Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled?

Today, progress is defined almost entirely by consumer-driven, often banal improvements in information technology. The US economist Tyler Cowen, in his essay The Great Stagnation (2011), argues that, in the US at least, a technological plateau has been reached. Sure, our phones are great, but that’s not the same as being able to fly across the Atlantic in eight hours or eliminating smallpox. As the US technologist Peter Thiel once put it: ‘We wanted flying cars, we got 140 characters.’

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I think one of the biggest reasons technology does not advance is because the incentive isn't to make any big advances.

    You don't make money by advancing technology, you make money by releasing a product. Even if you CAN advance technology in huge quantities you are better off not doing that and instead releasing a product with minor improvements over the previous iteration.

    As the capitalists have advanced in their mindset they have optimised out all innovation, moving towards a strictly iterative mindset for everything. They have gotten better and better at doing this. They collectively spread information about how to run businesses among themselves and become more and more set in this way.

    Huge leaps are pursued by people who are either complete lunatics who genuinely want to see those huge leaps happen, or by governments.