[sdiy] Real cause of DIY death

[Richard Wentk]

At 00:52 20/07/2005, Ian Fritz wrote:
>At 10:59 AM 7/18/05, Richard Wentk wrote:
>
>
>>What's really missing is new ideas. There have been very, very few really 
>>new ideas in technology over the last couple of decades now.
>
>Oh no, that's not right!  There are tremendously exciting advances going 
>on right now, in areas such as biotech

Yep.

>, nanotech, molecular mechanics, quantum transistors, quantum computing, 
>molecular electronics, etc.

Maybe. Quantum computing definitely, if anyone can get it to work. The rest 
- perhaps, if they turn out to have new applications.

But that's really the point. It's about paradigms, not implementations. It 
doesn't matter if your display is made of glass and CRT-shaped or if it's a 
thin slice of plastic, when the underlying metaphor is still 'this is a 
display.'

What made (e.g.) the Internet different is that it was a new metaphor - 
based on the old Memex and Xanadu ideas, and given enough of a spin to be 
practical. Building something out of quantum dots isn't inherently 
interesting unless it comes with some new metaphors for how technology can 
be used. And apart from biotech, which is in a kind of ethical limbo 
because the *really* fun stuff is still too scary for most people to think 
about seriously, nano and the rest are mostly still ways to do stuff we can 
already do., but more quickly and easily, and less about ways to do 
completely new stuff that hasn't been thought of yet.

A concept like programmable material is closer to what I'm talking about. 
There are people thinking about these things, but at the moment we seem to 
be in an R&D hiatus where a lot of technology is really quite backward 
looking, and the budgets and momentum for the next level don't quite seem 
to be there yet.

Don't forget that it took a century to get from Boolean algebra to 
wide-scale digital systems. Without the metaphor and concept of both the 
algebra itself, and its application in the form of information theory to 
make digital circuits *useful*, there would have been no foundation for 
digital electronics.

What worries me at the moment is that there don't seem to ideas of 
equivalent subtlety waiting in the wings. Most new technologies seem to be 
about implementation rather than revolutionary reconceptualisations. But 
only the latter lead to the really big changes.

Richard