#tech progress

Technological progress has two parts: knowing how to make the thing and accumulations of material assets. While these two types are not fully separate, they are different. Maybe the second type doesn’t count of tech progress and yet, even if we know absolutely everything, it would still take time to build tools to build tools to build the advanced technology. Moreover, this accumulation of material assets feels like incremental tech improvements even if little or no novel knowledge is needed. Like building ever bigger container ships brings down shipping costs even if the engineering challenge isn’t that great. Costs of making new technology comes down over time not just because we learn how to make it more efficiently but also because we just built more tools that make that technology.