My conclusion, while simplistic, points to an unfortunate mismatch between (1) our personal/subjective expectations to “progress”, (2) business management dogma, and (3) the shift from “enabling-progress” to “distribution-progress”.
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When I mean by subjective expectations, is that as the article refers to, many of us (techies), carry expectations to what progress must be like, the flying cars, spaceships and robot friends. These are images put into our minds, and some of them are based on pure fantasy and others, on former scientific trends, and their extrapolations. Others again, from former and current influencers, using them to manipulate us. An initial step to better grasp whether we are stagnating, is to look at the “possibility-space” between what is fundamentally possible within the principles of known science, and see where we are dragging our feet. If we are missing progress in obvious areas, it may come down to economics, but most likely is is due to the lack of transitional/incremental investment opportunities with a sufficiently small risk/capital step size to allow for progress (on this i (2) ). We are not likely to get anti-matter worm-drives as the next iteration from SpaceX’s Starship, the step-size is simply too risky even if the physical principles are understood.
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Since the mid-70s, the general business trend has been to take all business decisions based on a NPV/ROI, hereby assuming that we have sufficient knowledge about the outcome of an effort to estimate whether it is worth doing. Likewise, the frameworks of risk management are seldom able to manage uncertainty in imagination (i.e. the “unknown-unknowns”), forcing a decision bias towards preferring investments with known risks, that can be managed. Combining these management practices makes it basically impossible to allocate capital towards fundamental R&D, with no certain outcomes, and where the ROI can have an asymmetric upside, by opening up a completely new paradigm for business and progress.
On top of this, “Venture” Capital, is not and have never been free from this type of management, the ventures are known (whaling, SoMe, or SaaS) the risk taken is that of successfully capturing market. They are not the vessels of progress, but distribution.
We could also put our faith in the academic institutions, and government labs to bring about the future. But they too, have largely been funded according to the same model, but with a different incentive structure (think grants, citations, recognition) that also values controlled risk and predictable outcomes. As an aside, I remember one of the most productive professors at my old institute also said to apply for research funding for the already concluded project, and then use the money for the next project. That way he always had a perfect success rate, and could match the research project to budget, time and scope.
- When I mean with the two types of progress, is that we perceive the invention of telephony as progress, in the systemic sense, now “it is”, but having a telephone in every home, that availability is certainly also progress, as it makes it useful “i have it”, and doubly so for network-effect products, where “you’ll have it to” matters, like the phone.
Of these types of progress, “enabling” naturally most precede “distribution”, but as a society we can gain great wealth from the latter, ignoring the first for quite a long time, before we realize something is “missing”. I think that is what has happened from the factors in (3) for the last 4-5 decades. Computers and IT has driven a massive distribution-progress, blinding us to the fact that enabling-progress was dwindling. And now, when the economy can’t hide the fact much longer, we start to discover that lack of “progress” in the subjective sense.