Ever wonder why it takes 3 years to move from concept to prototype and more years to actually reach production? Or why it takes 10 years for a simple cell phone or computer technology to move from research to consumer market?
Of course the car companies would like to blame testing, government regulations (especially the EPA) and of course the consumer market for their faults and in the technology world the blame would go to trademarks and patents, again the government (this time the FCC) and last but not least limitations in science.
But the truth of the matter is all this is false. Yes some claims are true but I don’t think after ten years of making cell phones a company is still going to have problems with the FCC (after all they’re not releasing a new technological instrument) or GM is going to have problems with the EPA when they already know their standards. Of course the whole blame game thing is nothing new (Garden of Eden…HELLO) but it’s funny that the same companies that blame each other for stifling new technological advances are doing the same thing.
There are three major reasons why new technology is scarce including the fact that researches are scared that certain tech might be too powerful to let out in the public domain. Second is that the government likes to keep a tab on its citizens and certain of the new tech has the potential to put that “invisible” shield around its wanted citizens. But the major reason is that new technology means that researches and manufacturers have to change their way of thinking and also they do things.
An example is the computer. Back in the 80’s when the first PC’s were being released to the public for exorbitant prices many thought that this was all new. Than in the 90’s when the internet came into being the same thought was passed around. But a quick look at history proves otherwise. In fact the internet and the computer had been around for at least 20-30 years. But the US government had restricted the use to military use because it was the middle of the cold war and they were afraid that the Soviets would get their hand on the new tech and make it harder to spy on them.
Another example is the Quad Core processor. For those who are familiar with computer jargon the word has been thrown around for years. But it was not until the last 2 years that this became a reality. It was not that this technology was in testing for all that time, it was because computer manufacturers and OS publishers (Apple, Linux, and Microsoft) were not interested in creating new form factors (Intel, AMD) to meet the specifications of the new tech. this of course led us to be stuck with PC’s that were just barely giving us 512MB and of RAM and 80GB HDD.
So the buck stops at researches and developers. Yes the researches are doing their job, but they are not that likely to let the technology out of the bag unless they get a sizeable cut and since developers are not interested in doing complete overhauls more than once every decade it’s not a wonder why we are stuck with PC’s that barely give us 4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD. And yet we think this is the best so far.
