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:22:42 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <>
Subject: Technological progress
References: <>

> Subject: Technological Progress
> From: Brian Wowk <>
> 
> In Cryomsg 32953 Mark Plus wrote:
> 
> > Brian Wowk endorses Scott Locklin's observations about the
> > failure of technological progress in Cryonet #32937:  
> 
> > http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32937  
> 
>      I did not say that technological progress had "failed."  I
> simply agreed that the lives of Americans changed less in the past
> 50 years than they did during the 50 years before that.

Really? Were we debating gay marriage on the internet in 1960? Would
anyone have believed you if you had told them we would be doing that?

I'd argue that the lives of Americans have changed radically in the
last 50 years. The problem is, as with fish not noticing water, it is
difficult for most people to notice changes when they're marching
along with them.

I regularly attend a seminar by video conference these days. The way I
do this is that one of the participants in the seminar gets out their
laptop and video chats me over the wireless in the conference room the
seminar meets in. I'm generally in another city, also on a laptop
connected by wireless. People send me copies of the slides via the net
at the last moment so I can follow along. This is all done with
equipment that is not merely ordinary but actually cheap.

Think nothing has changed in medicine? A couple of years ago, I had a
set of symptoms that lead my doctor to worry about the blood flow in
my brain. I went to a lab, got an MRI done of my head, and went away
on my business. In 1960, the amount of unpleasant radiological
equipment, including contrast agents, that would have been needed to
do this would have made it essentially impossible. Today it is
actually cheap and simple. My ophthalmologist routinely checks the
surface topography of my eye using a computerized optical instrument
that would have been impossible to contemplate in 1960. The deaths
in Iraq among soldiers would have been as high or higher than in
Vietnam were it not for astonishing improvements in trauma medicine
that have saved something like 90% of the people who would have
otherwise died 40 years ago. 90% is astonishing. We can even reattach
severed limbs. Lets not even discuss the radical transformation of
transplants, which were very difficult and generally resulted in
organ rejection before the development of appropriate drugs -- they
now happen orders of magnitude more often.

I could go on and on.

People just have no sense of how much everything has changed.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32963