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Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

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Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#91

Post by pkroll »

saurik wrote: post #84
lcuff wrote: post #63

A favorite of mine from an earlier era: "That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." - Scientific American, Jan 2, 1909

Until the recent fundamental change of making cars electric instead of run on gas, have there really been many other "improvements of a radical nature" since 1909? If you go back and you look at cars from that period they not only look like modern cars, they are made by the same companies. They definitely are less powerful, and yet they have similar miles-per-gallon efficiencies as many larger cars from recent years.

Why is "of a radical nature" the important part here, and who gets to define it? Is fuel injection radical? Seatbelts? Crumple zones? GPS? In 1909 a car had 35HP and could peak at 53MPH, and was an ultimate death trap in an accident. Hundreds of improvements, some more radical than others, led to the cars of today being better in virtually every way, including subtle ways nobody knew mattered at the time (like not flinging people out the windshield in an accident).

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#92

Post by mrtweetyhack »

trilbyglens wrote: post #66
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #42

Tech progress is slowing down because all of the entrenched players are protecting their cash cows rather than innovating. I also think that the ability of these companies to capture practically all talented tech employees with inflated salaries has harmed the industry and diminished creativity. The fracturing of these massive conglomerates hopefully brings a cambrian explosion of new tech.

So much this. It's time to go Ma Bell on Google et. al.

[dead]

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#93

Post by jmoak3 »

grugagag wrote: post #17
brandall10 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, I take articles like this in mainstream media as a canary in the coalmine that something big is about to happen.

Some kind of technological shift that will make nowadays programming seem like chiseling furniture by axe. And we’re all just going to watch dumbfounded when things are going to get to complicated to understand by man.

Love this post for some similar thinking:

https://www.cold-takes.com/this-cant-go-on/

The world is a crazy place, could get crazier. Or not. I don't know.

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#95

Post by saurik »

pkroll wrote: post #91
saurik wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the recent fundamental change of making cars electric instead of run on gas, have there really been many other "improvements of a radical nature" since 1909? If you go back and you look at cars from that period they not only look like modern cars, they are made by the same companies. They definitely are less powerful, and yet they have similar miles-per-gallon efficiencies as many larger cars from recent years.

Why is "of a radical nature" the important part here, and who gets to define it? Is fuel injection radical? Seatbelts? Crumple zones? GPS? In 1909 a car had 35HP and could peak at 53MPH, and was an ultimate death trap in an accident. Hundreds of improvements, some more radical than others, led to the cars of today being better in virtually every way, including subtle ways nobody knew mattered at the time (like not fl…

That phrase is important because otherwise it wouldn't be there: it is load-bearing in that quotation.

All of the things you mentioned seem like the kind of incremental improvements you get over an additional hundred years of iteration and improvement... but I think it is non-sensical to try to sell that refinement as as impressive as the burst of improvement and innovation you saw as cars were first being defined.

In practice, I think a lot of people want every individual thing we do to follow some kind of exponential or even linear growth curve, but it seems much more likely that everything follows a sigmoid curve: an S-shapes trajectory wherein after a period of slow improvements the actual meat of a particular innovation are really experienced during a much faster and almost explosive growth followed by a return to slow incremental improvements to wring out the last benefits (but never just becomes fully flat).

The reason why, on a whole, we see such great improvements in our lives is then because of the combination of numerous S curves from new paradigms that overtake the old and provide an illusion of smooth and continual progress.

Like, I do think the premise of "tech progress" slowing down is strange: in the past few years alone we've seen disruptive "radical" paradigm shifts occurring that have altered how people live their lives to a pretty radical extent--though if you wanted to discount anything that was catalyzed by political and medical crises I might be forced to cede my stance? like, looking back in 40 years, this might all look incremental as I guess a lot of it is still speculative--but banal things like word processors or even laptops, we're clearly pretty far past the growth phase of the S-curve, and so all the things we already have aren't really improving much anymore and likely never will.

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#96

Post by mrburkins »

saurik wrote: post #84
lcuff wrote: post #63

A favorite of mine from an earlier era: "That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." - Scientific American, Jan 2, 1909

Until the recent fundamental change of making cars electric instead of run on gas, have there really been many other "improvements of a radical nature" since 1909? If you go back and you look at cars from that period they not only look like modern cars, they are made by the same companies. They definitely are less powerful, and yet they have similar miles-per-gallon efficiencies as many larger cars from recent years.

Yes, there have been massive improvements. so much so that many people take these as a given. Here’s a small few off the top of my head: - power steering (most people would struggle to drive a car without it) - anti lock breaks - suspension systems - fuel injection - multi gear transmissions - airbags

Now that I think about it I’m not sure I’d put the change from gas to electric as more revolutionary than a number of these seemingly mundane improvements.

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#97

Post by m463 »

mattejade wrote: post #83

As far as I'm concerned, the author of this article has not made a strong enough argument to draw such a bold conclusion. They point to patent research, showing that innovation in areas outside of computers and electronics has slowed down. Then admits "of course" computers and electronics aren't included in this. But computers and electronics dominate our world. If you exclude them and say "tech progress is slowing d…

I wonder if there's some other measure that can be made to mark the shift in technology.

For example, the processor transistor count.

Maybe (desktop) systems should be judged by total system transistor count, as GPUs have replaced processors with respect to transistors.

Or possibly, there should be a measure of transistors per person - many many people are carrying around phones with literally billions of dollars of development in them. Phones might arguably be the single most potent expression of technology on the planet. (I was going to say they serve one person, but arguably they might eually serve apple and advertising)

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#99

Post by effie »

lostlogin wrote: post #54
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why aren't we already aware of what these applications are since ML has already been well-funded and hyped for about a decade? Basically what is the inflection point? Obviously this is subjective, but underwhelmed would be a compliment for how I feel about ChatGPT. I've been hearing about these near-term breakthroughs for nearly a decade, even working in the industry. And yet, the real-world progress is nothing co…

I’m not the OP, and I’m a radiographer. Big things are happening with image processing in radiology. ML/Deep Learning or whatever the marketing people call it is what is being done behind the scenes in Siemens ‘Deep Resolve’ for MR systems. It’s utterly transformed what we do. It adds signal in an initial processing stage in the k-space domain (I’d estimate 25%-30%) then reconstructs the image. Then it doubles the re…

> Images are now obtained quicker and are higher resolution than ever. > I’m lucky to be able to compare imaging with and without the technology applied

Interesting, can you share some images, or a paper on this?

Btw I've tried some online image enhancers on a random painted image and it was not amazing, it did enhance some parts but not really by much. I'm sure specialized systems can do much better when the input image is made by the same source as the training set.

Re: Tech Progress Is Slowing Down

#100

Post by lostlogin »

effie wrote: post #99
lostlogin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not the OP, and I’m a radiographer. Big things are happening with image processing in radiology. ML/Deep Learning or whatever the marketing people call it is what is being done behind the scenes in Siemens ‘Deep Resolve’ for MR systems. It’s utterly transformed what we do. It adds signal in an initial processing stage in the k-space domain (I’d estimate 25%-30%) then reconstructs the image. Then it doubles the re…

> Images are now obtained quicker and are higher resolution than ever. > I’m lucky to be able to compare imaging with and without the technology applied Interesting, can you share some images, or a paper on this? Btw I've tried some online image enhancers on a random painted image and it was not amazing, it did enhance some parts but not really by much. I'm sure specialized systems can do much better when the input i…

I have got a few images that I used for a talk. These were an early iteration of the tech (Deep Resolve Sharp) and not what we use now (Deep Resolve Sharp, but also Deep Resolve Boost, which also adds signal in the k-space domain).

Siemens have a mass on on it, but I don’t believe the marking really conveys how good it is. They also talk up the speed side of things, while I have gone for a bit of speed but mainly higher resolution. I’m not even sure how to talk about resolution anymore. Is it the voxel size acquired, or what the end result produces? It’s smoke and mirrors but whatever you call it, the end result is great. We are also accelerating scans more than the Siemens examples (they seem to use 2 or 3x a lot. We go minimum 4, and as much as 8). We use higher resolution than most of their examples too.

https://marketing.webassets.siemens-healthineers.com/2f18155...

https://www.siemens-healthineers.com/magnetic-resonance-imag...

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