When will we hit the technological plateau

[valkyrie013]

Been reading again,
Some passages had me thinking, at what point will say the human race, plateau technologically?
500 years? 1000 years?
Let's say we discover some form of FTL. Stargates, hyperspace. Etc..
We go out we make ships, we explore, talk to aliens etc. But how long do we do that? At what point do we plateau with say FTL .we can't go faster. Ships are if the best material. All that is left is refinements
Progress would slow to a trickle, some people would continue working, but like space in the 70's not much motivation.
What does the human race do?

Was just thinking and would like other thoughts

 

[Noname Given]

Been reading again,
Some passages had me thinking, at what point will say the human race, plateau technologically?
500 years? 1000 years?
Let's say we discover some form of FTL. Stargates, hyperspace. Etc..
We go out we make ships, we explore, talk to aliens etc. But how long do we do that? At what point do we plateau with say FTL .we can't go faster. Ships are if the best material. All that is left is refinements
Progress would slow to a trickle, some people would continue working, but like space in the 70's not much motivation.
What does the human race do?

Was just thinking and would like other thoughts

It depends on the particular technology involved. Certain technologies have already plateaued.

 

[Oddish]

That's true. The internal combustion engine is basically the same as it has been for decades. The 9mm cartridge that our police and military use in their weapons is 113 years old. And the concrete and steel that makes up most buildings has been around since the 30's at least.

The tech that's really growing in computers, speed and storage capacity. And who knows how far that will go?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think the fact we haven’t fully explored quantum computing means we have a bit farther up to go. Also deep learning, data science and AI are pretty young.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

You know how in fantasy and science fiction, there’s always a long dead race of ancients with lost advanced technology to be studied and discovered?

Ever think, we are them? We are living in Atlantis right now.

 

[Oddish]

A lot of technology is blocked by things we have not yet developed. Why are laser weapons not a thing? It has nothing to do with lasers, we've had them since the 50's, and they've been in consumer good since the 80's. It's because we can't produce a portable power source strong enough.

 

[Gaith]

Let's say we discover some form of FTL. Stargates, hyperspace. Etc..

Er... "Let's discuss the future of real-world/plausible science, but from a starting point of fantasy"?

 

[Oddish]

Agreed. Let's get into space. Let's put people on Mars. Let's visit Jupiter and Saturn and joke about men on Uranus. Let's have Ds9 style stations in orbit and domed colonies on the moon. And then maybe we can start looking at the stars.

 

[DEWLine]

We're already working on mapping out our own galaxy, to every degree possible. GAIA, TESS, Kepler, a few other projects underway...and this is a discussion we could move to Science and Technology, right?

Here's some resources to play with:

http://galaxymap.org/drupal/node/265

 

[valkyrie013]

What timeframe I'm talking about isn't in the near future, it's something like a1000 years in the future.
Alot of stuff that would look and be fantastical.
That humanity has peaked. What then?

 

[Starbreaker]

There's always something else. Time travel, instantaneous travel to other dimensions or any part of the universe. Conquering death. Cooking a hot pocket all the way through.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

What timeframe I'm talking about isn't in the near future, it's something like a1000 years in the future.
Alot of stuff that would look and be fantastical.
That humanity has peaked. What then?

By that point, I think we'd definitely be out in the stars and we would, to borrow a phrase, boldly go where no human has gone before...

After all, technology isn't inherently the end all of human existence. Exploration is where it will always go.

 

[Oddish]

Hard to say how fast or how much we'll progress in the next few years, decades, or centuries. Far as I'm concerned, NASA pretty much became irrelevant on January 28, 1986. So maybe exploration is not in our future.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

A lot of technology is blocked by things we have not yet developed. Why are laser weapons not a thing? It has nothing to do with lasers, we've had them since the 50's, and they've been in consumer good since the 80's. It's because we can't produce a portable power source strong enough.

It’s also much less cost efficient than just getting a tiny piece of metal moving really fast.

 

[Ovation]

Cooking a hot pocket all the way through.

Well that’s just plain silly talk right there. You’ll only ever see something like that in science fiction.

 

[Oddish]

Cooking a hot pocket all the way through.

I do it all the time.

 

[Snaploud]

I doubt we're in any danger of reaching some natural dead end in technological development. The bigger risk is societal collapse or political stagnation (resulting in people/resources not being devoted to technological improvement).

 

[Owain Taggart]

A lot of technology is blocked by things we have not yet developed. Why are laser weapons not a thing? It has nothing to do with lasers, we've had them since the 50's, and they've been in consumer good since the 80's. It's because we can't produce a portable power source strong enough.

Yeah, exactly. I've long felt that while predictions are a thing, there's always the unknowable variable of societal progress which will always throw off predictions. Nobody can predict the rate at which society will make its progress. Some of it is fast, some of it is slow. And while some predictions will come to fruition, through a quirk of this societal progress, it will often likely end up more advanced or completely different than originally predicted anyway. And there are examples of this throughout history.

 

[Mudd]

we hit it sixty or seventy years ago. No one notices because we keep inventing distracting toys.

 

[Oddish]

I think that different technologies plateau at different times. Earlier ones I mentioned (cars, construction, weapons, batteries) have plateaued. Others (electronics, computers) are still growing. And some (lasers) are awaiting a great leap forward elsewhere before they can advance.

And some have been the same since time immemorial. We still use steel, for instance, and it's been around for centuries.