[lazerpants]

It's like looking at the Wright Flyer and saying that it is neat proof of concept, but that affordable transatlantic flight will simply never be possible. Prescient at that point in history, but myopic over a long enough time frame.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm surprised it was downvoted. It was a good point. Those of us in the computer industry can well remember when "640K should be enough for anyone."

We literally cannot imagine what the future will bring. I'm still waiting on my flying atomicar.

I think it will end up being necessary to make food this way, and that we'll figure out how to do it (Soylent Green, anyone?).

[2muchcoffeeman]

These sorts of things look like inspirational posters and suffer from survivorship bias. Many more ideas failed than succeeded.

We also seem to think that no one learned from all that experience. We can see the things that made something once thought impossible work at scale. We all know these stories. So we’re more primed to be wary of just being negative.

I’m all for spending money on this, but it could turn out certain breakthroughs are needed and we don’t know when or if they will come.

[White_Wolf]

I do have times when I look at my phone and think about the first "computer" I touched. I'm still amazed sometimes of how tech changed since I was 6-7 years old(talking almost 40 years)

I'm no fan of lab growing anything because or banning people from raising animals or having food plots because those that make the food make the rules. That being said... I wouldn't be suprised to see, in 2-3 decades, something taking off in that regard. All it takes is one stroke of genius and a ton of elbow grease to change it all.

[randomdata]

> Those of us in the computer industry can well remember when "640K should be enough for anyone."

I can remember the urban legend, but there seems to be no solid evidence that it was ever actually said, let alone believed by anyone. The saying is normally attributed to Bill Gates, but he denies ever saying it, and tells how he was pushing computer makers to include even more RAM.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

That’s why I didn’t attribute the quote. I’m quite aware that the attribution is probably B.S.

There’s no question that the attitude was prevalent, though; whether or not Gates said anything like it.

“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”

—Abraham Lincoln

[randomdata]

When 640k was all you could reasonably buy as a consumer, it had to be enough for anyone if you wanted to own a computer at the time. It was never thought of as some fundamental limit that could not be broken or utilized in larger quantities, however.

[Jensson]

Most things people said wouldn't happen didn't happen though. Some remarkable things happened, yes, but you can't count on remarkable breakthroughs happening in any specific area.

People looked at past results and thought we would live forever by now, but we still die and there is no end in sight of that.

People looked at past energy use and saw the future of fusion solving all human energy needs, but energy use has been flat for the past 50 years as no new efficient enough energy sources was found.

People looked at the innovations of transportation and assumed we would all have flying cars today, yet we still drive cars on the ground just like 70 years ago. They are a bit safer and more efficient today, but they are still just cars.

[beambot]

Fwiw, net-positive nuclear fusion now legitimately looks to be less than 5 years out. See Commonwealth Fusion. Here's a technical deep dive:

https://youtu.be/rY6U4wB-oYM

[Jensson]

Those slides was 2.5 years ago, there ought to have been some very interesting development since then if it is just 5 years away, right? Can't you link something more recent?

[beambot]

Most recent advances: https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusio...

I just figured the physics symposium lecture would be more interesting given the deep-dive details and allusions to why ITER "failed" to achieve the desired breakthroughs.

[pas]

(Just to elaborate on ITER. It's the classic too big to fail project, not to mention it has basically one feature: it's so over-engineered that it can't fail. It's almost the equivalent of the LHC. Built to "prove" a theory. Of course almost everyone wished some beyond the standard model physics to pop up at the LHC, it didn't as far as I know. Almost nobody wishes for unexpected things to happen at ITER, so it's supre boring. With a really eye-watering price tag. But at the same time it is a big umbrella project to get the necessary components designed, built, and tested for fusion. It's accumulating know-how, training experts, it's literally paving the fucking way. Hence the name. And in that context it's basically free. Companies spend more on filing and litigating dumb parents, and those are obvious too.)

[Jensson]

Thanks, that looks cool. Just that a professor with slides is rarely a good sign that something is soon production ready, but them meeting production milestones is a good sign.

Still I wont bother to check the physics, if they are right it is great, but I wont change my life based on them making it. I know the problems with ITER, it will be too expensive to really revolutionize much, but I haven't done physics in a while and wont bother with more now.