Inventions in applied sciences and disciplines make human life more comfortable. No one will argue about the enormous benefits of technology and developments in the fields of electricity, communications, transportation, construction, etc.
We can't imagine our life without household electrical appliances, cars, telephones and modern houses. Devices, equipment and materials are created by a person, and they create a human environment.
From history, everyone remembers the boom of inventions of the 18th and 19th centuries, when such revolutionary inventions and designs appeared as the railway and steam engines, telegraphs, photography, industrial steel production (open-hearth furnaces), incandescent lighting lamps and much, much more. Revolutionary technical innovations numbered in the thousands. At that time, almost every year something revolutionary appeared that changed the face of the human environment.
It would seem that something new has always been invented and developed. But is this so in quantitative terms? It turns out that at present the number of scientific innovations is at the level of the end of the 18th century:
Different databases show roughly the same picture.
Failures happened during the great and world wars in Europe and Russia, as the main areas of concentration of the intellectual power of the population.
Promotional video:
But why now, in spite of all scientific and technological progress, comfort in work and opportunities in science - so little inventions and technical innovations are made? Although, every year a huge staff of scientists, scientific workers and laboratory assistants in research institutes and other scientific institutions works in science.
The number of countries where serious science exists is not decreasing, but only growing. Is it possible that everything that is possible has already been invented, or are scientists trying to achieve the last possibilities in physics, chemistry of materials? Is it not that all the principles in electromagnetic interactions are understood and all possible combinations of composite materials and alloys in the field of materials science have been analyzed?
Perhaps most of these innovations were concentrated in the military-industrial complex. Indeed, a lot of civilian technologies have emerged from this area.
I think such a slowdown in the number of innovations in our applied science and technology is associated with a change in the economic principles of the existence of society. And it's not just a poor-quality transition from socialism with a high level of Soviet science to capitalist rails.
Capitalism itself has changed over this entire period. At the time of Maxwell, Roentgen, Popov, as well as earlier, there were a lot of wealthy scientists and inventors who were engaged in science and development in their own laboratories. Perhaps they also had investors who invested in science as a particularly promising type of business. Who invested - he demanded the result.
It was, as they say now, a trend in those days. But with the advent of the conveyor principle of production and the expansion of sales markets through an expanded logistics system based on railway, river and sea vessels on steam traction, it became much more profitable to invest in factories, factories, trade "bought and sold" and develop sales in other countries. And science gradually moved from private structures mainly to state concern. The efficiency has dropped.
The effectiveness of Soviet science, I think, was in the creative approach of all its employees, and not in the development of grants, budgets and writing reports. Plus, the level of training was much higher then. And minds and nuggets went to science. Now the prestige of this area has fallen and its indicators have fallen. Therefore, basically now we hear about foreign scientific achievements, tk. the prestige of science abroad is also supported by the level of salaries of their employees.
For example, electronic gadgets that you can easily do without. But the pleasure of using them is high. And where there is pleasure, there is also a massive purchase of such goods.
Also, developments are needed to reduce the cost of production, tooling costs, to reduce labor costs, reduce the number of employees, etc. Easier production and lower costs - more profit can be obtained by the owner of the enterprise. This is how capitalist principles are arranged and everything is intertwined with this. We will come across this phenomenon more than once in subsequent articles.
This is my point of view. Someone may disagree with her or argue with her.
Forecast
Unfortunately, the trend in the quantity and quality of innovations is such that nothing revolutionary can be expected.
There are some interesting trends in building technology. We will talk about them in the following articles.
What needs to be changed?
What can be done to reverse this negative trend? My opinion: it is necessary to increase the prestige of science, to find the most capable pupils and students and to lure them into this area. And inside this scientific machine, give free rein to the flight of fantasies to any ideas and directions, not disdaining even anti-scientific by modern standards. As well as energy, industry, medicine, etc. should act as customers and initiators for searches and movements forward. Work together, develop, and not live according to the principles of capital accumulation.
At one time, almost everyone argued that structures heavier than air cannot fly. But none of those scientists knew about the effect of wing lift and the application of the principles of jet thrust. Likewise, now, for example, everything that relates to the theory of ether is considered pseudoscience. Although, before the theory of A. Einstein, more than 300 scientists were involved in this area.
Who knows, maybe they failed to reach their practical goal of nothing at all, and the world would now be completely different. Let's say that the issue of generating clean energy would no longer exist.
Author: sibved