Week One: Tech News and Human Progress

Space just got a lot more interesting.

Photo by Federico Beccari on Unsplash

This week’s developments in technology and human progress happened mostly in rocket and space technology. Let’s record the recent advancements:

• Tesla hits ambitious production goals, making over 5,000+ cars per week. Since electric cars reduce pollution (energy stored in batteries is produced partially by renewable power and typical gas engines are less efficient that fuel-plants at converting fuel into energy) this is a step forward. Additionally, Tesla has also sold their 200,000th sale in the U.S. Ratings on the Model 3 are also extremely high, with a high profitability ratio (around 30%) and high ratings from critics. Ultimately, climate change is reduced and standard of living is increased.
• Virtual reality headsets get a common USB port. This is actually really good, because by using USB-C ports, VR will be able to run on tablets, computers, and even phones more easily, at least when wires are needed. This is a standard of living/computing power advancement.
• SpaceX builds a bigger boat: To catch rocket fairings and bring down the price of launches, SpaceX’s giant boat, Mr. Steven, SpaceX has increased the size of the net over the (already large) boat almost four times, which will help them catch rocket pieces more easily and make space travel more affordable and more realistic. Space mining is a good future opportunity for more resources, so a plus to resources and human population (more possibility for human populations on Mars).
• Blue Origin has a successful test: Mannequin Skywalker (haha, what an awesome name) survives a high speed eject from a Blue Origin launch capsule, which increases the safety of traveling by rocket. Jeff Bezos is very happy, even more so because his net worth recently passed 150 Billion USD. Another addition in resources, human population and standard of living (space tourism) and a larger gain than created in progress by SpaceX this week, which hasn’t happened in a while.
• …Just kidding. SpaceX is testing a new booster this week, named Block 5. The block five core is optimized for reusability and can significantly bring down the cost of launches. This is a pretty new piece of news, one I almost missed.
• CRISPR genetic editing issues are discovered. While you might think that this would decrease our progress, it is actually an increase. These issues needed to be discovered, and the sooner, the better. Genetic editing offers a wide range of possibilities, including an increase in human population, fixing climate change, and our time until the Singularity (a total change in humankind and our world).
• Bitcoin prices rise. This signals an increase in cryptocurrency as a whole and gives us the ability to trade currency safely and easily across the world. This means raise in computing power and standard of living.
• Slight gain in stocks this week as a whole. More money for investment means that more inventions can be made and technology can advance faster as a whole.
• Average gain across the world as workers continue to work, no new wars break out, and technology inches forwards without big advancements to report. This improves just about everything (standard of living, energy production, but our value is also reduced as climate change continues and our resources are used up. We continue to have a net gain, however.

That’s it for this week in Timeline of Technology! Let’s total our gain on the Human/Technological Progress Bar:

Previously, we were at 41.4923857% technological progress (a number I calculated in my last post). As our technological progress increases this week, it’s time to add to the progress bar!

• Advances in Tesla are important for the EV (electric vehicle) industry and help to reduce climate change. Because Tesla cars have been rated so highly, it is also fair to say that they’ll elevate our standard of living. +0.0000071% on the progress bar.
• Virtual reality headsets improve standard of living and increase learning ability/working ability, and this is an industry change, so about a +0.0000110% change.
• All space advances, totaled together, improve by a little, making rockets safer and cheaper: +0.0000260% to extra resources and standard of living (more satellites and better internet).
• CRISPR issues being discovered means that we’re closer to safer genetic editing, which is hugely important. Even slight gains in this field are critical. +0.0000430% to standard of living, resources, and time until Singularity.
• Bitcoin prices rise by $1000 USD: advance in standard of living and possibly computing power. +0.0000210% gain.
• Slight stock gains are crucial for the development of technology as a whole: +0.0000550% gains.
• Another week going by of people getting work done is a massive gain for us. Our world keeps spinning, humanity keeps developing, and we make a net gain of +0.0001580%

Adding together those values, our total weekly value is +0.000321%. Added to our current progress bar of 41.4923857%, we now have a 41.4927068%. Hardly a noticeable change over a single week, but as year go by, it will continue to rise exponentially. For easy comparison, the values that have changed are 41.492 3857% to 41.492 7068%.

Previous progress bar, made in HTML by me.

New progress bar, also made in HTML by me.

An unofficial note from the writer: This series is going to continue! Every week will feature technology news, such as Tesla meeting a production goal or a new VR headset being released, and the progress bar will be adjusted accordingly.

If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments!

Or, if you have noticed an interesting development in technology, or social work, or just in humanity in general, feel free to let me know. I’m pretty active and not very popular, so I can guarantee that you’re comment will be read, and I’ll add it to our next post. :)