Trying to control my impatience for a better world

[andrewducker]

I've been making an effort to not link to stories about possible technological improvement - unless it's either something which has actually been proven to work in a way that's possible to mass produce or something unusual

Comments

[xenophanean]

I know what you mean, annoyingly, if a technology *does* work, it tends to slip silently into use

[andrewducker]

Sometimes. Small, incremental changes tend to slide in silently - batteries get a bit better, screens get a bit better, processors get a bit better, and it's just part of everyday life.

But the first time a "Retina Screen" came along it was a big deal. Or the first 3D graphics cards. Or e-ink screens. Or when self-driving cars come onto the market, that'll be a big deal.

[xenophanean]

I suppose I'm thinking of the milestone which was cloning, nobody seems to realise that we went from, "oh we can clone a sheep, maybe, with some problems" to "We can happily clone any cattle". Maybe it's because it's such a scary field, it's actually quite hard to find anything but second order stories online, but I'm pretty sure the practice is rife.

[andrewducker]

It doesn't seem to be common-place to the "You are eating cloned beef" point yet, but it's definitely reached the "Done on a regular basis" point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_that_have_been_cloned

[drdoug]

Yeah, that's how actual science and engineering actually works - much more geadual, steady and contingent. But it's not sexy, so there's a minor industry of sexing up press releases to get news coverage by making it into what Up worthy is famous for.

Also, either that story or me is confused about the STFC, which I think is a funding council, not a research institute that actually does the research.

And finally, STFC is one of several acronyms that are amusingly close to STFU.

[steer]

Yes... exactly as Doug says. The thing about the "game changers" is that their progression is from "potentially interesting paper" to "nice academic paper with a demo section" to "industrial funding for working prototype"... so this whole process takes many years if not decades.

The most transformative technology in networking right now is OpenFlow which was an academic paper in 2009 and is now product and is revolutionary for guys like Google. This is a meteorically fast rise for this kind of things. In five years more (I guess) it will be revolutionary for medium size networking companies and in ten years will be the boring status quo that is just a plug in box and software you use.

[ext_2628100]

This year was the first year I had to work with the media office to make a press release for a paper. It was...interesting.

I think the worst thing is trying to get funding to research something with no immediate obvious sexiness, though. Intensely frustrating to have an intriguing idea in and of itself and then have to find window dressing to make it immediately relevant. This is not how we ended up with penicillin or the transistor...

An astonishing number of people who work with STFC are somehow not in the right demographic to even be aware of the term STFU.

[murasaki_1966]

Damn the twenty four hour news cucle!

[f4f3]

Yes, this.

Research to implementation runs in decades, and news in hours. Which gives it an insatiable appetite for the novel, for the great promise, for the quick fix.

Researchers need funds, so they are happy to provide the news bites.

And on we go...

[benicek]

Frustrating, yes, and these problems really are insoluble at the moment. Interesting article in the latest issue of Private Eye about Scotland's wind power strategy. It argues that currently when the whole of northern Europe experiences windy weather Germany's wind turbines drive the cost of power so low that Scotland will only ever make pennies selling theirs to England and then, unable to store it, they'll be forced to import power at great expense as soon as the winds drop and the price shoots up.

[f4f3]

That's a good argument for a renewables mix - wind along with pumped storage (both fairly mature now) alongside tidal and wave (in large scale prototyping). Scotland should meet the 2020 target for generating all of its own electricity through renewables, but the export market is another matter.

[andrewducker]

Yup. I'm more concerned about us being self-supporting in a renewable fashion than I am about us making money exporting it. If the worst problem we have is that the power is too cheap then I shan't cry myself to sleep!

[witchwestphalia]

Cheap power would help the world. One of the problems I see with the Green movement is that it fails to see that poor people need access to cheap energy to get to a decent lifestyle. They cook using open combustion. They don't have clean safe drinking water. These are solvable with a little cheap accessible energy. We in the developed world take these things for granted. Fossil fuels gave them to us. I realize CO2 is an issue but denying the rest of the planet basics like clean water until we can provide it thru renewables also bothers me. So yeah if NH3 -> H2 can provide cheap energy cleanly I'm all for it!

[coth]

Good title that. Problem with reading sf in youth is that you spend your whole life annoyed that reality hasn't caught up with the stories.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes.

Still waiting for my body-sculpting kit to arrive, and my matrix-hacking deck.