Spotting vaporware: three follies of would-be technologists « Locklin on science
When I was a little boy in the 70s and 80s, I was pretty sure by the 21st century I’d drive around in a hovercraft, and take space vacations on the moons of Saturn. My idea of a future user interface for a computer was not the 1970s emacs interface that the cleverest people still use to develop software today, I’d just talk to the thing, Hal-9000 style. I suppose my disappointments with modern technological “advances” are the boyish me complaining I didn’t get my hovercraft and talking artificial brain. What boggles me is the gaping credulity that intelligent people treat alleged developing future technologies now.
A vast industry of professional bullshit artists has risen up to promote and regulate technologies which will never actually exist. These nincompoops and poseurs are funded by your tax dollars; they fly all over the world attempting to look important by promising to deliver the future. All they actually deliver is wind and public waste.
Scott Locklin points out that new technology doesn't work on a 20-year plan, it builds on small incremental improvements. So when someone says they need billions of dollars and 20-years they are probably full of shit. Unfortunately the three things he singles out are Nanotechnology, Fusion Technology and Quantum Computers. All things that I found incredibly fascinating and cool. Too bad he is probably right that, while theoretically feasible, we aren't going to see any of them flourish anytime soon.
