| It is impossible to predict what effects technological developments will have. Claiming that effort in one field is "wasted" or "misallocated" is the height of hubris. I make satellites that are being used to scan the earth to determine the impacts of climate change, quantify coastal erosion, monitor foliage coverage and crop health, locate buried ancient ruins, predict the weather, and create high-resolution 3d maps of urban areas. The production of these spacecraft is very low volume, and therefore very expensive. Research into new lithography techniques for longer-lasting battery-powered consumer devices led to low-power electronics that allow the spacecraft I make to have greater processing power for a given energy budget. Advancements in more powerful graphics chips for gaming have led to affordable (and yes, despite what you think they are affordable) GPUs used to process and rasterize the data the satellites I build gather. Unreal Engine is used to build tools needed visualize the results. The low-profile RF connectors that we use were invented for the specific purpose of shoving Bluetooth and Wi-Fi into thin consumer devices like laptops and tablets and they save us (noticeable and significant) weight. I can't predict what will happen but I think I can predict what will not happen and given the size of the market I work in I assert that there is an exact and precise 0.0% chance that the resources needed to develop the technology I rely on every day would have been allocated in service of my market. It is too small. Instead they were handed to me on a silver platter by the consumer electronics market. People playing smartphone games-- and militaries trying to destroy each other have directly led to what I do being possible. >but I had to admit to myself at one point that, long-term, playing video games for any extended period makes me physically miserable and dumber. I do not play video games, at least nothing newer than SNES games, but I know people who do and that sounds like a personal problem. |