WI Technology never advances?

[Gurgeh]

What if by act of ROB, Humanitys technological level will never evolve beyond what we have for the next 500 years? What woould happen?

[khursed]

We'll run out of oil, then coal, then gas, depending, and we'll find that alternative fuel are really hard to come by and replace all that fossil fuel we love to use.

Then we'll also have a huge cleanup of the planet to do with limited means.

[Darth Wong]

What if by act of ROB, Humanitys technological level will never evolve beyond what we have for the next 500 years? What woould happen?

We already have the technology necessary to solve many of our problems. The main stumbling block is the will, not the technology.

Look at oil, for example. We're running out of it, or at least cheap sources of it, and even though supplies are limited, people are not only looking the other way, they're actually buying gigantic luxury vehicles which dwarf the large vehicles of my childhood. They are thumbing their noses at the problem. That is a lack of will to solve the problem, to say the least.

And then there's contraception: a technology which can handily solve many problems in the developing world. But can we use it to solve those problems? Of course not. George W. Bush withdrew all US support for the UN family planning initiative and the US is now trying to turn "contraception" into a bad word, as if it is a form of tyranny to support it. Once again, the technology is not the problem: the will is.

In any case, if you were to project a sci-fi future with our technology frozen at today's levels, the appearance of that future would depend mostly on social and political factors, not technological ones.

[Channel72]

The effects on computing would be interesting. We'd never get mass-produced quantum computers, and so many cryptographic algorithms would be safe for the next 500 years.

Also, without any serious technological innovation, corporations will have to dump everything into marketing, instead of R & D, meaning that the amount of bullshit spewed by marketing/PR firms will increase even beyond what we have today (if such a thing could be possible.) Technology start-ups will also be limited to coming up with small products for niche markets, rather than coming up with anything truly new or innovative. This will probably accelerate the already existing trend of corporate conglomeration.

[Sarevok]

Also, without any serious technological innovation, corporations will have to dump everything into marketing, instead of R & D, meaning that the amount of bullshit spewed by marketing/PR firms will increase exponentially.

It is not already ? Especially in areas of consumer electronics in general and IT and software in particular ? A lot of goods and services sold to us are done through purely power of marketing rather than creating a fundamental innovation. What is cool today is obsolete tommorow and blogger pundits make us wonder how we ever survived 2 years ago without social networking site x or cloud based storage y or fancy device Z.

[Channel72]

Yeah... I actually just edited my post a bit to reword that.

[Sarevok]

Ah ok cool. Did not mean to nitpick just point out how the world is starting to turn out like that in some ways.

[Darth Wong]

Looking again at social factors, I can imagine that after an extended period of no real innovation, the patent system would lose public support (since I'm sure corporations would still be getting patents even if they aren't really inventing anything; we all know it happens all the time already). Maybe not quickly enough, but it would be bound to happen eventually.

The destruction of the patent system would have interesting effects. For one thing, pharmaceutical products would become much cheaper, because nobody would be able to use patents to prevent generic copies and they wouldn't be able to convince the public that their prices are caused by "R&D costs" (which isn't even true today since they spend much more on marketing than R&D, but people buy into the argument anyway). Without claims of superior technology to fall back on, product manufacturers would have to rely entirely on style and reputation for quality to sell their products.

One really interesting side-effect would be the loss of the superpowers' military dominance. Right now, the military superpowers (and let's face it, there's really only one at the moment) maintain their technological edge by constantly innovating and coming out with newer and better equipment. Their poorly funded competitors simply cannot keep up. But if technological advancement stopped, the other countries would eventually catch up, even if it takes a century.

We have lived in a world which is militarily dominated by superpowers for so long that it's hard to imagine anything else, although it would be an interesting exercise to try.

[Sarevok]

Looking again at social factors, I can imagine that after an extended period of no real innovation, the patent system would lose public support (since I'm sure corporations would still be getting patents even if they aren't really inventing anything; we all know it happens all the time already). Maybe not quickly enough, but it would be bound to happen eventually.

I am not so sure about that. Intellectual property laws today are more about making maximum possible amount of money rather than compensating the innovators. Look at creative media - men like Tolkien and Disney are long dead but that does not prevent others from making billions mooching off their names and their works.Whats to say the same won't happen with industrial and scientific patents ? Human greed is a terrible thing and if there is money to be made someone will lawyer their way into making some.

One really interesting side-effect would be the loss of the superpowers' military dominance. Right now, the military superpowers (and let's face it, there's really only one at the moment) maintain their technological edge by constantly innovating and coming out with newer and better equipment. Their poorly funded competitors simply cannot keep up. But if technological advancement stopped, the other countries would eventually catch up, even if it takes a century.

I think the military situation would look like the Star Wars stories. Smaller planets can make blasters or light armor vehicles and even starfighters and small warships. But it is the big multi system polities like the Empire than can afford and has infrastructure to build star destroyer fleets and death stars. So in real world I guess small countries could eventually make guns and tanks and light attack aircraft equal in quality to America. I mean technically a lot of small countries already do that but they generally assemble knockoffs/licensed production from imported parts or build stuff that is generations old.

We have lived in a world which is militarily dominated by superpowers for so long that it's hard to imagine anything else, although it would be an interesting exercise to try.

Drawing the Star Wars analogy further I think smaller countries would be able to field troops and vehicles of same quality as Nato. They may even win at local conflicts through quality alone rather than home ground advantage. But the big carrier fleets or nuclear subs would still belong to likes of America, Russia or China.

[Darth Wong]

Looking again at social factors, I can imagine that after an extended period of no real innovation, the patent system would lose public support (since I'm sure corporations would still be getting patents even if they aren't really inventing anything; we all know it happens all the time already). Maybe not quickly enough, but it would be bound to happen eventually.

I am not so sure about that. Intellectual property laws today are more about making maximum possible amount of money rather than compensating the innovators. Look at creative media - men like Tolkien and Disney are long dead but that does not prevent others from making billions mooching off their names and their works.Whats to say the same won't happen with industrial and scientific patents ? Human greed is a terrible thing and if there is money to be made someone will lawyer their way into making some.

People also love cheap products too, though. The generic drug import business from Canada made plenty of money over the years, and as the rationale for supporting pharma company profits dries up, I think voters would lose patience with the bullshit.

One really interesting side-effect would be the loss of the superpowers' military dominance. Right now, the military superpowers (and let's face it, there's really only one at the moment) maintain their technological edge by constantly innovating and coming out with newer and better equipment. Their poorly funded competitors simply cannot keep up. But if technological advancement stopped, the other countries would eventually catch up, even if it takes a century.

I think the military situation would look like the Star Wars stories. Smaller planets can make blasters or light armor vehicles and even starfighters and small warships. But it is the big multi system polities like the Empire than can afford and has infrastructure to build star destroyer fleets and death stars. So in real world I guess small countries could eventually make guns and tanks and light attack aircraft equal in quality to America. I mean technically a lot of small countries already do that but they generally assemble knockoffs/licensed production from imported parts or build stuff that is generations old.

Yes, that makes sense. Apart from technology, there is also enormous cost of actually producing and maintaining such weapon systems.

We have lived in a world which is militarily dominated by superpowers for so long that it's hard to imagine anything else, although it would be an interesting exercise to try.

Drawing the Star Wars analogy further I think smaller countries would be able to field troops and vehicles of same quality as Nato. They may even win at local conflicts through quality alone rather than home ground advantage. But the big carrier fleets or nuclear subs would still belong to likes of America, Russia or China.

What if it becomes Drone War? Carrier fleets are expensive, but drones are much cheaper, and if other countries eventually catch up to America's drone technology, they have a means of fielding (relatively) cheap and effective weapon systems with long-range strike capability. No longer do they have to sit in impotent rage with no ability to strike back at faraway enemies apart from terrorism.

[Guardsman Bass]

Economic growth would continue for a while, as poorer, less-advanced countries caught up in terms of technology adoption, education, and general mobilization of the populace. Eventually, though, it would grind to a halt without new technology driving either productivity gains or new businesses to disrupt older ones. If that happens before population growth tapers off we're in for some social instability and pain, since new people would just make us poorer on average.

It's hard to say, though. There may be existing technologies that either go under-used today, or which could be used very creatively in the advent of the lack of "new" technology appearing.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder if we would see the power of religion grow. Right now, the only thing that keeps the average undereducated moron from rejecting science completely (instead of holding it at arms length as he does now) is his vague half-comprehension that it has something to do with technological progress. If there was no more technological progress, I could see a vast chunk of the population declaring that there's no point to science at all.

[Blayne]

Are we allowed in this hypothetical to innovate upon already made discoveries/inventions? Make something that exists more efficient? Efficiency and scales of economics seems to be the biggest problem for a lot of technologies.

[Darth Wong]

Are we allowed in this hypothetical to innovate upon already made discoveries/inventions? Make something that exists more efficient? Efficiency and scales of economics seems to be the biggest problem for a lot of technologies.

So much of technological innovation is just finding ways to make things more efficient. It seems like that would be a huge loophole.

[lPeregrine]

If there was no more technological progress, I could see a vast chunk of the population declaring that there's no point to science at all.

But would they really be wrong? Science is valuable as a process, not just a list of facts. If you take away the scientific method*, you're left with something that looks a lot like religion: a collection of indisputable truths, but no real understanding of where they came from, or how to explore beyond them. Whether or not scientists openly declare "god did it", the end result (especially on a scale of hundreds of years) would probably be that science becomes just another religion, and one that most people will abandon in favor of existing religions.

Of course that's assuming that the order isn't switched. It's also fairly plausible that the majority of the population deciding that there's no point to science would cause the lack of technological process by destroying support for science and engineering to the point that doing anything more than a bare minimum of preserving existing knowledge becomes impossible.


*It's hard to imagine a remotely plausible scenario where technology can't advance, but science still works and learns new things about the world.

[Simon_Jester]

I have that same question- what does "no technological advance" mean exactly?

Steel and wood are not new. Tools are not a new idea. Can I make a new hand tool of steel and wood, that is new and unique? It's a new technology, in that it does something different. But it's not new in the sense of 'holy shit revolutionary breakthrough!'

Does the entire act of design become impossible? Can I design a new car engine, that uses all the same parts as existing engines but is subtly different because I put them together differently or use different sizes or materials?

Can I debug problems with an existing machine that exist because I haven't got all the details worked out yet?

I think the military situation would look like the Star Wars stories. Smaller planets can make blasters or light armor vehicles and even starfighters and small warships. But it is the big multi system polities like the Empire than can afford and has infrastructure to build star destroyer fleets and death stars. So in real world I guess small countries could eventually make guns and tanks and light attack aircraft equal in quality to America. I mean technically a lot of small countries already do that but they generally assemble knockoffs/licensed production from imported parts or build stuff that is generations old.

The trick is that there'd be an ongoing export market for military hardware- it would trickle down. Old planes get sold off to other countries; license production happens too. Only here, if I buy a fighter jet you've been using for 20 years, its weapons and sensors are still as good as the new plane you buy to replace it.

It's sort of like cars: buying used is always cheaper than buying new, and almost as good if you aren't worried about the car breaking down on you in a hurry. So most of the cars on the road are several years old, and the only real limit is when they start to break down from old age. But old cars in good condition aren't jalopies compared to the new ones, because they are almost as good in most ways that matter; car technology hasn't changed that much in 15-20 years.

For example, in 1980 the F-16 was a sexy new super-fighter. Most Third World countries flew 1960s-vintage planes like the F-4 and the MiG-21, and an F-16 would mop the floor with them. But today, F-16s are far more common, and to keep that same kind of dominance the US had to invent the F-22 and F-35.

The same goes for tanks, missiles, and so on.

[someone_else]

What if it becomes Drone War? Carrier fleets are expensive, but drones are much cheaper, and if other countries eventually catch up to America's drone technology, they have a means of fielding (relatively) cheap and effective weapon systems with long-range strike capability. No longer do they have to sit in impotent rage with no ability to strike back at faraway enemies apart from terrorism.

Drones are cool if you have air superiority. They suck balls if the enemy has any kind of interceptor aircraft (or missile or drone) that can reach their altitude.

It would be WWII all over agian but with drones.

Also, ASATS can destroy satellite relays needed by those drones, and if everyone has them....

It's sort of like cars: buying used is always cheaper than buying new, and almost as good if you aren't worried about the car breaking down on you in a hurry.

This is an issue for military equipment (that must be ready to go NOW, not whenever you manage to start the 20 year old engine). Older ones are less reliable and require more mainteneance.

Also, If there is no advancement does the price of the same identical tech remain the same for 500 years? or not?
In real life the price should go down, but if there is no advance in tech?

[Rossum]

I wonder if we would see the power of religion grow. Right now, the only thing that keeps the average undereducated moron from rejecting science completely (instead of holding it at arms length as he does now) is his vague half-comprehension that it has something to do with technological progress. If there was no more technological progress, I could see a vast chunk of the population declaring that there's no point to science at all.

Its kind of funny because within the context of this argument there is in fact a godlike being whose powers demonstratively trump mans capacity for technological innovation. Even if said ROB doesn't manifest himself and outright demand worship, that could give some excellent ammo for someone wanting to start a resurgence of religious belief.

Anyway, depending on how you define technological progress, we might come across some sort of natural disaster or disease that becomes difficult to fight with modern tech. If scientific medicine hits an upper limit while disease organisms (and the environment) still retain the ability to evolve or change then we could run into germs who resist the medicines we can come up with. Of course, things like quarantining and just avoiding the stuff that harbors the disease would stop the spread but then again that would be a social change that picks up where technology can't.


So, with medical science guaranteed to never reach the point where we can just take a pill to regrow a kidney or have an EMH use star trek style medicine to cure us of everything that ails us, people are going to have to know enough to wear protective gear and avoid doing risky things. Of course, the tech we have right now is more than capable of keeping idiots alive so there might not be that big of a change.

[Zixinus]

Monopolies will be the de-facto standard for companies. Since there is no technological innovation and there is only so much you can save by improving production, you have a situation where the easiest thing to do to a competitor isn't out-compete them but to undermine them. Use obnoxious legal tactics, target their PR, undermine their funding, etc. You will also see whatever means to save money (minus paying managers less, probably) by decreasing work conditions, lowering wages, etc.
Without technological improvement, there is a limited context in which a product can improve for a given amount of money. Then it becomes a choice of PR (say, who has a better word-of-mouth).

The nature of a pissing matches like these is that sooner or later, someone will emerge that is just far more bloodthirsty and amoral than the rest. Hence, monopoly.

I know, it's an old, almost cliché cyber sci-fi theme, but it does have some grounding in reality. You can tell by the fact that this is already happening to an extent. Just look at Foxconn.

[madd0ct0r]

I think you'd only see stable monoplies form in industries with really high entry costs, and even then you might get a government prepared to pay the start up bills just to have the capability in country.

also the market wouldn't be stable, even without tech disruption since availability of resources will fluctuate.

I guess with no innovation and steadily rising fuel costs you'll see the general quality of life in the first world slowly slide down, with wages per hour declining against the cost of living. Developing countries still have room to breathe, but unable to innovate (can they 'invent' some tech that already exists elsewhere) growth will loose a lot of it's momentum.
This means new business models might become viable in the West (like the labor heavy but resource light scavenging type recycling popular in Vietnam).
As transport costs rise you'll see people living more densely and closer to the urban centre, possibly with suburbs greening into farmland or small holdings.

Fish in general go extinct, various diseases are never cured, and new ones appear steadily with us unable to do more then quarantine the victims.

[amigocabal]

Look at oil, for example. We're running out of it, or at least cheap sources of it, and even though supplies are limited, people are not only looking the other way, they're actually buying gigantic luxury vehicles which dwarf the large vehicles of my childhood. They are thumbing their noses at the problem. That is a lack of will to solve the problem, to say the least.

Do you have a source for this? This source claims otherwise.

And then there's contraception: a technology which can handily solve many problems in the developing world. But can we use it to solve those problems? Of course not. George W. Bush withdrew all US support for the UN family planning initiative

And what about your Prime Minister, Stephen Harper?

Bush is not, and never was, your President. Canuks have no more standing to criticize him with respect to refusing to support international family planning initiatives, than they have standing to criticize the Prime Minister of Israel or the Prime Minister of Mongolia.

[Spoonist]

Bush is not, and never was, your President. Canuks have no more standing to criticize him with respect to refusing to support international family planning initiatives, than they have standing to criticize the Prime Minister of Israel or the Prime Minister of Mongolia.

What the fuck? Are you saying what I think that you are saying?
Why shouldn't anyone "have standing to criticize" any and all who do stupid shit like that?

Please ellaborate, because I hope that I read that wrong.

[madd0ct0r]

nope. I got the same reading you did.

amigocabal - extending national sovereignty to EVERYTHING.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Bush is not, and never was, your President. Canuks have no more standing to criticize him with respect to refusing to support international family planning initiatives, than they have standing to criticize the Prime Minister of Israel or the Prime Minister of Mongolia.

I just took a quick look at your posting history. You posted in the "Severe Labour Shortage in Western Canada" thread. You also posted in the "Denmark approves same-sex marriage" thread. How DARE you comment on issues which don't fall into your immediate geopolitical vicinity. I demand that you retract any and all statements you have ever made about states, nations, economic systems, societies, cultures, subcultures, musical genres, or any other category of existence to which you do not directly belong.

[ryacko]

People also love cheap products too, though. The generic drug import business from Canada made plenty of money over the years, and as the rationale for supporting pharma company profits dries up, I think voters would lose patience with the bullshit.

~20% of pharma revenues goes to R&D. And Canada isn't known for many new medical innovations. Theoretically in a free market, pharma profits would have to go down.

Drones are cool if you have air superiority. They suck balls if the enemy has any kind of interceptor aircraft (or missile or drone) that can reach their altitude.

It would be WWII all over agian but with drones.

Late-WWII fighter planes actually could intercept drones without difficulty.