Why Has Human Technology Advanced So Slowly? I have to wonder if anyone has noticed we have been discovering more types of matter and phases of matter lately? Advances in Technology are speeding up. Scientists found out a strange thing when experimenting with a quantum computer, they were able to simulate two periods of time at once. This was because they were able to induce a new phase of matter never seen before. There is so much going on. The James Webb telescope seems to be getting hit by tiny meteorites on a constant level. One estimate is it has already been hit 19 times with one doing significant damage to one of its 18 segmented mirrors. One has to wonder how much more of this it can take before its mission is brought to a halt. It was estimated it would take some hits, but it wasn’t thought one would be this damaging. Let’s hope it doesn’t get hit by another really damaging one like this. We have other large telescopes scheduled to be launched. The James Webb mirror is 6.5 meters and the Roman telescope, which is scheduled to be launch by SpaceX in a few years is 2.4 meters, still pretty big. It is the same size as the Hubble mirror. There is a debate going on which seems to be gaining steam. It has to do with finding alien life. It is a little more unusual than most debates on the subject, because it has to do with alien life being able to live in space, not just on a planet. It probably began because of some sightings of aliens in space without suits. Two different Russian crews saw giant aliens outside their space station and they were described as looking like angels. There are some strange thoughts about this. While it is true both sets of astronauts saw the same thing, taking this a step further we don’t know how far evolution could go or how much beings might be able to alter their bodies in the future to allow them to do things seemingly impossible to us today. Maybe many races, some races or a few races eventually give up their corporeal form and become more like a spirit. A spirit which isn’t affected by any of the usual conditions such as radiation and the lack of oxygen. Could it be when we die, we are skipping the evolutionary process and reaching that point and that is why we are so interesting to aliens? Are we advancing too fast, too slow or at the right pace? I have to wonder about this since is seems there was long periods of time when we didn’t seem to be advancing much at all and even when we had a spirt of advancement, such as with the ancient Greeks, it fell by the wayside. Why didn’t others build on these ancient Greek inventions such as the steam engine and even the ancient computer known as the Antikythera mechanism? Think of where we could have been today. When the wheel was invented, it was used for thousands of years as a means of transportation. No one thought about gears and such except for the few inventions for water mills later on until that ancient computer, which had features 1,500 years ahead of itself. Why didn’t someone think hey, we could make other mechanical things this way? Cars and trucks seemed to take a long time to finally reach people. It is recorded the first self-powered vehicle was invented in 1769. It was a steam powered wagon. War was the impetus for this invention. It was invented for the French Army to move supplies and even soldiers, but it never met the specifications. It had been designed to reach speeds of 4.8 miles per hour and be able to move 4 tons. Unfortunately, it was such a disappointment, it was back to the horses. That is not the question however. The question is why wasn’t it improved upon? It wasn’t until 1886 when the Benz Motorwagen was invented. All those years wasted. If we go back in time, we see there wasn’t much invented for hundreds of thousands of years. Sure, we figured out how to sharpen rocks and also use them in a hand axe, but that was about it for a long time. Evidence of what is believed to be arrow heads in a cave, leads us to assume the invention of the bow goes back 72,000 years ago. This is if we are correct and those are arrowheads and not some sort of tips for spears. For tens of thousands of years nothing new came out to replace the bow. When the Romans finally came on the scene, they had developed what can only be described as bigger shooting weapons which all worked on the same principle, that is launching objects. That was 70,000 years later. The Chinese had improved on the bow, but the bow was still being used. It is hard to believe so many years went by and we didn’t have much meaningful improvement in technology. Beings on other planets may only be more advanced than us, not because they have been around longer, or they are smarter, but because they didn’t have these huge gaps in developing advanced technology. Some races could be much younger than us and still more advanced. On the other hand, there may be older races than us who have never advanced. Could it be because the human lifespan was so short it prevented people from doing anything but trying to survive as long as possible? Now that we are living longer, which is still not long enough, could that be the reason we are able to advance technology so fast? Why have things changed in this area so much? Some say it is because we finally reached a point of invention where almost everything we invented, leads to more inventions. When we discover new materials for instance, that leads to us being able to create things which we have never been able to create before. New power sources also make it possible to create much more powerful machines, some of which like the Large Hadron Collider leads to more discoveries. I am no expert, but I see where we slacked off in developing means of transportation for space travel and are just now starting to advance again in that area. Part of this is caused by the way the government awards contracts. Companies with newer technology and better pricing should be given contracts ahead of those with the same old technology. The newer space companies are advancing past the older ones and this will also help in speeding technology.
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