BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?

Subject: BS: Has technology taken as far as it can?
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Jun 12 - 09:29 PM

I was looking over the BBC's "Future" section and I read TED at least weekly. I think I'm fairly "up" on technology.

But I wonder if we have come about as far as our current technology can take us. After all, access to the World Wide Web and the Internet are pretty common and you don't need wires. Wireless, in fact, is as common as wired connections once were.

New energy resources are being found, the most recent I know of being a few trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Alberta, and of course there's the Bakken Field in Eastern Montana/Western North Dakota. Wind turbines are more and more common, and I've seen any number of solar arrays around businesses and even homes.

Even the town I live in, here in Deep Blood Red Idaho, has curbside recycling.

Will there be a new breakthrough -- fusion power, perhaps? What are your thoughts?

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken as far as it can?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jun 12 - 10:13 PM

As long as concepts keep advancing, there will always be advances. Almost unmentioned the last few years has been the amazing advances in lighting... dimmable compact fluorescents, new LEDs that make almost 'eternal' flashlights possible....etc. We have barely scratched the surface of 'alternative energy', and botany & biology are becoming entwined with physics in interesting ways.

Are there new basic principles yet to be discovered? Maybe...but logic says that there must be a finite limit to everything ..except space & the universe. (How many circuits CAN be etched onto a silicon chip with laser? And can we REALLY put micro-machines into the body to assault cancer at the source?)

Drugs are increasing exponentially.... I wish they'd invent one to let me live another 100 years to get an idea how to answer the question....

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 09:47 AM

Our economic problems are not technological. They are psychological, economic and demographic. Conservation is our best hope for energy. But everyone still wants their SUV's. Carbon taxes are a possible solution the political will is not there. And.. we are getting old. Europe is getting old. China is getting old.

With all that said. We are living the the wealthiest time for humanity by far. We need to relax and enjoy that while going after the relatively smaller problems one at a time.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 12:24 PM

I'm working on a computer program to answer your question, Rap. I'll let you know when I can.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Bert
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 12:30 PM

Of course not; I don't have my flying car yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 12:32 PM

And I don't have my replicator yet. Nor my transporter.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 12:42 PM

I'll guarantee that the next big thing is going to be operating computers by thought. They already have it to some degree. They're also talking about a new computer technology that is laser operated although I'm not clear on how it works but it's supposed to instananeous fast. So imagine coupling a technology that's as fast as thought with a thought-activated operating system. That's what's coming.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: DMcG
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 12:51 PM

I'll guarantee that the next big thing is going to be operating computers by thought
Hmmm, a lot of people are going have to learn to think more clearly then. And letting your thoughts drift at work could prove highly embarrassing!

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 01:08 PM

When you think of the VAST increase in technology over the last century , it is scary to think what is going to happen over this century !

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 01:52 PM

"In his 1843 report to Congress, the then commissioner of the Patent Office, Henry L. Ellsworth, included the following comment: "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."

So, yeah. Sure.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 02:03 PM

I'm not saying that it will end, but that all we seem to be doing is sort of improving upon what we already have. Even laser-operated semiconductors and chips are simply replacing what we have with a bettered product. And "thought-operated" computers have been around for at least a decade.

Social networking has, I think, also about reached its peak.

So, where are we going? What's next?

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 02:55 PM

I think major new breakthroughs will arrive, certainly. But these salients occur when a whole field of supporting events occurs. For example, a lot of advances in precision tooling were needed before the internal combustion could become effective. We are currently turning out scores of advances in nano-construction, nano-materials, and smart materials. At the same time we are sniffing energetically around the regions of fusion and other means of energizing society in a renewable form.

I remind you of the director of the US PTO a few decades back who declaimed his job was a waste because everything worth inventing had already been invented.

Righty now we are spilling fortunes into the fields of information transfer and processing. But this is not the ultimate focus of technology, certainly.

SOlving water, solving energy, and solving interplanetary transport and off-planet colonization are surely among our next batch of critical fields.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 03:28 PM

Christian Mingle (see the TV advs.) will solve all social problems. Haven't seen a Muslim or Buddhist mingle yet-

I would like to see research into black holes. All surplus, from nuclear waste to excess population, could be tossed in and disappear forever.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 03:33 PM

I think the biggest and most effectual advances in the next few years will be in the micro economy. Self-produced, energy, locally produced food and other consumables, will help make the world better able to support so many people.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 03:46 PM

I don't know what the TV ads are, Q, but I think Christian Mingle is a terrific name for a fictional protagonist. Maybe a spy for the left penetrating the ranks of the Tea Party or the Bush Administration! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Jun 12 - 04:56 PM

War materiels and space vehicular needs have enabled a great many innovations. Soon, I hope, war needs will end and space travel has been mostly discontinued at the moment. What other field might bring innovations?

What about quantum physics- is that a wide open field?

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Musket
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 07:48 AM

I may not have a flying car just yet, but a hump backed bridge near us gives you all the illusion without a pilot's licence....

Technology has allowed the world to shrink and world leaders to realise they are a factor rather than The factor in people's understanding of the world around them.

Hence technology has to overcome more hurdles than before. Go back to the industrial revolution, and you will see the world and its Grandma embrace new technologies and the eruption that transformed the Western world. Perhaps now, resistance to embracing new technologies is far more widespread? Everything from refusing to join Facebook to protesting GM crops.

Yes, yes, I know all about the Luddites, but I'm sure somebody will enlighten us....

I have always tried to embrace technology, chiefly as I have tried working from a home base rather than an office as much as possible. Hence the first person for miles around, to my knowledge, to have a car phone, first to get a fax machine at home, using a phone for other than calling, lugging a brick around trade fairs, a watch you had to press buttons on just to tell you the blasted time.

Yep, that was this idiot.

Now? Not as tech savvy as I used to be, but looking around the study, I seem by stealth to be keeping Apple shares high. (iPhone, iPad, iMac, iwoodburner.......)

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:14 AM

So here's something to ponder. Will technology ever replace the: iDiot?

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:18 AM

See what iMean? Cant even find my cookie, let alone me marbles!

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:23 AM

No! Now the cookie monster has arrived and wont let me keep me own cookie to stay logged in. In a small way this proved my point about technology having been invented by iDiots.

Good night for now. Will try agin mebbee termorrer.

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Bobert
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:45 AM

The operative word in Rap's question is "us"... For most folks the answer is no but for others, myself included, I'll stand on the hand dealt me... I have no interest in going much further... I just don't want of need to be that connected... It's not in my DNA...

BTW, I'm not making a judgment on those who spend most of their time connected... If that's yer bag, fine...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 03:39 PM

Amos, Christian Mingle is an organization promoting contact between Christian singles. They claim to get 1000 new members every day.
http://www.christianmingle.com

TV advs. claim 2 million members. Will they be a factor in the next election? This type of organization seems to have developed along with the Tea Party, far right religious conservatives, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 03:57 PM

Well, thanks for the clarification, Q!

I still think he'd make a great undercover agent.

The name is Mingle...Christian Mingle. No martini, thanks. I'll take acai berry juice, stirred, not shaken." We could take each of Fleming's plots and re-cast it with right-wing villains. "M" could be the publisher of TruthOut or some such, with a secret operations room out back behind the presses where he dispatched secret agents to take out Karl Rove and suchlike missions... definitely has possibilities!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 05:36 PM

Rap, I just got the program done and HAL has responded. He says that people who live in Idaho often ask questions of that nature. He will not give you the answer unless you hook him up with a hot-looking Cray    computer he heard about in one of your defense research establishments. Sorry to bring bad news.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 05:45 PM

As long as we are dissatisfied enough to think and recognize problems we will keep coming up with answers. Maybe not to all problems right away but definitely to a lot of problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 06:28 PM

////I'll guarantee that the next big thing is going to be operating computers by thought////
//////// Hmmm, a lot of people are going have to learn to think more clearly then. And letting your thoughts drift at work could prove highly embarrassing!////////

It will profoundly change the way we think. And to answer another poster, we've had thought-operated computers way longer than a decade but it only came to light in the early 90s after the MILITARY released the technology to the public--meaning it was already obsolete by then. So imagine what there is right now. We have barely scratched the surface of thought-operation. One technology allows one to play a bank of synths without ever touching them. Users say it requires retraining the way the brain thinks. After a few hours of playing by mind, one feels an overwhelming euphoria--meaning it will be the new drug.

It's coming and it's already here. Soon it will be in every home, hanging on every belt and or sitting in every purse. We will be dependent on computers in ways scarcely conceivable now. Mark these words. It's coming.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 07:02 PM

I think that "brain wave" operated computers would be more accurate. So far they are only promising to those with nerve impairment.

The opposite technologies, Robotics and remote operation has a much more potential in the short term. Auto-piloted cars, battlefield and surveillance drones and robots are presently in use and growing fields.

It won't be long before most if not all dangerous and menial jobs in industrialized countries are done by automatons or kids with joysticks.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:43 PM

No. But it has taken me as far as I need to go, for the time being anyway.

Thought controlled shit? I just can't get with that. Not possible. My ex tried that with me. Didn't work.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 08:56 PM

It's hard to use thought control on someone who doesn't think, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 07:40 PM

I think the real question is "Have we taken technology as far as we can?", and the real answer is "Not by a country mile".

Human beings are a curious lot (inquisitive, not weird...well not all of 'em), and since every answer throws up a whole bunch of new questions, we're not going to stop looking for answers any time soon.

All that has ever been required for mankind to invent and discover, is the simple notion that a particular thing is possible.

Given that first premise, they will not stop until it has been made reality.

As for whether our innovative capacity is finite, look at how technological advance has accelerated over the last two hundred years, and more amazingly over the last forty.

A less specialised, more wholistic approach to scientific thought may be all that is required to enable the solution of that elusive "Warp Drive", and the subsequent expansion into the universe at large.

If I were to live to my 100th birthday, I would expect to have seen greater advances in that twenty nine years than we have seen in the last one hundred.

If we were to stop advancing now, we would simply stagnate.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 05:27 PM

"If I were to live to my 100th birthday, I would expect to have seen greater advances in that twenty nine years than we have seen in the last one hundred." Don T

I agree- would almost make it worthwhile to stick around that long. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Has technology taken us as far as it can?
From: gnu
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 07:12 PM

What will the think of next?

SOMEone had to, eh?