Some people claim that the idea of technology or science being slowed down is ridiculous – that they march forward at their own pace. But this is not always true – there are a number of interesting examples of tech, tech adoption, and science being greatly slowed down:
1) Psychedelics: In 1966, LSD was banned in CA, and in 1968, a U.S. law came out banning psilocybin (the chemical in “magic mushrooms”). Since then, the study of these compounds and the development of related ones has been incredibly slow, only recently making a resurgence.
2) Nuclear power: While other energy technologies like solar have dramatically fallen in price, regulation (caused by well-meaning but misguided environmentalists and scared NIMBYs) prevented nuclear power from following a similar trajectory, causing it to have poor adoption.
3) Consumer supersonic flight: Even though this technology has existed for a long time, the wasteful projects that initially deployed it convinced people that it couldn’t be viable commercially (despite this being far from proven), leading to a step backward in travel tech.
This piece was first written on July 8, 2023, and first appeared on this site on August 30, 2023.
Were these setbacks global or only in the U.S.? If global, then why (the regulation was in the US only after all)? 🙂