[Jach]

I'd question the 30-40 years figure. I suspect "it depends".

Check out the book "Skunk Works" sometime and marvel at what they managed to do on the frontiers with such small numbers of people and crappy computers (with relatively small budgets and tight deadlines to boot).

Peter Thiel riffs on this idea a lot. Despite our incredible advances in computing and networks, it seems like progress in everything else has slowed down. (Randomly found video with his basic stack of points: http://bigthink.com/embeds/video_idea/48434?width=512&height...)

Another example, consider how long it takes to build any skyscraper in the US. This isn't even new tech, it's well understood, but it still takes a long time from planning to legal stuff to the actual construction. And yet there's a guy in China who builds other kinds of skyscrapers at a rate of two floors per day. Slowness is not a fundamental thing.

[_coldfire]

Which of those two skyscrapers would you prefer to be inside during an earthquake?

[Jach]

Zhang's. They're built to withstand magnitude 9.0. https://www.wired.com/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building-ins... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/30/chinese-constr...

[adrianN]

They might be designed to withstand magnitude 9.0, whether they actually are built that way is a different question.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed; I would assume a big part of the bureaucratic layer exists to make everything work mostly correct even though there will be cheaters and thieves at every stage of the construction process.