--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Look around you, at the rate things ~were~ going, super sonic travel
> should
> > be commonplace, a moon station should be old news, maned mars mission
> should
> > be old news as well. Highly destributed concurent systems should be
> > commonplace.
>
> There is a much easier explanation for this. It first happened in physics,
> and then it happened in engineering as the simple applications of physics
> all happened. I think Pauli may have been the first to talk about it, but
> I won't swear it was him. It might have been Dirac, and I'd appreciate
> correction:
>
> "Back then, a second rate mind could have a first rate idea. Now, a first
> rate mind has a hard time coming up with a third rate idea."
>
> The last fundamental revolution in physics was about 75 years ago. Recent
> fundamental theoretical advances, like the standard model, have no known
> commercial applications, even 25 years later. QED does, but that's 50
> years old, and its probably the last innovation.
<yada yada>
Nice try Dan, but we both know that's not what is happening here. I was not
referencing anything we don't already know ~how~ to do, just stuff we aren't
doing that we do know how to do, or worse, have done.
Granted the space exploration stuff might take a bit of thought here and
there, but we've already built supersonic airlines and highly destributed
concurent systems. They aren't being used though, and when you realize why
you learn something about the culture. It's not like we aren't advancing as
quickly, it's that we are moving backwards. You know it, I know it, everyone
who stops and thinks about it knows that for the real big stuff, the
possible, the known, we just don't have it any more.
=====
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Jan William Coffey
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