Quote from Mvic:
For some the glass if half full and getting fuller, for others the glass is half empty, has a crack in it, and the bottom is about to fall out
I notice that Goog just got in to the clean energy business, and the beat goes on.
Its not that I am a wide eyed optimist, its just that I remember writing code on a 32K (as in less than a Megabyte!) BBC computer back in the mid 80s. 20 years later and we are on the cusp of yet another revolution in computing that would shatter Moore's law
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/technology/11storage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Advances in material science make things possible today that would have seemed laughable even 10 years ago. The rate of progress and productivity is speeding up not slowing down and what the world will look like 20-30 years from now is likely to make the energy concerns we have today seem rather myopic if we can keep up with the population explosion (a real concern and sadly I think the poster who predicted a pandemic that will substantially reduce the global population is likely correct)
If you insist on viewing the world as static then already there are technologies that are bringing us productive deep sea finds like the one recently off the coast of Brazil and the technologies they are using in Kansas to get what using old methods would have taken 100 years out of the ground in 10 years (involves pumping water down in to the oil field to facilitate faster extraction).
I just saw a story on CNN where Neil Young is getting his old 60's beater that gets 10MG converted to a 135MPG rocket!
Despite the fact that the human body is the most complicated machine on the face of the planet what we have acheived in terms of extending lifespan is remarkable given the relative dark ages we have and are still living in in terms of understanding the how it works. This table speaks for itself:
http://www.elderweb.com/home/node/2838
I suppose advances in medicine, nutrition etc had nothing to do with that. In genetics were are also on the cusp of a revolution in epi genetics. The promise of being able to manipulate our genes is closer than ever and while still 10-20 years away it would not surprise me if by the end of this century we will have added another 30 years to the human lifespan.
Tin foil hat off
how people see the world, doesn't really change how it is
goog is god, they'll give you free energy in no time, only it comes with pay per click ads, like you go to the pump, you have to click some ads here and there before you can start pumping
about Moore's law and advancements in computers, those are not inventions, those are advancements and expansions around the same fundamentals
through out history there were only a small number of breakthrough inventions, others were just cut and pastes with fancy colors
the link you have provided is a promise not an achievement, quantum computers are a promise too, they will be an invention when they are created, but for now it's like talking about star trek
i remember how they pictured the future for us when we were in elementary, america this glorious nation will land on mars and build perfect civilizations there, come on man your kids still chew on those plastic mcdonalds shit, what kind of a special future do you see for them, maybe internet addicts if they are lucky
regarding the table you have linked to; the numbers have increased mainly due to decrease in infant deaths, not increase in life spans. even if that table of yours is correct, if you look at the column under 'at age 65' for white men you will see that in 1900 they lived up to 77 but in 2000 they lived up to 81, that is not a significant increase, specially if you consider those plastic hearts they get
anyhow my point and imo: an intense desire for something and struggling to obtain it does not necessarily mean one will get to that something, though it might increase the possibility to some degree, it will not make it happen by certain
just like humans who grow old and gain experience, and eventually die
humanity as a whole will grow old though experienced and developed, and will eventually be unable to withstand the natural forces that will bring it's death and extinction