Considering that Tesla demonstrated wireless transfer of power in late 19th century, I do think its more than possible.
Its just that we live in a system which is limited by the amount of money it can invest in.
If investors see a technology as too outlandish or even too expensive, it won't be invested into.
Tesla demonstrated the "most Basic Understanding" of how to do it, but he was one of literally a handful of people on Earth who could understand the science behind it. Science was still incredibly in it's nascent stage at that point in time when Tesla was around.
Investors didn't understand the costs behind it versus the costs behind delivering power via AC/DC lines.
We also know now that there is significant EMF / Radiation limits we need to consider because of Wireless power transfer and how it affects the human body, that's something they didn't understand back then and were rightly cautious about the effects on the human body.
And it's significantly more efficient to deliver electrical power over wire than by wireless transfer of power.
You have less wasted electricty spent to power/charge your device.
Take maglev for example. Invented in 1960-ies and already in 1974 we had proposals that the technology can be paired with vacuum tubes which would propel the said trains to velocities of 2000 miles per hr.
We hadn't done this due to cost efficiency constraints. Even now we are barely using the technology.
Take UK for example, it would have costed £60 billion to connect Brigton to Aberdeen (and pass through all major cities) and then back along the coast... and yet, the idiot government is stupidly investing into HS2 which is based on outdated rail technology (on which they already spent over £100 billion).
This is just one example of monetary constrains and investing into stupidly outdated approaches that long term would become obsolete extremely fast (a product of outdated thinking and 0 indication of what we can actually do).
In the UFP, monetary constraints don't exist... and as such wouldn't experience same hangups.
The HyperLoop is just a modern take on vacuum trains with maglev tech, and there are ALL sorts of reasons why you shouldn't persue it, ALOT of it is safety reasons along with the resources needed to make a truly safe Vacuum Tube and the amount of time it takes to pump in/out the vacuum along with issues dealing with implosions, maintaining said track, the efficiency of delivering people. It's alot of Pie in the Skie dreaming and it's not practical for a whole host of reasons beyond "Money".
Rail Technology is resource and cost efficient. Even if there was no money, there are Raw Matter / Energy concerns in the UFP along with maintenance and Energy Consumption compared to # of People moved for ___ distance.
Government just don't spend more resources because it's Faster/Shinier/Newer. There has to be a marked improvement on Energy/Unit Matter spent to move ___ people over ___ distance for ___ years of operation before replacement and maintenance.
No UFP Government would just spend more Energy/Unit Matter or need more Maintenance just because you want the new Fast/Shiny.
There are Safety concerns, resource allocation concerns, Energy Consumption, Reliability, Repairability, etc.
Looking at also what scientists are doing when it comes to increasing overall range and quality of wireless communications (especially using quantum based technologies), the market itself has only just now begun to 'catch up' and invest more in the infrastructure because investors are seeing potential profit in that area.
Please show me IRL working Quantum based Wireless communication that actually works in mass production.
Exponential advancements and returns usually do end up breaking people's perceptions... most people cannot think along those lines because they aren't taught.
Heck, even I am having a hard time thinking about it, but the difference is that I take it into account.
That's why I said my projections are conservative at best.
Also, how every area is currently advancing is intrinsically LIMITED by the amount of MONEY that flows into it (and majority of it is NOT spent on infrastructure, science, technology or improvement of quality of life for everyone - least of all there is very LITTLE in how much is spent on environmental protection and repair).
That's because most advancements in IRL history aren't as "Exponential" as you think they are, regardless of money and your detest/hatred for Capitalism.
Environmental Protection and repair didn't even start to come into the public conciousness until the late 1950's / 1960's. Before then, most people/"the masses" never understood the Ecology of our World, or how we are damaging the Environment. It's only been a relatively recent trend in the past few decades that we as a larger society focused on it.
In short, how we develop at the moment has nothing to do with the amount of resources we can shuffle into a given project and just developing the BEST in that area and improve upon it.
Instead, atm, humanity looks at things from a pure monetary point of view... since this doesn't exist in UFP, the same limitations do NOT apply.
You'll be surprised, it's more than just "Monetary" PoV right now. Otherwise companies like Tesla or SunPower wouldn't survive or exist, regardless of money. There are a finite set of people who understand the most high level of any given field.
You can't just shove people into ___ field and magically make it progress, real life isn't a game of Civilization.
A.I. isn't some magical element that you think it is that will automatically fix things. If you understood how A.I. IRL really works, you'll easily understand all it's weaknesses and limitations.
That's why I said that on average high end ends up in the mid end after about two years, and in another two years, it will end up in the low end.
I've been following the PC market since I was a kid, easily for over 20 years, it's not a "Doubling" every 2 years, far from it, and it's definitely not just "High end shifts to mid, and then to low end.
There are FAR more tiers of performance and far more nuance when it comes to every generations pushing of the performance envelope at the top end. It's not as simple as you think it is.
Same with CPU's.
ArsTechnica did a decent job showing 20 years of CPU performance gains.
It's not the most in depth or accurate, but reading the article gives you a very rough estimate of performance improvements over each generation, and it's largely linear increases in performance with a few jumps here and there based on big break throughs.
You're again constraining things to the 'competition' aspect within the market system which is intrinsically limited by the amount of money that goes into a given segment (not the amount physical resources that could be easily shuffled into a project with relatively minimal effort - especially if the raw material is sourced from landfills, broken down into base elements and reconstituted into what we need - no need for outdated 'mining of fresh resources').
Improvements in technology is far more than shoveling in raw materials, even with recycling existing matter from landfills.
And resources are more than just "Physical Units to allocate".
When you go to R&D, many aspects that you thought would pan out, don't work once you test it. Even if you want to bring it into mass production, it might not be scalable on a mass production way.
Intel also held a monopoly on the market for that decade and was BRIBING OEM's to not include AMD's technology in their systems, or to basically pair it with subpar hw.
Yes, I know all about Intel's criminal past and how it violated Anti-Trust.
This is Capitalist limitation which has NOTHING to do with how much technology could have progressed in the absence of the market and money where needed resources were simply shuffled into creation of superior computer chips.
Even with infinite money, there are only a finite amount of people who are good enough at every stage of R&D, CPU design, engineering, etc.
Electrical Engineering and improving Computer CPU's / GPU's / Electronics isn't something where you can grow talented engineers on trees or shovel them out of a University and see them make revolutions over night.
That's not how it works. Even without a Monetary System like the UFP, there are only a few talented people good enough to push the boundaries of each field of technology, it's not something where you will magically solve everything via brute force or computer power.
Even the Borg, with it's vast computing Collective AI, still needed to assimilate entire species instead of creating all new technology on it's own. It lacks the creative insight on how to R&D / develop technologies. It can only solve problems based on it's limited tool kit and lacks the creativity to truly innovate on it's own. That's why it needed Janeways method to defeat Species 8472.
For example, we had numerous proposals for using carbon composites as a replacement for silicon in chip construction dating back to the 1990-ies, but were never really explored properly due to 'cost efficiency' limitations as dictated by the Capitalist market.
It's more than just "Cost Efficiency" bro, there are finite amounts of people who truly understand how the entire system works together, there is a more than just $$$ reasons why we still stick to silicon instead of moving to carbon or graphene as the die-electric layer. Alot of it has to do with figuring out how to make Carbon / Graphene a truly mass producable replacement for Silicon that has all the benefits and none of the down-sides. It's never as simple as just "Throw Money at it".
Money is just a small aspect of the issue.
Fact remains that IBM developed proposals in holographic storage since 1990 for example and we have YET to see it in practical use.
Because Holographic Storage has yet to become practical compared to magnetic, it's easier to innovate and improve storage capacity based on magnetic systems than using Holographic. Don't just believe the hype everytime somebody writes a science article promising ___ improvements. There are ALOT more roadblocks than you think there are when it comes to R&D that goes beyond $$$.
In fact the first touch screens were invented in the 1970-ies... and we hadn't seen them deployed on a large scale until multiple decades later... mainly again due to cost efficiency getting in the way.
The technology to do Star Trek like Touch Screen wasn't really feasible on a technological level until the mid 00's. It has nothing to do with cost efficiency and more to do with the hardware level needed to make it happen.
The UFP (I'll repeat) has no such constraints... and would be shuffling enough RESOURCES into practically every sector... some more than others perhaps, but regardless, evolution in every sector would have radically ECLIPSED what we are doing when money is out of the picture.
It's never as simple as just "Throwing Resources" at the problem, if you ever did any real engineering or complicated work on a massive project, you'll understand that many times, it goes beyond $$$, but there are real technological impediments that can't be just solved via throwing resources at things.
You're understanding of real world R&D and how things gets developed seems to be overly simplistic.
Look at Warp drive. When Voyager launched, it was able to sustain Warp 9.75 for 12 hrs.
4 years later, the USS Prometheus was stolen by the Romulans and was maintaining Warp 9.9 with relative ease with no indication it needs to stop at that velocity.
So, we have seen pretty much a doubling (or more) in Warp speed in just 4 years from an FTL engine which is arguably a LOT more difficult to advance (given exponential increases in power consumption) compared to sensor technology.
And I've done the math for the actual Wf 9.75 -> Wf 9.9 based on Tom Paris' statement on how fast Wf 9.9 is from the episode "The 37's". Wf 9.9 ~= 21,473c
And the increase in speed from Wf 9.75 -> Wf 9.9 when converted to multiples of c (Speed of Light) is only a 16⅔ % improvement in linear speed "AT Best", if you use the cubic formula, it'll be even smaller % of an increase.
It's not the dramatic gain that you're making it out to be of "Doubling performance in 4 years".
Also, we have more advanced proposals for communications and sensor technology, but existing companies on the market and their monopolies do not necessarily allow such proliferation until older tech has been effectively 'milked for all its worth' in terms of money... or until new tech demonstrates it can generate large amount of profit.
Please show me where it is, this advanced technology for communications and sensor technology that is being held back by the evils of $$$.
And again, the existing industry doesn't really consider the prospect of harvesting old/existing technology for raw materials which could be used to create new technology in its place. Instead, they go off and create even higher environmental impacts by taking up more and more space with 0 regard to the environment - they don't really look at the bigger picture... which is why real life is no where near indicative of how fast technology and science could actually evolve due to artificial limitations we have in place.
Harvesting raw materials vs recycling existing raw materials and refining it down to it's base matter is a matter of challenge, difficulty in seperation of all it's chemical components while being energy, matter, and resource efficient.
It's not that simple, we can't just rip apart everything atom by atom for recycling and get perfect recycling and reuse. And it comes down to more than just $$. There's energy, labor, time, etc.
Again, such limitations and mindsets wouldn't exist in UFP.
At least, its definitely not difficult for me to see this... but maybe part of the reason is because I read advancements in science and technology ona regular basis, then contrast that to how fast the market 'reacts' and implements them... and the market is ridiculously slow.
In essence, our science and technology are evolving today so fast that they have SURPASSED the outdated socio-economic system we have (which is struggling as is).
There are resource allocation issues in the UFP, it's all there in the Beta canon and Alpha canon as well.
Just because the UFP has better recycling doesn't mean it doesn't have matter / energy resource allocation issues along with man power, R&D budget allocations, etc.
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