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.’

  • StellarTabi [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    lol I grew up in the country where everything was as good as it'll ever be, except for a tiny amount of internet things, I mean modern CGI is barely better than 1993's Jurassic Park and they don't even use it to make good Sci-Fi!

    Then I get to see the picture of the Chinese train driver who started his career on some 1800s shit and is now driving a train more advanced than anything I've ever seen in the US.

    And now the internet itself has peaked, everything is switching gears from growth and innovation to rent-seeking.