X-Message-Number: 20918
From: 
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 13:21:52 EST
Subject: Re:  the apparent slowdown of progress

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> From: Daniel Crevier <>
> 
> The explanation for the apparent slowdown in progress may be just that we
> have made all the easy inventions.

I think an invention seems simple in retrospect but it was not when it was 
done.
The problem is not to invent, it is to turn ideas into reality. There are 
plenty of ideas now but social order (laws, political choices, banker mind, 
lack of engineers..) hinder the real work. 

 The inventions described in mid-twentieth century
> science fiction, like flying cars and weather control, which were expected
> to materialize by 1980, were in fact much much harder to develop that we
> thought at the time.
> Consider the flying car (you know, the 'Back to the Future' gadget that
> hovers silently by buildings and flies at hundreds of miles an hour).

I disagree, Moller cars has built such a flying car. Computer and GPS could 
pilot it with current technology. The problem is not its theoretical 
possibility or even can we do it now, it is a social problem.


I think we are in the developmental equivalent of what psychologists call a> 
> learning plateau: when you learn a new skill, periods of rapid progress 
> tend
> to alternate with episodes of constant performance. This doesn't mean that
> learning doesn't go on during a plateau: it just doesn't manifest.

I fear we are at the start of such an indefinite plateau, as was the ancien 
chinese imperial system where travel beyond the boundaries was punished by a 
death sentence. We must act before we are trapped in such a system.

Here, someone has argued that, may be, progress was moving the other side of 
the Pacific rime. I am not so sure. After WII, Japan was a destroyed country, 
but more, people here found that their civilisation was not "up to the job". 
So they don't build back the ancien technical and social order as was the 
case in Europe, they put their objective to get a parity with the US level. 
There was a rapid progress, when the objective was more or less completed, 
progress stopped. China is now launched on the same track: Rapid progress to 
get technological and economic parity with US level. India would be happy to 
remain a poor large country, but can't let the regional power going to china, 
so it must take the same course. Somewhere in the middle of that century, 
Chindia will meet this objective (if the AIDS epidemic don't destroy it). 
This is no proof that it will go further.

Seen from Europe, progress seems too being moving Eastward.  The European 
Union is expanding on its East border, today with Poland, next with Ukrainian 
federation, may be someday with Russia (Europe up to Vladivostok). Only 
Africa and South America would be out. US would be a dwarf against any of 
these giants, all with similar technological level. May be it will expand 
into an all american single nation from Anchorage to Ushuaia... You may think 
this is a form of progress, but it is not technological progress and if this 
one is sacrificed, it will not start again because there will be no more 
scientists and engineers to fuel it. The end of the plateau would be a down 
curve.

My conclusion is that we must learn from Mr. Bin Laden: If the world don't 
move the way you want, do everything yourself to move the world. If you want 
religious obscurantism, it is simple: bomb anything and anybody with 
technological content. If you want more science and technology, start to bomb 
anybody with knowledges and science education.

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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