In 1999 we hadn’t experienced the dotcom crash or 911. Those events may have slowed consumer technology application by a few years. On the other hand, military robots, remotely piloted aircraft, and “social” software for tracking terrorist groups have seen accelerated development. Concerns about global warming and oil shortages will likely accelerate nanotech and biotech associated with energy production while reducing the pace of development in other fields. Computational power continues to increase by a factor of a thousand per decade. Biotech continues to advance exponentially.
If humanity were really approaching a technological singularity I’d expect to see rapid increases in average wealth. Stock market performance in the last decade doesn’t reflect a growth in real wealth. Also death rates for common diseases aren’t showing a significant decline.
In 1999 we hadn’t experienced the dotcom crash or 911. Those events may have slowed consumer technology application by a few years. On the other hand, military robots, remotely piloted aircraft, and “social” software for tracking terrorist groups have seen accelerated development. Concerns about global warming and oil shortages will likely accelerate nanotech and biotech associated with energy production while reducing the pace of development in other fields. Computational power continues to increase by a factor of a thousand per decade. Biotech continues to advance exponentially.
If humanity were really approaching a technological singularity I’d expect to see rapid increases in average wealth. Stock market performance in the last decade doesn’t reflect a growth in real wealth. Also death rates for common diseases aren’t showing a significant decline.