Has every breathtaking innovation already been made?
 

This post in the "Ground Zero..." thread about nuke tests hit at something I've wondered about for some time.
Y'all can fact check my dates, etc. I want to share these raw observations off the top of my head:
I take advantage of most electronic advances I run across. I'm not a Luddite. However, I can't help think that nothing really breathtaking has been developed since the Apollo Program. Consider the roots of these once ground breaking devices:

• Commercial aviation peaked in 1958 when the Boeing 707 rolled out. It's not better now, just more efficient with turbo fans, digital flight controls and navigation. When the Wright Bros. flew under power in 1903 that was fantastic. 37 years later we had the P-51 Mustang (not yet with RR Merlin motor). It was/is perfection in design. Within four years we had turbojet fighters. Within ten years we had the F-100 that could break the sound barrier in level flight. Beyond that it's been incremental performance improvements at huge costs.

• Then there's satellites. Other than the electronic payloads they're no different from that ground breaking weather satellite series in the mid-60's.

• Our daily drivers...electronics aiding in design, safety, drivetrain control have been great, but incremental. EVs are something completely different but costs and environmental damages are just shifted forward and backward to give the illusion of efficiency.

• My new iPhone is an incremental improvement over my 6G.

Is there anything under development that will be revolutionary on a visceral level; or just incremental improvements on current products due to digital advances?

I think you're missing the power of AI working live feedback loops.

It is big, very very big.

It can do more to ruin society than the A bomb ever has.

Best to learn what is going on and what to do right now.

Hmmm. I think I disagree.

Biotech / genetics is in its infancy.
AI isn't (yet) aware.
We are still using mineral based computer chips as opposed to organic - like our brains.
We have not grown new limbs / organs very well.
Cloning is not widespread.
Fusion reactors are not yet working in any sort of scale.
We have not warped the space-time continuum.
My light-saber still looks like a crappy flashlight and won't cut butter.

And more...

LOL, exactly right.

That's the thing with these breathtaking inventions or innovations, is often, they are so hard to imagine that most folks have no idea until they come out.

I'm sure that stuff will pop up that really surprises everyone.

Worked metal whether it be copper, bronze, or iron/steel were probably shocking
Guns and/or explosives.
Electricity, especially to homes
penicillin
There's probably a whole slew of medical stuff, antibacterial, antiseptic for successful surgeries.
TV was probably a pretty big shock.
The "horseless carriage" (aka automobile/cars)
Air planes
Personal computers.
The Internet
The first pocket sized cell phones that were accessible would be similar.
Modern smart phones are more like an extension of PCs and/or the first pocket sized, accessible cell phones and/or the Internet since they really are a combination of the above.

I'm sure that stuff will pop up that most of us just don't imagine, and, I'm sure, there's a slew of stuff that I've left out of the list

Nothing has been completely new since the invention of the wheel, I think.

Everything since has been incremental. Some increments have been larger than others. It seems to me that all math, for example, comes from the initial idea of assigning a name to a quantity.

The James Webb telescope is an invention, designed from scratch, with many new breakthrough new technologies needed to make it work. There were 344 single points of failure that could have made it a total failure. Imagine, 344 individual things all had to go perfect while a million miles from Earth. And they did.

We will learn more than we can imagine, since we don't know what we don't yet know. Will any of it have a direct impact on day to day life, not likely. But the knowledge of how the universe works will unlock many new questions.

I suspect the next big mega thing that does affect everyone will be a small nuclear power plant that has almost no waste, and is totally safe, can't melt down Fukushima style and does not make bomb making materials. I hear Thorium - salt reactors are a possible answer.

I would say the smart phone and the internet were the last major world changing invention. Digital photography totally changed the photo industry. Commercial professional photography has been turned on it's head.

Probably asymptotically we are approaching the regime where we are only making incrementally small discoveries, but the reality is that there is a huge amount that we still do not know, so I am optimistic that new, big discoveries are out there.

I can't go into the details, but we have discovered a new behavior in a material in my little, tiny corner of the world that no one else has seen before. So...something completely new. Also, we are working on an experiment here at work to find evidence of dark matter. Hopefully this is accessible:

https://www.ornl.gov/news/physicists-confront-neutron-lifetime-puzzle

or, a brief discussion about how people were freaking out by the above experiment: :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfMP5BUdKpA

We do stuff every day here at work that has the potential to be the next big thing. So, yeah, I think the next big thing is still out there...

I agree.

I think the most breathtaking, and most horrifying, innovations are yet to come, and it will involve AI and virtual reality.

Virtual reality will at some point become essentially indistinguishable from real life. From a technical standpoint, but more importantly from a mental or emotional standpoint.

In other words, at some point people will be spending more time “online” in virtual worlds than in the real world. And, here’s the kicker, what’s going on in the “online world” will become more important than the real world.

Society will change drastically when that happens. For example, people living like that need very little. You could literally live in a 8x8 box, as long as there was a communal bathroom and a food source.

People like that could literally be farmed as voters. They’d vote for anyone that would promise to support and provide for their existence.

It sounds like science fiction, but I’ve seen it already happening. I know an able bodied 28 year old that still lives with his parents, is unemployed and spend essentially his entire existence in his room, online. This is a college educated, formerly normal kid. Govt lockdowns and the Internet did him in. He needs food and basic shelter in the real world, but other than that everything of importance to him is on the screen in front of him. It’s his life now. I don’t think he’s alone and in the future there will be more, not less, like him.

PPOT actually made me realize it many years ago. There have been people here who have posted basically from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep, 30-40 posts a day, 7 days a week, for years on end. And, very personally and emotionally involved. It always amazed me. That is, essentially, living in a virtual reality. And an incredible level of personal, emotional and psychological investment - all on a an extremely low tech commercial car parts chat board.

Imagine what will happen when the technology become 100x more advanced and engaging. Those “innovations” are coming and will change humanity in ways never seen and never even imagined.

That's because you don't have the latest/greatest.

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The 5 gallon bucket was a recent huge thing for under developed countries.

^^^As well as for me for storing bird seed and garage/bar toilet

um no.

we could invest in fundamental technology development better, and get much better returns from it than we are doing right now, but thats a PARF topic, not an OT one.

there is plenty of life changing technology happening right now, and for the foreseeable future.

I'm apprehensive about AI and other invisible advancements that can be snuck into our lives. I'm heartened by the thought that I'm way down the food chain from the big predators...at least for now.

Same for messing around with genetics...impressive stuff but will be weaponized like the above

My money is still on the engineers of every discipline. There's some amazing knowledge on here! Also reference my weird thread questioning the mass of things under water. It was learning-ful for me! Note I used "mass" not "weight". :)

50's were interesting for chemist bc they had all these new radioactive compounds and could harness the energy of atom splitting and ect. Physicist and quantum mechanics were still emerging. We had the tech crudely but didn't fully know how it all worked. Fundamental questions of influence of oxidation states of uranium and plutonium are still being asked today. Yet we can throw all that fallout upon the earth.


Genetics is an interesting aspect. Supply your dna to a private company that will sell it to drug companies. That could nefariously use the data to develop designer pathogens. Or more simply the fish in dirty water and vaccine vs fish in clean water argument.

When you're watering down research for woke agenda. The complete academic model is flawed and will implode for the west.

100% agree with this. There is a good book called Darknet, by Matt Mather. It's science fiction, but not far removed (IMO) from what we'll see in the not too distant future. AI will bring about things we can't even imagine. I've been reading a lot on the subject, and it doesn't give me the warm fuzzies for the future of humanity.

We’d better get AI under control. I don’t see how, though. If we can’t control the manufacture of viruses how can we control AI?