From: Tim Maroney (tim@maroney.org)
Date: Mon Sep 03 2001 - 20:48:20 MDT
on 9/3/01 5:45 PM, Anders Sandberg at asa@nada.kth.se wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 05:00:59PM -0700, Tim Maroney wrote:
>> Are there any quantitative arguments to support the argument that the
>> twentieth century was one of unparalleled technological acceleration?
>
> I think the place to look is Ray Kurzweil's website - he seems to be
> collecting exponential growth graphs :-)
>
> http://www.kurzweilai.net/
Thank you. There are some graphs and claims at this link:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html?m%3D1
But the input data is not cited, and the Y-axis is anything but clear to me
for the more sweeping graphs. Mass use of inventions, paradigm shift rate --
these are useful things to look at, but where are the inputs? There are no
references. There hasn't been a paradigm shift in physics, for instance,
since quantum physics was developed eighty years ago. Life expectancy, as
shown, is not exponential, but linear. Economic graphs like education and
manufacturing seem rather beside the point, as do graphs of recently
invented technologies such as "growth in e-commerce", "resolution of
noninvasive brain scanning devices," "internet backbone bandwidth," and "dna
sequencing cost." If all these technology graphs reach their maxima
tomorrow, that does not equal any kind of social revolution. It just means
DNA can be sequenced cheaply, lots of things can be bought online (even
though people still prefer physical shops), bandwidth is dirt cheap, and
researchers can do better brain research. Shall I order the party hats now?
There needs to be some measure of social impact of technology, and I'm not
seeing that. Looking back at my life, which is just short of forty years
long, I feel that the only major invention which has caused anything like a
social revolution is the personal computer. Other than that, I'm still in
the world of cars, running water, electric lights, audio playback,
airplanes, atom bombs, and television that my parents inhabited. My
television is better -- I just watched the "Paths of Glory" DVD on my laptop
in the bathtub -- but it's not basically different. Ditto my CD player
compared to a phonograph. My car has more features but it's still basically
just a car.
If anything, the last fifty years seem like something of a lull for
technologically-induced social revolution. There were more socially
important things invented and deployed in the seventy-five years before 1951
than in the fifty years after.
> I think one can look at aggregate values, like energy production per
> capita, or the efficiency of various motors/generators to get an
> estimate of overall changes.
I also don't think (as I mentioned with respect to Moore's Law and
population growth) that isolated exponential graphs demonstrate much. Has
anyone done graphs of miles traveled per capita per year in the first few
decades after the train was deployed, for instance, or casualties per
bowman-hour in the century after the invention of the longbow? I wonder if
they are any less exponential. Without some such control data, it seems
difficult to support the hypothesis that there is something special about
today's technological advances compared to those of previous centuries.
There would need to be some metric of social significance, and again, I'm
just not seeing that. All I see on that point is hand-waving. The number of
patents issued is going up, therefore we will all be supermen by 2030. Huh?
There may be more research and scientific advance going on, but most of it
is at the fringes of society, and what progress it contributes to people's
lives seems incremental rather than revolutionary, with a very small number
of exceptions like the PC.
The cancer survival rate creeps up but there's no cure for cancer. Contra
the predictions of science fiction writers, we're not off for weekend jaunts
to the moon, although getting to Sri Lanka is cheaper and faster than it
was. AI seems as far away as ever. Voice recognition is here, and what do
you know, it doesn't seem all that terribly important after all. There's no
power too cheap to meter. And so on. None of these predicted revolutions
have happened, but we're being asked to swallow another one.
>> Every one of the last eight centuries at least has seen
>> major technological changes from the previous century.
> Which is what you would see if there was an acceleration - every time is
> the fastest yet. If it was slowing, we would see more advances in the
> past and a clearer "golden age".
Right. Make no mistake, I think there have been many centuries of
technological revolution, and I'm sure we're poised for more. What I don't
get is the assertion that the technological revolutions we're about to see
have some singular transcendental quality not possessed by any of the
revolutions of the past. Humans have been reinventing themselves since there
have been humans.
> In general, I think you are right to ask for evidence. Far too many
> common assumptions people believe are based on very rickety evidence.
Indeed. I'm a skeptic by nature. My intuition tells me there may be
something to this idea of accelerating technological progress, but when I
sit down and try to figure out how to justify it, I'm not seeing much of a
solid basis. Since there are people here who are almost religiously
dedicated to the concept, I thought I'd see if any of them could do better.
-- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org
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