I was talking to a friend recently about technology and its progression on a 10-100 year scale, someone who isn't as used to this class of thought experiment as the average HNer but has a background in math & physics.
Anyway, the upshot was that there are a few things to really keep your eye on, known unknowns more or less. One is any process with a long term trend of improvement, like GDP growth, computation growth and anything that seems to be following such a trend. Another is energy sources.
It used to be popular to think of technological progress as a history of energy sources. Human power followed by beasts of burden for agriculture and transport. Charcoal for smelting followed by coal. The old wind and water powered mills followed by the coal fired mills, steam engines etc. Oil, combustion engines. Each energy source enabled a sort of technological revolution. I think this model of tech-history was at its giddiest when nuclear seemed to hold more promise (the 50s?). Nuclear Power, the space age energy.
Any feats of energy sources are worth keeping an eye on.
I spent the rest of the spring designing and developing this new damping approach. Basically it amounts to a very sensitive array of sensors that are all hooked into a computer which is able to watch the data streams in real time to diagnose these phenomena. The computer is then able to apply precisely timed forces to the apparatus at key locations to get rid of these vibrations. I got the idea by reading an article on identifying and eliminating the vibrations that happen in the beams of big particle accelerators like CERN and the Large Hadron Collider.
Cool. Energy storage certainly counts. It's a nicely left of field concept, as a bottleneck remover.
If energy storage can get onto a rapid improvement path, all sorts of options might suddenly be feasible. But I have to say that the idea of a flywheel storing enough energy to power a house sounds scary, never mind anything bigger. What happens if the stabilisation fails somehow?
Allegedly from a comment during development on their kickstarter, an experienced fire engineer helped to design the four layer security system - running the flywheel to breaking point never damaged any layer except the innermost. However, this is yet to be seen in production, so YMMV.
Anyway, the upshot was that there are a few things to really keep your eye on, known unknowns more or less. One is any process with a long term trend of improvement, like GDP growth, computation growth and anything that seems to be following such a trend. Another is energy sources.
It used to be popular to think of technological progress as a history of energy sources. Human power followed by beasts of burden for agriculture and transport. Charcoal for smelting followed by coal. The old wind and water powered mills followed by the coal fired mills, steam engines etc. Oil, combustion engines. Each energy source enabled a sort of technological revolution. I think this model of tech-history was at its giddiest when nuclear seemed to hold more promise (the 50s?). Nuclear Power, the space age energy.
Any feats of energy sources are worth keeping an eye on.