Is progress slowing down?

Those who favor the stagnation hypothesis point out that, other than computing, most fields have seen only modest, incremental improvements. Our cars, planes, factories, food supply, antibiotics, and so forth are just improved versions of what we had in, say, 1960.

The counter-argument is: Wait, what do you mean, “other than computing?” How can you just ignore the area where we have seen revolutionary progress? Saying, “other than orders of magnitude increases in capacity, performance, and cost; revolutionizing all of communications; connecting every human being on Earth; and putting all the world’s knowledge and culture in every pocket; what has technology done lately?” sounds a lot like “what have the Romans ever done for us?”

The rebuttal to the counter-argument is: Computing is just one area. We used to have revolutionary changes going on in multiple areas at once:

1870–1920 saw the the electric generator, electric motor, and light bulb; the telephone, wireless, phonograph, and film; the first automobiles and airplanes, and the assembly lines to build them; the first synthetic plastic (Bakelite); the Panama Canal; the Haber-Bosch process; and the germ theory, along with its applications to public health.
1920–1970 saw radio, television, radar, and the first computers; the invention of nylon and other plastics; the expansion of mass manufacturing with an explosion of consumer products; penicillin and the golden age of antibiotics; Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution in agriculture; nuclear power; the interstate highway system, jet airplanes, and the Moon landing.
1970–2020 saw … the PC, Internet, smartphone, and GPS; and genetic engineering, including GMOs. It also saw the Apollo project ended, the first supersonic passenger jet launched and then canceled, the promise of nuclear power unfulfilled, a War on Cancer with lackluster results, and similarly modest progress against heart disease. Yes, there were many incremental improvements in a variety of areas that are easy to forget about, but that’s the point—there were fewer revolutionary breakthroughs.

Another way of putting this is that if you look at a 1970 living room vs. a modern one, not much has visibly changed—again, other than the computer (and related technology, such as the big flat screen TV that has replaced your clunky CRT).

If progress is slowing down, what’s causing it?

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Dan Dascalescu

Dan Dascalescu