Limit to optimisation

Whenever I look at some of the old technology, I can't help but think, "That was normal for the time!" Spending several minutes setting up a film roll, or the effort spent on trying to dial in a phone number was never looked at as tedious or time-consuming during that age.

Unless given something to contrast with, any process/thing seems normal for us humans. A similar thought occurred to me when reading a book. Anyone who has seen a book doesn't think much while flipping through it, or writing in it. But for a person in the far future, a book will be looked at the same way we look at stone tablets. Ancient and delicate. This shift to digital media is already underway and I can't help but think, is there a limit? A limit to the extent of optimisation and comforts.

Recent previous generations did not know how to carve on stone walls, or thatch a hut. Ours, does not know how to dial a number in a vintage telephone. The future generation shall never know how to flip the pages of a simple book.

With the progression of ease in our lives, is there a limit to optimisation? It may seem so considering that the only thing stopping us is our physical forms and the speed of human evolution. But then again, a man operating a dial phone would never have thought that the phone itself could remember the number! However imaginative we get in our sci-fi futuristic visions, we never truly know what we will come up with.

Coming to the original question, My answer would be, only as long as we have breakthroughs in the Biological field will technology progress beyond a point.

Humans have been evolving for 6 million years and the change from 'inventing the wheel' to 'flying in Jet-liner' took just 5000 years.

The ratio of evolution time to technology development comes to about 6,000,000 yrs / 5000 yrs = 1200. Meaning that at an average, every year given to human bodies to evolve is equivalent to about 1200 years worth of technological development!! And to think that only 200 years were enough to go from the ENIAC to iPhone 13 Pro. (not sponsored 🥲 )

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As long as we evolve at the same rate, technology will remain bounded by our limitations. Mobile phones have no scope of compaction, keyboards will be bulky, and space suits will be huge.

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