I think it's more that the low hanging fruit has been plucked than that there is a 'fall' of industrial research labs. Just like with technology in the early 20th century there was a golden age where advances were relatively quick and dramatic because the fields were brand new. Once the field matures it takes more effort to get up to speed on what has already been learned and evolutionary progress rather than revolutionary takes over.
And so far we seem to be doing pretty good with that level of progress. Any faster than this and I'm not sure we'd be able to properly integrate technology into our culture and society before it had become obsolete already.
Just look at for instance the succession of audio recording and distribution methods to get an idea of that: the gramophone record lasted for many decades, CDs succeeded them and lasted for a couple of decades, digital formats are dying out about as fast as they are being created (with the exception of mp3).
At some point you're going to have problems of interoperability simply because of the speed of progress (we're seeing something quite close to that on the browser front right now).
To explain this acceleration of technology, let's remind the exponential growth of population: There are more people on Earth than dead population since the birth of times
So there's as much potential for science advance in 1 lifespan as since the wake of Humanity.
>To explain this acceleration of technology, let's remind the exponential growth of population: There are more people on Earth than dead population since the birth of times
Actually there have been around 100 billion people born over this history of human kind. Given a bit over 7 billion people are still alive that suggests most people ever born are dead.
As an aside I have heard this suggested as an argument that the probability of death is not one. If only ~93% of all the people born have ever died then you can't be certain that everyone born will die.
I beg to differ, based on experience. The low-hanging fruit is gone only for the paths mainstream research take. There were some great discoveries recently but since they don't resonate with the "in" crowd it gets mostly ignored.
Re: robotics- you mean low-hanging fruit research-wise or application-wise?
I'm not closely following latest research in this area but I get the feeling that most of the
focus is geared towards autonomous cooperation and nano-scale. What are other directions?
Application-wise :) Mostly I'm thinking that with cheap 3D-scanning sensors and GPUs, it's finally the beginning of the era for domestic and consumer robots to be viable.
And so far we seem to be doing pretty good with that level of progress. Any faster than this and I'm not sure we'd be able to properly integrate technology into our culture and society before it had become obsolete already.
Just look at for instance the succession of audio recording and distribution methods to get an idea of that: the gramophone record lasted for many decades, CDs succeeded them and lasted for a couple of decades, digital formats are dying out about as fast as they are being created (with the exception of mp3).
At some point you're going to have problems of interoperability simply because of the speed of progress (we're seeing something quite close to that on the browser front right now).