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From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: The insane progress nobody is talking about
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 16:10:34 -0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <slrnv760nq.ve1.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>
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People are bitching about a lack of flying cars or fusion power,
but hardly notice the actual, incredible, crazy progress that is
happening.

I'm talking of course about artificial illumination.  (Yes, again.)
Not sexy?  Too bad.

Recently a conventional light bulb that had escaped my purge revealed
itself by dying.  I replaced it with the latest generation of Philips
LED bulb that requires about 1/14 (!) as much energy for the same
light output and is specified with a lifetime of 50.000 hours, which
amounts to some 50 years of average use.

Today I replaced two fluorescent tubes--one had died--in the kitchen
with LED tubes.  Those require 1/3 the energy and Ledvance specifies
them with a lifetime of 75.000 hours.  You do the math.

From a 20th century point of view, those figures are totally insane.
When cheap LED lamps became common a few years ago, I thought that
was the end of the line, but even LED lamps have made significant
further progress in beam angle, energy efficiency, and lifetime
within just the last few years.  Anybody who is hoarding lamps for
use in a few years will be sitting on obsolete technology in no
time.  Buy today, weep next year.  Between the crazy pace of progress
and the ever absurder lifetimes, keeping spares around no longer
makes sense.

It is utterly stunning progress.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de