Submitted by Sawovsky t3_zwkpnm in Futurology
What I mean by perfect conditions is the widespread availability of education, books, world-shared knowledge, global cooperation of scientists, high-speed internet and computers... all that allowing for more complex research, bigger teams, budgets, many people working on projects...
We live in an era where there are many more educated people, and a lot of money is put into r&d and scientific institutes by both countries and corporations.
Conditions seem ripe to have significant breakthrough discoveries every other day, but somehow it seems that there are fewer MAJOR discoveries and inventions compared to 100-200 years ago.
What I mean by "significant" falls within these conditions:
- Something that fundamentally changes society and/or our worldview.
- Era-defining inventions/discoveries (cars, steam machines, TV, microchips, vaccines (the concept of it, not individual vaccines)...).
- Something obvious that it's enormous and paradigm-shifting.
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I may be wrong and missing things, but most major things we now have are still based on technology from the 20th century. If I'm wrong, please - correct me!