Since then: Transportation, air ground and sea, virtually the same. Personal computers were there. Cell phones were there (larger, more expensive). Space program maybe in a better state. Space shuttle. Medicine hasn't fundamentally changed our quality of life.
What has changed? Not that much. We have progresses but not much in the way of revolutions.
The earth's population has grown, a lot. Computing devices are more ubiquitous and the Internet. The world has become a smaller place and people are a little less different. The Berlin wall has fallen. 9/11. Those of us with jobs are working harder. Gaps are growing between rich, middle class and poor.
2044
Climate? Population? Super bugs? We are likely to be closer to a "world state" but there's always a chance of some major war. Nuclear weapons? Major disasters?
Technology wise we will probably get self driving cars in this time frame. Maybe space exploration will advance but I don't believe in any major way, perhaps the ground work would be laid for some more major shift there. Life expectancy will probably increase somewhat. In many areas we are hitting some system complexity limits in being able to make major progress. This has been happening already. We'll get more bandwidth to our homes, have somewhat faster and smaller computers, and likely new display technologies (3d/VR ...) We will have more robotic devices around performing various functions but nothing like Asimov's world... I think client vs. server will shift back to more client side similar to the mainframe->PC shift...
For sure there have been a lot of changes but my intuition says progress over the last 30 years wasn't so great. I'm pretty sure the spread and severity of Malaria has grown. HIV. Air pollution in China.
Let's look at the link:
- It looks at 50 years, not 30 years.
- Very anecdotal. With regard to Mexico I'm not sure if it's better off than it was 30 years ago. What about the drug wars?
- Seems to equate more money with better outcome. High-rises and modern bridges = progress.
- "more than one billion people in extreme poverty," - today
- "Income per person has in fact risen in sub-Saharan Africa over that time, and quite a bit in a few countries", inflation adjusted? Doesn't look like it is. I was just looking at Wikipedia's Health in Kenya article: "The 2010 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Kenya is 530, yet has been shown to be as high as 1000 in the North Eastern Province, for example.[5]This is compared with 413.4 in 2008 and 452.3 in 1990"
All that said, the world is hopefully moving towards a more stable population and a larger middle class (percentage wise) but I would need to see a lot more data before being able to say a lot more for sure about changes over the last 30 years.
Great to put things into perspective. I do believe in autocatalysis (innovation cycles become shorter and shorter because each stage is the foundation/catalyst of the next). Danny Hillis has a great talk on this.
Since then: Transportation, air ground and sea, virtually the same. Personal computers were there. Cell phones were there (larger, more expensive). Space program maybe in a better state. Space shuttle. Medicine hasn't fundamentally changed our quality of life.
What has changed? Not that much. We have progresses but not much in the way of revolutions.
The earth's population has grown, a lot. Computing devices are more ubiquitous and the Internet. The world has become a smaller place and people are a little less different. The Berlin wall has fallen. 9/11. Those of us with jobs are working harder. Gaps are growing between rich, middle class and poor.
2044
Climate? Population? Super bugs? We are likely to be closer to a "world state" but there's always a chance of some major war. Nuclear weapons? Major disasters?
Technology wise we will probably get self driving cars in this time frame. Maybe space exploration will advance but I don't believe in any major way, perhaps the ground work would be laid for some more major shift there. Life expectancy will probably increase somewhat. In many areas we are hitting some system complexity limits in being able to make major progress. This has been happening already. We'll get more bandwidth to our homes, have somewhat faster and smaller computers, and likely new display technologies (3d/VR ...) We will have more robotic devices around performing various functions but nothing like Asimov's world... I think client vs. server will shift back to more client side similar to the mainframe->PC shift...