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Anon thinks about human history
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Technological progress is exponential.
I think that's true for only a planet with indefinite resources. We haven't really hit many caps yet, but I believe things will start to slow down within a lifetime.
We're also, in my view, hitting the limits of what certain technologies can do. Internal combustion engines, for example, are near the limit of what they can do as far as efficiency is concerned. We're also bumping into the limits as far as semiconductors are concerned.
There's also diminishing returns with trying to wring out the very last piece of efficiency from a system, so yes, I do think we're going to see a plateau in terms of technological progress, at least in some areas.
This is true for older technologies.
Like combustion as you said, we used it a lot and pretty much designed it the best we can with the materials we know and have. But there will be completely new technologies opening up, like maybe fusion. Or solar we know already since a while but made major improvements the last decade and will probably improve it even more.
I was more thinking about how we had this technology rush. I think it is mostly due to the use of fossil fuels and therefore "incredible cheap" energy which also led to humans reproduce a lot. (incredible cheap in quotation marks, because we will probably have to pay the real price which is environmental damage and a modified atmosphere)
When you have a world with 3 times (random number based on nothing) more people you also have 3 times more great artists, scientists, etc. Of course only, if society stays more or less the same. Imagine how many great works we could have if the majority of great minds wasn't preoccupied paying for food and a place to stay like in a hamster wheel.