Have We Reached a Limit?

[stickmaker]

I'm an engineer. While I value knowledge for the sake of knowledge, I especially value knowledge which can be put to practical use. Things which we can use as tools.

Throughout most of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries advancements in our control and manipulation of the universe came from discovering new principles (such as electromagnetism and radiation) or from inventing new ways to apply them (better steam engines, the various incarnations of internal combustion engines). This was the age of the Great Inventions, when discoveries and developments led to railroads, automobiles, electrical power distribution, computers...

So where's the next Great Invention? The next new tool? So far, the past couple of decades have seen almost solely incremental improvements, rather than major new ideas. And the only major new "tool" discoveries I can think of offhand are the related Buckyballs and Buckytubes, which promise some interesting applications. Yes, we have found and are still finding interesting new things about the universe. The moons of Saturn are fascinating. And Pluto has a newly-discovered moon of its own, as well as a sister world farther out in the Kuiper Belt. But those are discoveries of a different order. Things which, while fascinating and well worth learning, are unlikely to directly affect our modern lives. Flatly, they aren't _tools_.

What if there are no more new tools? What if we have already discovered all the materials and methods which can be used to build or modify? What if this is the limit, all that we'll ever have?

This is not a pronouncement of doom and gloom. There's still a *lot* we can do with what we already have, simply by figuring out new or improved applications. But much of the fun would be gone.

Comments

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

I would argue that you only think of the current changes as incremental because we're living through the process of discovery, whereas we look at the older discoveries with the hindsight of what a profound change a certain moment has on the world. People in the future will find those moments in our time as well. We just can't see them because we're too close.

[solarbird]

If the information theory view of the quantum equations turns out to be useful, there are going to be a lot of new tools.

Also, neurobiology - where I'm heading - promises to be a really terrifyingly cool toolbox. ^_^

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that sometime in the early 1800s, a politician proposed shutting down the US Patent Office because (and I'm paraphrasing here) there was nothing else that could be patented. A century or two from now, there will be another idiot politician espousing the same idea once again.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

No, sorry, urban myth. No elected or appointed official has ever seriously suggested shutting down the US Patent Office.

In fact, the particular director most often credited with this actually kept petitioning Congress for more money, because so many new patents were coming in at that time.

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

How about nanotechnology and genetic engineering? Lots of new biological tools these days.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Both are old concepts, and slow in demonstrating their promise. There's theoretical evidence that nanotechnology may never be practical (at least at the smallest scale) due to quantum interference effects, and experimental evidence that cloning will not be practical in the forms currently envisioned (that is, growing tissues in lab cultures).