this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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And yet we have somehow gone from rechargeable phone batteries that were about 3 times bigger than the phone I'm typing this on and had a capacity of about 500 mAh to where we are now with the battery that powers my phone being some small part of it and having a capacity of 3000 mAh, with only two major technology changes on the way. Meanwhile, we've been using the same technology for over a decade and the capability keeps getting better. I wonder why that is?
Those while are great are just pushing the tech in tiny increments. It's still the same tech. Kinda like how ICE vehicles got better and better, but they still use non-renewable energy.
This tech we need, is the leap from ICE to electric vehicles...vs an old model T to a modern Corolla.
An order of magnitude more power in the same form factor in 30 years isn't a tiny increment. It was certainly a number of tiny increments to get there. And for those big leaps you're so desperately looking for, it isn't one little group sitting down together thinking how they're going to do something. There are decades of research building out a number of tiny discoveries, combined by a group at an opportune time to put it all together so everyone can talk about this momentous leap that they, from the outside perceived as something new that sprung out of nothing.
Yea that again, doesn't negate what I've stated. Tiny increments throughout a technologies life is great, just like ICE vehicles, but it's tech from the 70s and we need the next leap forward.
Fusion power is based on the aeolipile and work by Marie Curie. Just because you don't see the all the incremental steps connecting those devices doesn't mean they aren't there.
That's like saying the wheel was invented thousands of years ago...you know what I'm talking about and are just being pedantic about it.
Fusion power ain't there yet though, bad example?
Fusion power isn't commercially practical. We could make a working fusion plant right now. It would suck and provide almost no power, but we could make one. And the difference between the one we can make today that barely works and isn't useful and one that would be useful will be some number of additional incremental steps between where we are today and when that would work. Which is exactly the point. And your attitude of, well we aren't using it today, so nothing has actually been done, is what I'm criticizing, so thanks for making the point even more obvious.