I would agree with you about growing costs for equipment in trendy “big science” (dark mater, hot fusion, gravity waves, accelerators), and I see this trend in military domain, like in IT in old-fashioned companies, like in nuclear industry… It is aggravated by a growing increase of regulation.
It seems that some domains push providers to improves performances to the point nobody can buy the product, but it is really perfect. I’ve heard that for nuclear reactors (they can resist to anything, but nobody can afford them), for tanks (they are smart, agile, powerful, robust), for military drones (they can work in civil air zone, do any mission, transport much, but cost like a helicopter)...
Meanwhile, in IT I’ve seen the trend to RAID disks, to Cloud, to SaaS, while Ukraine war showed the efficiency of simpler drones, not so overengineered canons, old tanks and old planes, tinkered by motivated staffs...
Here I’ve caught an article about the cross-pollination of AI and new experimental methods, reducing costs by 10x.
It makes me think about the exponential learning curve drawn by piling S-curves… As if the end of an S curves goes to unaffordable perfect technology, and that a revolution make you start again the exponential phase of a new S-curve...
See how quickly African labs have used Crispr-CAS technology for their own needs, to fight emerging diseases or climate change in their agriculture. It was done for much cheaper than for transgenic GMOs.
I have a very technical question about the history of semiconductors.
I’ve read long ago, that in the 20s Germanium conductance was a mystery, because of parasitic PN junctions caused by contamination and various metallurgical uncontrolled differences...
It seems that some researchers had observed PN diode effects, but also, unable to explain it, have kept the measurement in their drawer… Is there any serious report about that dark age of germanium PN junction ?
More generally, I would like to understand the really underground story of early semiconductors research, when it was an anomaly, impossible to repeat reliably because of missing theory and technology, not the final phase when theory and experiments had connected in the 40s.
Best regards.