22nd January 2011, 8:45 AM
My point was that while we don't have any huge breakthroughs in battery tech, it isn't for lack of trying. And, there have been numerous SMALL breakthroughs. Over time, those add up.
It's similar to how people whine about scientists not finding "the cure for cancer", as though it's just some single cure waiting to be put into a pill, even though over the decades countless small advances in treating it have been successfully developed, to the point where today's cancer treatment is massively better than it was 50 years ago. Computer advancement is incredible, but I think it spoils us to the speed every other field advances at to the point people don't recognize that they ARE still advancing.
It's similar to how people whine about scientists not finding "the cure for cancer", as though it's just some single cure waiting to be put into a pill, even though over the decades countless small advances in treating it have been successfully developed, to the point where today's cancer treatment is massively better than it was 50 years ago. Computer advancement is incredible, but I think it spoils us to the speed every other field advances at to the point people don't recognize that they ARE still advancing.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)