Is it me or is there less innovation in technology now?

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There will come a time when mankind will no longer be able to continue with technology without the help of technology itself.

Technological singularity will become visible to all, we will need computers to develop new tech, not sure when but will be soon.

They now bringing more tech into day to day life, from banking to shopping. That is what is happening

Umm, technology has been built on the shoulders of other technology since at least a couple hundred years ago. You're late to that party.

The rate of progress is slowing, anyone can see that. Not a ton is different between, say, 1982 vs. 2012, compared to 1952 vs 1982.

Nanotechnology is promising some spectacular inovations in the future.

Technology is now about improving existing technology, what people can afford as well, no good creating new tech if people cannot afford to buy it.

Tech is changing. The future as described in Popular Mechanics in the fifties, looks clunky now.

Making spider silk from genetically modified goats seems natural.

Common soil bacteria can supply all our food, building material, and as soon as my carbon nano bots make social contact, open trade relations.

Fungi have trade deals with plants where they deliver pure elements the plants cannot produce for themselves, and there are other elements I would pay for in compost.

In Atomic practice waste water is filtered by bacteria that absorb radioactive atoms, which can be recovered from their bodies later. We cannot get it out of the water, but feeding bacteria they do, and the dead flow downstream, get filtered out, and the materials then recovered and reused.

Teaching Kelp to recover Gold, disolve kelp, plate out the gold, could pay well. As a prospector, crushing ten cubic foot of hard rock to a fine powder for a few grams of gold is a good strike.

Ecuador has a salt flat lake with most of the world's Lithium. Brines do support lots of life that filter feeding Flamingos eat. A chain bioculture short of flamingos could remove the lithium from the salt, then from the bioconcentrate. The waste product would make a cattle feed.

We live in a well developed technology we have been blind to. Grass knows more about producing energy than we do. We need to get together with these CO2 reprocessors, invest in them, till there is a raw material shortage.

There are waste free processes all around that can be developed to large scale self driven processing. Good soil works because it contains 40,000 pounds of soil bacteria per acre, that has a short life, who's decay produces plant food. In life it frees elements it cannot use, that plants can, that if they just built up in the soil would kill soil bacteria. We can become the pool cleaners in this game, and recover near pure elements.

Even the recovery can be another biological process, producing the desired oxide or sulfide form.

Change is coming fast, I have a top of the line Olympus trinocular scope, it cost as much as a car. A few years later my eyes were replaced by cameras, and a LCD screen, then better cameras, sharper larger screens, which is much easier on the eyes, neck, and can be recorded. Now I need some Nanobots to go down to the working end.

If a bacteria can absorb the atoms I want, and some bug will eat them, the nanobots can be the stablehands that gather the manure, which is a high concentration of what I want without damaging the culture.

Nothing lives well in it's own concentrated waste. Removing manure and the dead keeps the production cell functioning. It can be made to float to the surface where it can be skimmed. A continious process can skim acres of salt brine.

We just need to be able to see and interact with the world around us, and it can supply all of our needs.

One's judgement of technology is conditioned by one's expectations. There is a lot of subjectivity here. It is best to stick with facts. Count the number of patents granted in various fields of technology. Count the number of articles (in respectable journals) published.

ruveyn

One of the things I have noticed is a certain deterioration of certain technologies because of cost. For example half a decade ago you could choose between having a 4:3 screen and a 16:9 screen, before that weither you wanted LCD or CRT. Nowadays you have to get 16:9 (or 16:10 with apple) LCD. For certain applications this is not desirable but it's impossible to get it new.
The same goes for analog film. No film camera's are being produced anymore and cinema's are getting rid of their 35mm projectors to switch to digital only. Digital has advantages, especially when it comes to cost, but it changes the look and feel for the worst. Same goes for digital acquisition (camera's). It's an advancement in some ways but a deterioration in others.