One of the greatest technological advances is undoubtedly the internet and all the services it offers such as email, the web. Today we can communicate with almost anyone around the world. However, in the 60s, so it was with "paper and pen" the man had a lot of vision since it was that time he wanted to conquer space, reach the moon, other planets. I mean I think it is the basis for the world what do we have today.

Some things were possible but considerably slower: Driving some 100 km to a library in order to look through certain journals (interlibrary loan existed but you can hardly order 20 kg of magazines just to have a look at the table of contents), phone calls with manufacturers to order databooks of electronics components, sent by mail, etc. Other things were harder still: When searching a manufacturer of unusual items, you could rummage through yellow pages, visit commercial fairs, and ask colleagues but were successful only with luck.

What strikes me about the price trend between the mid-80ies (bought my first used (!) PC for DM 4200) and the late 90ties (PC with 150 times better performance for less than DM 1000) is that our thanks should go mainly to the parents of school children. Those who could afford it gave their children PCs because they imagined (vaguely) that their children would learn to write programs, to deal with operating systems and data bases, and this would secure them a good position in the working world later on. Instead, most of the children played games which demanded high performance hardware. Thus high performance hardware became an inexpensive mass product.

Luckily, the same hardware is well suited for demanding serious simulation tasks!

Today, marketing tells us that everybody needs a smart phone, a smart home, a smart car etc., and that manufacturers can only succeed with industry 4.0 (5.0, 6.0 ...) but I still fail to see a comparably beneficial side effect for research.

Dr Joerg Fricke

Thanks for your comments.

Dr Michael Uebel

Thanks for your comments.

The world of Science is expanding. The innovations made in 70s, 80s, or 90s are used as applications by the present researchers to accomplish their current research targets. Without a doubt, I can say that scientific findings in early 40s or 50s may used by the researchers in 70s to conduct their studies. So, the chain of innovations and its nature runs back without an ending. Today, we use Internet extensively to continue scholarly work and it is difficult to imagine how to reach our goals without this smart resource. The future scholars could use much developed resources than today's Internet and they would wonder how to accomplish their research goals without the resources available for them. So, this is the nature of scientific development. We do everything today for the convenience of the next day.

There is lots of material that is not digitized or, if digitized, is not being properly archived and preserved. Future researchers may have to seek out the hard copies, if any. Also, I'm sure many of us have files that we can no longer access because they require software that our machines can no longer run or require hardware no longer available; we will end up only being able to use what we happened to have printed. Moreover, there is likely to be a major Carrington Event awaiting us:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/3/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/

Despite all technological advances, the brain is still the most important tool of science and research :-)

The truth is, however, that computers speed up acquisition basic information - and also processing the results of our brains (if some this exists :-).

Computers alone don't invent anything - yet.

Dear Dr Josef Puncochar,

Thanks for your reply. Of course, brain was, is, and will remain the most important tool for science and research. There is no doubt about it and this is not the subject of the question as well. There is also no doubt that computers alone cannot invent anything. In the past also, we had brain and we continue to have it. The question is about the addition of computer and internet as a tool, with the same brain with us then and now.

R. K. Saxena

Dear Dr Manjula Wijewickrema,

Thank you for your logical and balanced reply.

R. K. Saxena

Nowadays most of researches are depending on Computer and internet. Thanks

1. We can't even imagine it.

2. We can imagine (hardly), but we can not really fulfill them.

3. We can submit and we can execute (hardly), but the results will be non-competitive compared to computer studies.

Preprint COGNITIVE VETERINARY – DIGITAL SOCIETY VETERINARY: THE DEFIN...

4. People in higher forms of consciousness do not need computers and surpass them in the possibilities of knowledge by many orders of magnitude.

Book On HIGHER FORMS of CONSCIOUSNESS, the PROSPECTS of MAN, TECH...

Imagine e.g. archeology, biology, psychology:

Computers and internet certainly ease archiving, recording, communication etc.

Bit this is no necessary precondition: many of these researchers could as well do without these tools (although they wouldn't want to do so: why make your work harder than necessary).

Fazit: possible/imaginable, but not feasible these days.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” That is why it can not be compared the 70s and the modern time. The technologies change. I'm just not sure that we are using technologies the right way...

I still prefer books and no one can convince me in better media. Internet resources are invaluable but one must find important information at first. Most of the time I spend on the internet - may be about 80% of my time - I spend it to filter out the garbage. Nevertheless, the computer and the internet influence our life significantly and tend to be the main instrument for doing research and communicate it.