Why does technology keep improving

Japanese firms are successful at commercializing new technologies because they select technologies with ready applications and move quickly in developing and manufacturing the product.

A driving force in maintaining this commercialization strategy is severe competition among Japanese firms. Another point is the difference in assumptions between Western European and Japanese engineers.

This Cartesian way of thinking was quite effective in the natural sciences, where greater simplification is necessary to organize ambiguous data. However, production activity is not that simple.

Basically, manufacturing is a battle against thousands of different possible breakdowns and errors: mistakes in planning schedules, incorrect design, accidental mixture of materials, and so forth.

Moreover, machines do not always work uniformly, and factory workers occasionally make mistakes. If these errors accumulate, the result will be a pile of defective goods.

We cannot predict where and how such errors will occur, however. Everyone in the factory must cooperate, looking for potential problems and taking care of them in order to prevent future problems. Every nation has the potential for achieving a more affluent society by introducing technology and developing added value in manufactured goods. India succeeded in supplying food for its population, and projections are that India will even export food in the near future. Therefore, there should be cooperation and understanding among nations concerning the use of technology as a tool for achieving an improved standard of living for all people.

Unfortunately, the fruits of technology are often treated too politically to be used to upgrade the quality of human life. Business Week. January 12, Meadows, D. Meadows, J. Randers, and W. Behrens III. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books.

The technological revolution has reached around the world, with important consequences for business, government, and the labor market.

Computer-aided design, telecommunications, and other developments are allowing small players to compete with traditional giants in manufacturing and other fields.

These are known under the umbrella of Industry 4. Find out about Industry 4. The best solution for your business will depend greatly on your industry. Research what your competitors or other companies in your industry are using and consider consumer technologies that are widely available as these may be cheaper if you only have a small number of staff.

When you find the right technology solution for your business, it is important to consider its security and take steps to manage cyber security risks. Different technological solutions can significantly boost the productivity of your workforce.

They can:. It also lessens the risk of misplacing or losing a patient's records since all information will be stored safely on a web application. Before the digital age, searching for specific information means spending hours looking through printed sources, like books, newspapers, and magazines. But, now, all you need is a phone and access to the Internet to find what you need. Thousands of resources are available on various online platforms, making it convenient for someone to search for the information they need.

For instance, technological tools help people access details about their health conditions, which aren't too serious to require medical attention. You can take care of simple health concerns, like allergies or a cold, since you can search for natural remedies or preventive measures you can do at home. Thanks to technology, treatments that seemed too far-fetched are now possible. It's not unusual for hospitals to perform complex treatments, such as organ transplants or chemotherapy , to cure patients suffering from serious illnesses.

Patients who are battling severe health conditions have a higher chance of surviving today, thanks to the vast contributions of technology to the field of medicine. Various medical research and development efforts have also been done to find treatments for serious diseases that seemed incurable before technological advancements. Classroom learning is now made more interactive and engaging to keep students interested. Teachers use technology to plan activities and create learning materials that may help students pay attention in class.

Technological tools and online applications have also made e-learning or remote learning possible. This innovative power is evident nearly everywhere we look on Earth today. According to Kurzweil, technology is also an evolutionary process, like biology, only it moves from one invention to the next much faster. Similarly, each generation of technology builds on the advances of previous generations, and this creates a positive feedback loop of improvements. Because each generation of technology improves over the last, the rate of progress from version to version speeds up.

To see this, imagine making a chair with hand tools, power tools, and finally assembly lines. Production gets faster after each step. Now imagine each generation of these tools is also used to design and build better tools. Kurzweil suggests such a process is at play in the design of ever-faster computer chips with the software and computers used by engineers.

Further, as a technology becomes more effective, it attracts more attention. However, specific paradigms e. This suggests that the horizons for amazingly powerful technologies may be closer than we realize. Now, in , a computer has mastered the even more complex game Go —an accomplishment not expected by some experts for another decade. We sequenced the first human genome in at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.