One of the most important ones that a lot of people use every day are the huge advancements that have been made in creating modern chips. It might not be something new and exciting, but it actually involves very groundbreaking work and huge breakthroughs. Not just the crazy machines that ASML makes, thought to be breaking the laws of physics just years ago. But also advancements in manufacturing, being able to create super advanced 3D structures and large scale manufacturing at a very high level, yet with a surprising consistency in quality and low cost. Not just for ever bigger, more efficient and faster chips, but also things like MEMS at tiny sizes and low cost.
Often it’s taken for granted what we have. People saying stuff to the sentiment that this isn’t the future, everything is boring, we haven’t got flying cars or people living on Mars. But the fact we all got this ultra powerful computer, with a high resolution high framerate self emitting screen, no active cooling, a bunch of sensors, lots of memory and storage and hyper connected to all sorts of networks, all powered by a high capacity high power low wear battery should be mind blowing. And not just that, but it fits in our pockets and they are so cheap everyone has at least one. Just because we’ve chosen to spec our tech tree into the small stuff instead of the large stuff, doesn’t mean we haven’t come a long way.
I think people look at the past at new “inventions” and think that’s the way progress is. New revolutionary stuff. It’s why people often invest in crowd funding of obvious scam products. They want something that changes the game. In reality it’s a lot of little steps that create a big change over time. And imho this has always been the case. We always hear about the Wright brothers “inventing” the airplane. Like they had some magic sauce and thought of something nobody else thought of before. Then made it and bam the world was changed. In reality they didn’t invent anything, they developed it. They made prototypes and iterative refinements. And they were far from the only ones working on the exact same concept. If they didn’t finish first, someone else would have within the same time frame. But the romantic story of two American blokes with the right stuff changing the world all on their own just sounds good.
So let’s also celebrate the thousands of smaller breakthroughs that got us where we are today.
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 1 week ago
You’re right, I try to remind myself to marvel at the incredibly cool science we wield every single day.
But I’m also pained because I understand where the “boring future” folks come from too:
Where would we be if all this incredible technology was actually designed for humanity and not simply for profits at all cost? If optimizing for humanity was the target instead of exploiting it?
Smartphones, for instance. Small, networked computers! In your pocket! Wow! I’ve always wanted a pocket laptop! But they sure don’t feel like it. They’re designed to be content (mainly ad) delivery devices and data miners first, and useful machines second.
(There are some tiny niche actual-computer palmtops now which are pretty cool.)
I think that’s the part that gets people kinda depressive about modern science breakthroughs. The coolest stuff, the working folk don’t even get to tangibly feel much benefit from.
Discovery is locked behind paywall research journals and implementation is marketed in the interests of capital and used against us to make us work harder for longer hours for less pay.
What’s happening to space is a VERY stark illustration of all this. NASA unifying humanity and working globally on projects like the ISS was INSPIRING.
Now it’s all about private interests and their stupid desires, like space hotels for the elite.
I bet we’d marvel at technology designed for human beings, and not sheer exploitation.