Ask HN: What became possible or practical in 2015, which wasn't in 2014?
3 comments
This is definitely a neat question, especially as growth is sometimes hard to identify as it happens in front of you. I think there were a couple of really significant things that came about this year.
1. Gene editing in embryos
2. Orbital rocket makes a successful return and landing.
3. Self driving car technology becomes more commonplace, and becomes more feasible for people.
I think the hard thing about your question is, "have we built new tools to build a cooler future in 2016?" and that can only be seen when tools today are actually building the future tomorrow. The other thing is that something like 2 or 3, have had people working on them for years prior, so it's not that anything become suddenly practical in 2015 -it's just that all the work now bared its fruit.
Sources:
[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-mo...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Flight_20
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9k5c_P-y-k
1. Gene editing in embryos
2. Orbital rocket makes a successful return and landing.
3. Self driving car technology becomes more commonplace, and becomes more feasible for people.
I think the hard thing about your question is, "have we built new tools to build a cooler future in 2016?" and that can only be seen when tools today are actually building the future tomorrow. The other thing is that something like 2 or 3, have had people working on them for years prior, so it's not that anything become suddenly practical in 2015 -it's just that all the work now bared its fruit.
Sources:
[1]: http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-mo...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Flight_20
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9k5c_P-y-k
- Is anything possible now, which wasn't possible a year ago?
- Is anything affordable now, which was too expensive in 2014?
- Is anything practical now, which was impractical in 2014?
Taking a cue from a WaitButWhy.com article on Elon Musk[1], and the sections "What was possible in the world in 2005 is very different from what’s possible today, and it’s a huge (and rare) advantage to be working with an up-to-date [view on Reality]" and "Conventional wisdom is slow to move, and there’s significant lag time between when something becomes reality and when conventional wisdom is revised to reflect that reality. And by the time it does, reality has moved on to something else. [..] By ignoring conventional wisdom in favor of simply looking at the present for what it really is and staying up-to-date with the facts of the world as they change in real-time — in spite of what conventional wisdom has to say — [people] can act on information the rest of us haven’t been given permission to act on yet"
[1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html