this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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To be fair, there’s only been 24 year’s of 21 century. Most things you gave listed happened at the end of the 20th century. But also the question is somewhat self negating - we won’t know what’s the greatest invention until we see it working great, but it takes much more than 24 years to take an invention from concept to consumption. For example computational biology is kicking off. Computer aided dna generation started in the past 24 years. But it’s so new few people think about it. Just like no one thought of internet as the greatest invention in the 70s… it was just too new
You're not wrong. But there are counter examples. I was going to use the example of the jet engine in my last answer as a true paradigm shifting development that had immediate impact. And in the mid-century period too! Or the first powered flight occurred in the first decade of the 20th century and had an immediate impact. The transistor and solid state electronics would be another example.
So let me flip it around and say we've had a quarter century without a major technological breakthrough. There's been progress, but it feels incremental. I spent a night with a physicist a few years ago who was arguing that progress is slowing because we are still relying on the exploitation of Newtonian physics. There are a few technologies that have made the leap to nuclear physics. But we've had the basics of quantum physics for a century now and haven't been able to exploit it in a useful fashion.
Good point! I wonder if we’re spoiled by computer invention though. Would be interesting to compare preWW2 invention rates and now. I suspect computers just made everything else easier, but now we’re back to hard problems
Agreed. These are genuinely difficult problems that aren't going to get solved by our current crop of silicon valley "geniuses".