Escaping Technology Stagnation and Reaching True Technology Acceleration

03-16-2021 • arclein

People could travel 25-30 miles a day by horse or bicycle but traveling 50-150 miles per day in one of the 2-6 million cars in the 1920s was difficult. The reason is that the roads were mostly dirt and poorly connected. The interstate highway system had to be built over the 1950s to enable better car travel. Cars and planes have not had real improvements in travel times since the 1970s in the western world. The inflation-adjusted costs per mile have been stagnant. We have been able to travel 400-900 miles in a day via cars and trains since the 1960s in developed countries. Mass air travel has been able to move people over 3000-5000 miles in a day since the 1970s. The distance that can be traveled in one hour has gotten worse in many cases over more recent decades because of traffic jams. The actual time to make air travel has gotten worse because of 2-3 hours needed for the check-in and security processes and the time needed to get to and from airports.