Technological stagnation: Why I came around

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket and a global communications network to connect everyone on the planet to each other and to the whole of the world’s knowledge, art, philosophy and culture.”

I quite liked their take on the industrial revolutions. The first industrial revolution had a few major staples, as did the second, and we are so eerily early in the third that who knows what will begin.

So, making a very rough count of revolutionary technologies, there were:

> 3 in IR1: mechanization, steam power, the locomotive, 5 in IR2: oil + internal combustion, electric power, electronic communications, industrial chemistry, germ theory, 1 in IR3 (so far): computing + digital communications

Personally, I think IR3 will also have robotics, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology (genetic editing, &c) will be the defining additionals.

Fingers crossed for nuclear fusion