Why Does Technology Take So Long?

Technology progress as fast as the money will flow from it .

Del

Because if we didn't care about it we'd still be in the dark ages.

Discovery is its own reward.

There has been a fair amount of academic analysis about the rates of "technological substitution" and "diffusion of innovation", regardless of the technology. Try a Google on "technological substitution studies"...you'll be amazed. Many examples exist which prove the point (early ones include the substitution of diesel locomotives for steam locomotives; the replacement of black and white TV's with color ones, etc, etc). Birth control pills were well known and proven for 15-20 years before they became widely accepted. The same analyses have been done to explain the continued lower costs of computing power...several books have been written about this, but I have forgotten the titles. If you are interested, let me know, and I will dig out the title of one of them (which I actually purchased some 20 years ago).

As you'll see, there is much interest in predicting the rate of tech substitution, for planning future product development objectives..

"why should we care about it?"

I believe most of us would be happy to spend our entire lives working to make life better for our children and grandchildren than it was for us. If we were extremely self-centered and selfish, then I suppose we may not care. But most people are just not that way. Humans (With a few exceptions) are loving, caring individuals who sacrifice for others. If it were not so, this forum would not even exist.

Perhaps it's partially due to the results if you're the company/engineer/designer that used it first, and something goes wrong with the product. Even if it isn't the "innovation" that failed, it will be the machine with that new fangled idear(sic) that will be recalled.

Take Vista as an example. I keep hearing about how failure prone it is, but when I look at complaints I see very specific problems that are often caused by third party vendors. I run Vista and XP in daily operations and they seem to work equally well, with Vista having a few more useful features and XP being able to run older apps and some code on the original processor.

Bottom line: people have long memories for problems, and short memories of success.

Budgeting Debates and Papers Works.

ReBooting,

MC

They say necessity is the mother of invention. But for every rule there is an exemption.

Sometimes discovers comes way before necessity usually be accident, which compound with the need for other developments to take place, to utilize the original invention.

phoenix911

not to be a trouble maker , but servo's were in introduced in the 1950's, nobody knows everything, & never will. It depends on the Engineer and what need is to be satisfied to invent or design a device - machine or any apparatus you can imagine to satisfy a need.Also other parameters come into the picture.Cost to the customer, cost to build,production quantity,ability to build in house, not farmed out.also the Engineer must come up with numerous unknowns. This is the experimental stage to prove out an idea that has never been done before on a smaller scale. Also to be always available when a machinist needs to know what & how to do it. also assembly workers. Plus no changes should be made without documenting with the Engineer.An Engineer must never lose the handle on any part of his machine, etc.When your idle that means you forgot to do something or should be looking up advertising articles of misc. devices that could possibly be used. Thus Servo's were in the market earlier than you thought. Just never found it.