The best is the last | Hacker News Reader

The best is the last

ben-evans.com

I like the article a lot, but the main point is tautology.

It's like the saying, "It's always in the last place you look". The reason they stop developing antiquated technology is because it has become outdated. And because people stop investing in improvements, the last of the generation is therefore the best of it.

Take the XC-99. It's beautiful, to be sure, but is it the best possible piston powered plane? Could better materials provide a different design, improved speed, more internal space and a higher carrying load? Could better engines provide a better gas mileage, higher power output, less noise, better performance at altitude? I think you can see that improvements could be made. They weren't because it didn't make sense to.

To say that the technology is best when it's ripe for replacement could just be flipped around. Technological advances happen when they happen and whatever gets replaced was the best we could do before then.

A thousand times this. The concepts in the article are great, and the examples helpful/interesting. But it seems foolish to use these principles to try and 'call the top' of some technology.

Technology improves over time. New technology obsoletes old technology. Once a technology is obsoleted, of course it's 'the best'.

But propeller driven-aircraft aren't obsolete; they became turboprop.

Take a look at Super Tucano for a modern example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/23/world/la-fg-ecuador-...

Only $10M each!

Well, yes. And that is due to the fact that jet engines don't scale down to personal aircraft of the size of the Super Tucano. Nor would it make sense to do that. I am sure there are plenty of people who enjoy flying their turbo props and would find a jet less enjoyable. But for the purposes of long distance travel, no one wants to sit in a plane for several more hours because they find flying in a piston powered plane charming. I want that Boom plane here now, in fact. The shorter the flight, the better.

I'm mildly confused by your comment. It seems that you're implying that the Super Tucano is a personal airplane.

Just checking to make sure that you know it's actually a warplane, and that countries are buying it because it's downright outstanding for ground support.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow

Sorry for the mis-wording. I understand it is a warplane; I read the articles in the past few weeks about the impending death of the A-10 Warthog and the use of the Super Tucano in private military fleets.

My point was that the segment of small turbo prop planes is alive and well and so innovation, of course, continues there, but that isn't the same segment of larger passenger or cargo planes that the article is speaking of.

Ah, gotcha. Just wanted to clarify.

I've always considered turboprops to be jet engines; any other definition of "jet" would likely leave high-bypass turbofans to also be not "jet" engines.

A bit of a tangent, but it reminds me of how Apple loves to say in their announcements that whatever product is "the best X we've ever done." Well of course it is, why would you make a new thing that's worse than last year's?

In tech, "newest" often trumps "best".

Idlewords has a better talk on a similar theme, using planes as an example: http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

Engineers alive in the fast rise period assume this fast improvement goes on for ever. But it doesn't. Once a technology gets good enough the innovation shifts to lowering costs, not improving the product.

Do check out the link above, it's one of the most thought provoking tech pieces I've ever read.

And then that old tech is still around for a long, long time....

Piston aeroplanes are still flying today. New ones, in small 2, 4 and 6 seat capacity are still being built[0]. Some older piston aeroplanes, perhaps in the region of 40-60 years old, are being overhauled and modernised for commercial flight training use.[1] Some larger 8-12 seat piston aeroplanes are still in use carrying commercial passengers and cargo[3] and also have various modernisation upgrade options available.[4]

Of course there are modern turboprop aeroplanes which can do the same jobs better - for some definition - but the issue is economics. The capital investment in a turboprop outweighs the cost of maintenance and Avgas in an older piston engine design. (This is changing due to the fact of Avgas becoming very scarce in many regions of the world.)

The point being, I wouldn't expect the PC, with keyboard and mouse paradigm, to disappear in the near future. I'd still expect many white collar workers to be sitting at their desk, typing on a something resembling a keyboard, in 50 years time.

[0] http://beechcraft.txtav.com/en/baron-g58

[1] http://www.aopa.org/Community-and-Events/152-Reimagined

[3] http://www.altitudeaviation.com.au/air-charter-aircraft-ligh...

[4] http://www.mikejonesaircraft.com/default.htm

Agreed. I guess the point is that there are still improvements in mobile and TV and other interfaces. I am still many times faster at almost any task with my laptop, but it is not always with me like my phone or as comfortable as my TV.

The clippers weren't the last (nor to a certain standard) best commercial cargo sailing ships. That would be the steel-hulled windjammers, which were first built in the most popular configuration in 1875, and the largest of which wasn't built until 1902[1].

They weren't as fast as the clippers (though still quite fast for a sailing vessel), but they could carry much more cargo. They remained cheaper than steam for many years for non time sensitive bulk cargo. Even after they would have disappeared from a completely free market, they remained in service due to the artificial cheapness of labor for some countries that required serving terms aboard a commercial sailing vessel for certain licenses.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preu%C3%9Fen_%28ship%29

The part about rate of improvement following an S-shape is interesting and I'd like to see it empirically researched, but the fact that the last exemplar of a given technology is always the most advanced is quasi tautological. Why would you build a new plane if it wasn't better (in some way) than what came before it? Or a new computer/phone?

I can see the Cutty Sark out of my window at work (barely), I've never really thought of it as technology really.

more fool you

Technology is everywhere, and we are almost blind to it because it is so pervasive. I don't mean that as a criticism, because we really have no alternative. Step out into a downtown area, even of a little podunkville with three shops and a gas station, look around you, and start considering the web of dependencies you are enmeshed in, the road, the cars, the products in the windows, the windows themselves, all the breeding that has gone into all the plants you see, all the sounds you here beyond the noise of the wind and maybe some bird calls, all the smells... it would give you continuous vertigo to try to be aware like that all the time. Worth it to do once or twice though; it's a nice counterweight to the constant doom & gloom of the news and constant confident assurances that everything is going to hell and has gone to hell over the past $ARBITRARY years.

Only the best of the paradigm / technology, also known as best of breed. The difficulty is deciding when to make the jump from old paradigm to new paradigm. The article mentioned the clippers vs steam ships and how much better the steam ships were, but usually the decision is much harder.

Take smart phones for example. Just when the Iphone 2.5G came out, was it better to get a new Iphone (with in some regards limited functionality, slow connection and poor camera) or stick with the "Best of breed" feature phones?

See the square windows on the Lockheed Constellation? The window corners turned out to be the weak point during pressurization, leading to failure, so windows were rounded after that.

Propeller aircraft design hasn't stagnated. I quite enjoy flights in the Bombardier Q400's that Porter Airlines operates.

Not sure I'd put the Convair as the pinacle of piston power. Constellation sure.

P51 Mustang, or Hawker Typhoon perhaps have more claim.

So it depends from where you look. Much like I don't think I'd say that everything possible has been optimised in the laptop world.

The Convair was the example of piston tech taken too far.

I'd go for the de Havilland Mosquito:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito

Another example: the Sega Dreamcast was the last video game console designed from the ground up with 2D graphics in mind and still retains a cult following for this reason.

Pretty sure you mean Sega Saturn. Dreamcast was mostly 3D games. Saturn was designed primarily for 2D and they got burned for it, because Playstation and Nintendo 64 was showing the new 3D hotness (although those early 3D graphics really haven't aged well, while Saturn's 2D games still look pretty good), and were also cheaper.

Or in some cases, like with supersonic commercial jets, the technology is retired before it's mature.

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