Old Tech, New Tech

A few blog posts ago, I bemoaned the fact that global technological innovations needed some juice – the fastest commercial airliner, Concorde, has been mothballed, and we’re nowhere near going to Mars. It seemed as if some of our best technological achievements are behind us.

Have a look at this new article in Time – The Boring Age. It’s essentially saying the same thing. The pace of technological innovation itself is at an all-time high, but are we just fiddling with a tried and tested formula each time? Are we innovating according to customer focus groups and not pushing the boundaries of science, technology and engineering? Where’s the new game-changer?

I keep returning to the aviation technology matter. While new innovations over the past few years have improved engine efficiencies etc, it’s still the same basic propulsion system. New systems being tested (like scramjet technologies) look promising, but take decades of testing before they’re put to use, much less applied commercially. But beyond that, what about the whole engineering of the way we travel. Pictures and movies of travel in the 1950′s era – the so-called Golden Age of travel – seem so glamorous. Sure it may have taken them a longer time to get from Point A to Point B, but didn’t those people in the pics look happy? Compare that to the cattle cars we’re put in now. Are the bean-counting accountants and economists the ones putting the brakes on innovating a new, more comfortable means of travel nowadays? And, in the end, would customers pay more for a more comfortable means of travel that doesn’t make their journey that much longer? That, however, is not my point. All I want to know is if it’s possible to develop a new and better way of traveling using new innovative methods.

Now I don’t have the answers to these things – I’m not clairvoyant either. Just some simple observations…