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Computers, atomic energy and weapons, vaccines, DNA, ... . It seems that the great inventions and discoveries were more or less between 1850 and 1950.--Llaanngg (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or invitations to debate. Is there some specific question for which you would like a reference? μηδείς (talk) 00:31, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The question is not whether there will be less discoveries from now on. It's more from a history of science point of view. At the first glance, there were an explosion of discoveries and invention in the time 1850-1950. Is that just a psychological effect, or is it real? Is there even a name for this period in the history of science, in the same way that history has names for its periods (middle ages, modern era and the like).--Llaanngg (talk) 01:26, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are you claiming the Internet is not a disruptive technology? While its antecedents certainly existed a long time ago, it didn't really become a thing until about 1993-1994 or so. Certainly, the Internet, as it exists today, has fundamentally changed the way the world works, and thus would be a "disruptive technology" at least on par with the lightbulb or atomic energy or vaccines. While we're at it, certainly smart phones are equally as important. What about 3D printers, which are probably the latest such technology altering the way things work in "disruptive" ways. I'd say those three things, all of which post-date your 1950 end date, all are discoveries/inventions/innovations which are at least as important as the stuff you note. --Jayron3203:09, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No, I am not claiming the Internet has not changed the way we do things. And smartphones too have somehow an impact on our daily life. However, I have my doubts about the revolution that 3D printing represents. It's expensive, slow, and the pieces are brittle in general. There are machines which print non-brittle parts, but those are even more expensive that those at the bottom of the market. It's more of a promise than a real thing that's being used by people in their daily lives. We have better ways of producing plastic parts than this.
Notice, however, that the examples that I mentioned above are just that, examples. I didn't mentioned aircraft, nor automobiles, nor fax machines. I don't claim that technological progress has disappeared, just that there seems to me that there was more often back then. --Llaanngg (talk) 11:47, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Practical 3D printing is 34 years old - and the idea of additive printing has been written about since the 1950's. If you go and buy a $30,000 3D printer, it has none of the problems you describe - except that it is indeed "expensive"...but expensive relative to what? Was the first car not ground-breaking because it was expensive relative to the bicycle? In 1981 when Hideo Kodama came up with the approach, there was literally nothing like it - so how do you suggest that the cost of his machine was too expensive? When the RepRap project dropped that price to $500, it was perfectly capable of producing useful parts - as evidenced by the fact that by 2008 these machines are capable of producing parts for making more 3D printers with. Sure, there are limitations to what they can make - but then cars can't fly and atomic bombs can't make pizza. Like all things, they have uses as well as limitations. You're also looking at a very brief snapshot in the development of these machines. Liquid polymer machines are getting extremely fast - prints that take hours with an extrusion nozzle can be made in minutes with these machines...their throughput is independent of the size and complexity of the object in X/Y space - they only care about Z height - so for some kinds of object, they are a thousand times faster than deposition printers - but for others they are only slightly faster. Also, I think you're looking very narrowly at one implementation of a much more general 'invention' - that of rapid prototyping and manufacturing in general. The revolution isn't so much in 3D printing as in all kinds of computer-driven machinery. Attach a computer and stepper motors to a victorian-era milling machine and you have amazingly good subtractive 'printing'. Use a laser cutter or a water jet or a plasma cutter and you have revolutionised the stamping, pressing, die-cutting and embossing processes. I don't think it's possible to clearly recognize a disruptive technology while you're sitting in the middle of the revolution, watching it happen. SteveBaker (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would separate inventions from discoveries. The great scientific discoveries that lead to the major industries today seem to me to have occured before 1950. I would put the start a bit before 1850. Inventions are another matter. Star Lord - 星王 (talk) 16:07, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I asked a very similar question here once, so it's not just you who's noticed it. Many fields, like aviation, seem almost static now compared with the massive advances made up through WW2, including prototype jets. Indeed we even moved backwards by one measure, in that we no longer have supersonic passenger planes. StuRat (talk) 03:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is this the We Were Promised Jetpacks effect? Technology has gone in different directions from what people extrapolated in the mid-20th century. If you look back at Star Trek: The Original Series, for example, while the prospects for interstellar travel seem as remote as ever, our 2010's computers make their 2260's ones look like toys. --Trovatore (talk) 03:29, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also think StuRat is missing an important issue with regards to air travel. The technology to build and fly supersonic jet planes did not go away. It still exists. But some things to remember 1) crossing the "sound barrier" is ultimately an incremental and arbitrary measure of advance. The Land speed record continues to go up every so often, yet statutory automobile speed limits remain stubbornly unchanged for decades. That doesn't mean that technology isn't getting better: there are very good reasons why land speed records don't affect highway speed limits, not the least of which is that people don't become better drivers merely because they can drive faster. 2) It turns out the economics of supersonic flight don't work. There's diminishing rates of return on the speed of commercial flights. The Concorde was a novelty, and ultimately a Veblen good of sorts: its use was based solely on the need of very rich people to claim they flew on it, and thus to display their very richness. Most people have little need to fly that fast, and thus there was not a financial reason to keep it going. The return on expenses was terrible for the Concorde: the increase in speed is outstripped by the increase in operational costs, and that's why it failed, not because we couldn't fly it anymore, but because people didn't need to fly it. The Internet has made it's purpose obsolete: People don't need to be physically in a place when they can do everything the need from where they are at right now. And focusing on a single technology (air travel) missed the point of looking at technology from a wider perspective. Looking at human advancement since the Concorde was developed, we have invented all sorts of really awesome technologies that make a plane which flies just a bit faster than the earlier planes (but ultimately isn't all that different from them) seem like not a big deal. --Jayron3203:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That strikes me as a little overstated as regards Concorde. Per our article, it would save you about four and a half hours on the transatlantic flight. That's time I would definitely prefer to spend somewhere other than cooped up in a metal tube, if I had the choice and the price were reasonable, and if I were "very rich" I would likely consider it reasonable, without needing to impress anyone. --Trovatore (talk) 04:10, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is, though, that not enough people were willing to pay the exorbitant ticket prices for that 4 1/2 hour advantage. The issue is not whether you, in the singular, would. The issue is whether humanity (at least, that part of humanity which would buy plane tickets on the Concorde) would. By-and-large they didn't. We know this is a fact because the Concorde doesn't fly anymore, and no one is developing a replacement for it. If the demand existed, then someone would have met it, because the technology is there. What you imagine you would like if you were rich is irrelevant. We ran the experiment. The results are conclusive. The economics of supersonic commercial flight don't work. --Jayron3204:14, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But, let's compare with jets. Commercial jets started coming out after WW2 and soon took over the industry. That set our expectations for the next big aeronautics technology, which was supersonic passenger planes. So, people in the 1970's could reasonably have expected that technology to also take over the skies. But not only did they fail to do so, they were eventually phased out entirely. This type of dashed expectation is what makes people feel that "progress has slowed, stopped, or reversed". The technical and financial details don't much matter, it's all about perception and expectations. StuRat (talk) 04:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Very rich people now vacation at the ISS and book flights into space with Virgin Galactic. Speeds and exclusivity are still available to those who need it. My first decent car (an Austin Mini) had a top speed of 72mph and the fastest freeway speed limits were 70mph. I now own a car (coincidentally, but conveniently for the sake of this argument, also a Mini Cooper) that can go at 145 mph, the highest freeway speed limit near where I live is 90mph. So the problem isn't the tech, it's the laws and the infrastructure of our roads, and the limits of our ability to control such machines. There will likely be higher speed limits when we all have self-driving cars. SteveBaker (talk) 16:12, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are all wrong. It's the widespread use of tattooing and body piercing that's the issue. In 1962 if the president wanted to flirt with a foreign minister he didn't take a selfie at Nelson Mandela's funeral service. He had Frank Sinatra bring her round back. Can't do that with a Prius on Flakka. μηδείς (talk) 05:09, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Concorde did have a real advantage over subsonic planes for eastbound travel, and that is that you could take off and land on the same day, without trying unsuccessfully to sleep on the plane. Going westbound, it was strictly a Veblen good. There really was no need to arrive at an earlier local time than when you had taken off. (There are many short flights that arrive at an earlier local time than takeoff, but that is a stair-step effect due to one-hour time zones. Supersonic aircraft westbound are outrunning the Earth's rotation.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:44, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really follow why you think it's not an advantage to spend less time confined in a tin can, time zones or no. --Trovatore (talk) 03:45, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Concorde supersonic concept died for two reasons: government regulation and government subsidization. First, the Concorde was never allowed to succeed as a widespread international carrier because only 20 planes were built, and they flew very limited transatlantic routes. There was no economy of number. The second problem was that as they were government-subsidized vanity objects, they squeezed possible investment in other competitors out of the market. There was no point in backing a start-up that would lose money not only due to the normal period it takes to achieve profitability, but because the government-subsidized Concorde would undercut any such competitors for a much longer period, preventing a return on investment. μηδείς (talk) 01:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Specifically with regards to air travel, it's worth remembering that plane speeds are only one possible advancement. There have been many gradual advancements in efficiency, reliability, and ease of flying and maintenance. This has meant that the most likely cause of any crash from a modern commercial airplane is some mistake or intentional act mostly unrelated to any design flaw or problem. It's also one of the reasons why it's far cheaper to fly. (Other reasons are changes in how airlines operate.) Even in the developed world, people generally see the benefit of cheaper travel. But this arguably even more felt in the developing world where this cheaper travel has come together with rising standards of living to mean that people for who air travel was something only the very rich, and tourists, did, to something they themselves can use. Nil Einne (talk) 12:05, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While all aircraft since the Boeing 707 seem to be similar, they are very much not if one looks closer. The 707 had 4 skinny turbojet engines. 1960: 4 skinny turbojets2015: 2 fat turbofans The Airbus A350 has 2 high-bypass turbofans.The A350 has more than twice the passenger/cargo capacity of the 707, about twice the fuel capacity, it's 10-15% faster, and it has 4 times the range. That's an improvement of more than 400% in fuel per passenger mile, not to mention the fact that the A350 can fly nearly any route on Earth non-stop. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I forgot to mention distance. We're now sort of at the level where we can economically run flights that are probably too long e.g. Changi to Newark. Mind you, it depends on the route. Only time will tell whether something like London to Sydney or even LongLondon to Auckland non stop is going to work, or not enough passengers will be interested in such a long flight (combined with the greater expense for such a route). Of course it would be great if these flights were cheap and much faster, but it's silly to suggest that we haven't had significant progress. Nil Einne (talk) 02:46, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Another example of us apparently going backwards in technology is the reduced effectiveness of antibiotics. Yes, this is due to antibiotic resistant bacteria, but our inability to come up with new antibiotics to keep ahead of the bacteria is worrying. Again, there may be financial rather than technical reasons, but the result is the same, we are backsliding in the war against bacteria. StuRat (talk) 05:17, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think a better way to measure it is increased wealth. Consider that flying by plane was inaccessible to all but the rich in 1950. The reality is that today we expect air conditioning, microwave ovens, refrigerators, computers, internet access, cell phones, flat screen TV's and HDTV and cars in virtually every household. To the extent that disruptive technology continues is measured by how older technology is mainstreamed and how fast. It was only 15 years ago that I bought a 36" 4:3 CRT HDTV (1280i) for $2,000. The problem is that life-changing disruptive technology is only recognized after it is mainstram and no longer disruptive. Blackberry was disruptive. Then iPhone. Before that, Nokia. Ever hear of a Dell cellphone on the Dell disruptive model for PC's? It failed. You heard about the others though. --DHeyward (talk) 05:28, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is still a steady flow of impressive inventions ... unfortunately, most of the research being funded is to advance government surveillance, so that's what they all concern, or at least, that's what you think of them as being for, even though in theory you could use them for many practical things. Drones, Apple Watch, terahertz scanners, voice commands, face recognition... even GMOs and self-driving cars, which ought to be tremendous improvements that affect all our lives, instead seem to connote primarily the fact of increased control and the death of ownership as a social concept - that farmers don't have the right to plant their own seed and people won't have the right to drive where or how they want, let alone anonymously. With the new products, you don't own them - they own you. It's gone from the point in 1990 or so where every new invention was the Coolest New Thing to the point where most of the time where I just want to wince it was ever thought up. Wnt (talk) 12:25, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I was born in the 1950's...what can I recall that was science fiction in the 1960's - but which is more or less routine today:
Wikipedia and Google-search, bringing the availability of all human knowledge at the touch of a button from anywhere in the world and the ability to find any fact known to man in 10 seconds or less. The melting point of a cubic zirconium is 2750 degC...see, I just looked that up.
Social media, with the ability to communicate with almost half the population of the world within seconds, to have real-time access to an audience of several billion people - and to be able to talk with someone in the midst of a revolution or war zone halfway across the world.
GPS and the ability to navigate perfectly anywhere in the world and never, ever get lost or not know the best way to get somewhere.
Google Earth - the ability to see from a god's-eye view into anyplace in the world in full color and (increasingly) down to a resolution of 15 centimeters or less.
Cellphones - a hand-held computer, information source, video-phone, camera, GPS, data store.
Drone aircraft - revolutionizing information gathering and warfare and just now starting to allow anyone to view their world from a distance, see over the next hill, get a perspective on their neighborhood that was never affordably possible in the past.
The self-driving car - who knows what kind of revolution that will be?
Video streaming - the ability to watch any TV show, any movie, at any time and from any place...and the ability to let anyone become a movie maker/producer/director.
Credit/Debit cards - I recently realised that not only have I not got any cash in my wallet - but the last time I had cash was more than a year ago - I pay the guy who mows my lawn via PayPal. Someone gave me a check - and I suddenly realise how insanely annoying it is to have to drive to an ATM to pay it in...oh, but wait, I can just photograph it with my cellphone and deposit it like that. Cash and checks are silently vanishing. We were arguing that the penny should be removed as it costs more to make than it's worth...but while we were debating it, *all* of our physical currency become unnecessary.
Bitcoin - virtual money, I don't think we've scratched the surface of what this will do to our world.
eBay - the ability for individual humans to sell to a market comprised of the entire planet.
Rapid shipping - the ability to cheaply send physical items anywhere in the world within 24 hours for tens of dollars - and to ship product manufactured almost anywhere on the planet for so little money that it's cheaper to manufacture thousands of miles away and ship to your customers.
Kickstarter & crowd-funding - the ability to have your customers be your venture capitalists, so anyone can start a business.
Just-in-time factories - having a supply chain that gets parts to a factory *exactly* when it's needed so you don't have parts starvation or the need for wasteful warehousing.
Electronic books and music - The ability to have the entire text of any book - or any piece of music ready to consume within 30 seconds.
Skype - Free video-phone calls anywhere in the planet for $0.00 per minute.
Ubiquitous cameras - The ability to record everything you see or hear, 24/7. The possibility that children of today will grow up having not just a couple of baby pictures and a few snapshots of their parents to remember their childhood by - but hundreds of hours of video, tens of thousands of photographs.
Rapid prototyping - yes, you poo-poo the 3D printer - but (as I explained above) you're completely missing the point there.
Space technology - Landing on the moon...having a permanent presence in space...having robots driving around on other planets sending us back mountains of information...probes that are now outside the solar system.
Weather monitoring - Accurate weather forecasts - for anyone to be able to see storms as they approach.
Astronomy - knowing how the universe began, how it evolved, how stars and galaxies formed, that nearly everything is dark matter.
Home printing - the ability to have a printing press in your home office - being able to print photographs without the need for darkrooms or ikky chemicals and without having to wait a week for the photos to be printed for you.
The perfect clock - clocks that tell the time to within a fraction of a second that never lose or gain to any important degree.
Genetically modified organisms - the ability to design plants and animals to our needs without all of that tedious selective breeding.
Musical instruments - that are capable of producing literally any sound that humans can hear and can replace an entire orchestra with a machine that's half the size of the keyboard of a 1950's piano.
Virtual worlds - The ability to construct an interactive, immersive 3D world, with sounds and (somewhat) intelligent beings inside it - and being able to see that world in three dimensions and move around inside of it.
Video games - the ability to produce entertainments that can absorb even adults for days at a time and have them come back wanting more.
The Internet Of Things - The ability to monitor and control an unthinkable range of devices from anywhere in the world. With the right gadgets, you can now turn on and off the water in your kitchen sink from anywhere in the world.
The Cloud - You can now store any and all personal and business information out there in cyberspace in essentially infinite quantities and be able to retrieve it whenever and where ever you want. No more filing cabinets. No need for scrapbooks or photo albums. You can even allow some of it to be available to anyone in the world who cares to look at it with personal websites, so you can publish your own crackpot ideas, show pictures of your cats, whatever floats your boat.
Online shopping - I can buy ANYTHING from almost anywhere in the world and have it delivered to my door within a week or two. Pretty soon, that's going to be hours. Amazon Prime will now deliver to me within a guaranteed 3 hour window...that's astounding.
A computer that can beat the best chess-player on earth, or win Jeopardy! against the two best players of all time. More to the point, a computer that can read all of human knowledge, UNDERSTAND IT, and then answer questions about it and explain how it came to those conclusions.
OK - I'm bored with thinking of things - I bet there are a hundred more if I had the time to think it all through.
Now, I'll certainly agree that not all of those things are "good" - but in hindsight, neither was the atom bomb - but for sure they are all disruptive. Any one of those things would have seemed like science fiction when I was a kid...most of them were things that even science fiction had not even dreamed of. SteveBaker (talk) 15:55, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
About GMO crops, I wanted to add that farmers have been purchasing their seed grain for a long time. Non-GM hybrid crops produced exclusively by selective breeding do not produce seeds that pass on all the benefits of the hybrid. Say you're a farmer interested in cold-resistant wheat. A seed company grows fields of plants that produce cold-resistant hybrid seeds; these seeds are gathered and sold to farmers. Now, the hypothetical farmer plants the seeds and grows a crop of cold-resistant wheat. If the farmer chooses to plant the seeds of that wheat, though, it might not be cold-resistant. This is because plants reproduce sexually and ''meiosis'' ensures a mixing-up of the parent plants' genes.
So, GMO crops that yield sterile seeds do not deprive the farmer of the ancient practice of storing seed grain to plant the next year. That's been gone since the green revolution, which is probably the quietest disruptive technology. Being able to feed more consumers with fewer farmers has ramifications throughout society. This is a little out of place in a discussion about disruptive technologies, but I think it's important to know that GMO crops don't represent a social backwards leap by requiring farmers to alter their planting practices. Roches (talk) 18:14, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also want to add that 3D printers and their related fields are IMO at the Tennis Court Oath stage of causing a technological revolution. Sure, there are better ways of making plastic parts. But we're comparing established, mature methods with a method that's just begun to develop. When private automobiles were in their infancy, railroads were a much better way of getting around. When computers were in their infancy, it was easier to solve many problems with mechanical devices or the human mind alone. Rapid fabrication is a little like self-driving cars, another technology likely to be revolutionary. There's another way (human drivers), and right now the other way is better, but the gap is closing fast. Roches (talk) 18:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The economics of other methods of making plastic parts are tricky. The current going rate to make an injection mold for a small part is around $10,000. Generally these parts wind up costing a few cents to make once the mold is paid for...but that means that for runs under a million parts - the cost of the mold is the driving factor. So 3D printing has a role to play in smaller volume production. It'll cost you a few dollars to make a one-off part on a 3D printer - but if your volume is down under a few thousand units, 3D printing is actually cheaper than injection molding. The other issue is in lead time. I can design a part on my computer right now, and have it in my hands in an hour or two...but the other available approaches have weeks to months of lead time. Subtractive milling technologies are possible - but they're really not much cheaper or faster for small runs either. But the latest generation of liquid polymer printers are becoming VERY fast. You could (in principle) make one with a bed that's several feet across and generate objects at a rate of an inch or two per minute. For small parts, that means that you could make thousands of them in parallel with a single machine - and achieve production rates that would be comparable to injection molding with lead times identical to current 3D printing technologies. The only way that injection molding remains feasible is that the materials cost is a little lower...but now you need runs in the millions in order to see that benefit. This is definitely 'disruptive' because it displaces the prevailing technology almost overnight. We're not quite there yet - but the change is probably only a year or two away.
Another aspect of this is that existing 3D printer technologies depend on there being easily available feed-stocks. Since 3D printing is a microscopic fraction of the world consumption of plastics, the plastic manufacturers aren't too interested in making formulations that are optimised for 3D printing - so 3D printers have to work with materials that are optimised for other manufacturing techniques. Once the technology hits that tipping point, the chemists and materials scientists will suddenly rush to start improving the chemistry of the plastics - and there will probably be a second wave of the revolution.
You haven't taken into account the contrast between the effects of the Korean animation industry on one hand, and the Wall of Sound on the other. The first has allowed Fox's The Simpsons to become the longest running animated comedy show ever, outstripping the previous record holder, CBS's flagship variety show, 41 Minutes with Commercials. But its sweatshop conditions mean that the most popular Americans on TV have had to have had their pinkies removed for the sake of Hank Azaria's wardrobe complex (in the sense of warehouse, not fixation). Just to be able to compete, the good folk of South Park have mitten hands, and the Canadians of South Park have detached skulls. Some say that people like 41 Minutes with Commercials'Mickey Rooney got off easy with the hormone treatments and the eight on-air weddings. He kept all his limbs. μηδείς (talk) 05:19, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking for a term to describe drug delivery systems (liposomes, micelles, nanoparticles etc.) through the blood. Can I use this -"Drug Delivery Systems for Intravenous Administration"? 85.64.222.101 (talk) 19:24, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Drug Delivery Systems for Intravenous Administration" - does not sound correct. People use terms like "IV piggy-back" which means that the IV line is for dextrose or normal saline and a small bag with the drug is attached to it just dribbling in small drops in. "IV infusion" perhaps is a better term or IV bolus. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:49, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Drug Delivery Systems for Intravenous Administration" is perfectly standard "medicalese", and can be found in published articles. One objection to it is it can be misconstrued and heard as suggesting the systems were being administered as opposed to the drugs, and I'd invert it to "intravenous drug delivery systems". (And there's no reason to Capitalize Every Word, Which Is Something Manufacturers of Devices Seem to Do Because They Think Their System Is Very Important.) - Nunh-huh10:56, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The systems actually are being administered. Liposomes, micelles, or nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream as a vehicle for carrying the drugs. Looie496 (talk) 13:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To certain surprise I couldn't find whom Field stain is named after (the word "Field" is capitalized in sources, so should be last name). Neither Whonamedit nor anything else returned any result to me. Just add to the article, if a source emerges. Brandmeistertalk21:54, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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