From: Dan Clemmensen (dgc@cox.rr.com)
Date: Tue Sep 04 2001 - 17:38:40 MDT
Charlie Stross wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 07:48:20PM -0700, Tim Maroney wrote:
>
>>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.
>>
>
> Not sure you're right, there.
>
> Consider the cellphone. The USA is somewhat behind the curve due to a
> crippling failure to standardize digital cellphones early on, but over
> here ownership has passed 60% of the population and is still rising. (You
> see pre-teen kids with cellphones so their parents can keep track of
> them when they're playing out, for example.)
>
Actually, the cell phone is a specific example of a more general
phenomenon: a great deal of recent innovation revolves around the
computer and the integrated circuit. These two related technologies
follow Moore's law. In the pre-computer era, identifiable innovations
were less dependent on a single driver, so there were many of them.
Since 1951, We have had the equivalent of a fundamental breakthrough
in computing and in semiconductors every two years, and each of these
breakthroughs is equivalent to e.g. the invention of the telephone
or the telegraph or the airplane in terms of societal impact.
Before you disagree, please consider the relative improvement in
electronics today versus the improvement in automotive or airplane
technology during the most rapid portions of their respective
developments. Basically I feel that the difference is that
inventors tend to exploit the areas of maximum potential or
innovation. Today, these areas are overwhelmingly driven
by electronics and computing, so most inventors are programmers
and EEs.
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