A new fallacy?

A long time ago, laptop computers were black and white. I had read a paper about the principle of making them color. It worked the same as black and white, but each pixel was divided up into three pieces, with a red, green, or blue filter on each third of a pixel. There were a lot of troubles manufacturing such a beast though. It was reported that a 256 by 256 color LCD screen had been developed, but making larger ones was not possible. The author theorized that future screens would need to tile several of these together.

Flash forward a few years. I hear an advertisement about a new laptop, with a color lcd screen. At first, I doubted it’s existence. When I finally see one, I’m looking closely for the tiles of 256×256 pixels, which don’t appear. After a while, it dawns on my that my technological prejudices were several years old. Even though I have an E.E. degree, I had doubted the existence of something because I had assumed technology was still at the state of the article I read years earlier.

Technology is always improving, and we should not forget it. The first pesticides had lots of nasty side effects, the more modern ones have far fewer. Landfills are no longer the leaky piles they once were, some are even power generators. Plastics are extremely difficult to recycle, and often create some extremely environmentally unfriendly byproducts- it seems that this is improving according to an article I read a few years ago.

I think this problem is fallacious. Arguing that something is not possible because once upon a time it was not possible is a flawed argument, therefore a fallacy. After doing several searches, I could not find a name for this one. I tentatively name this the changing times fallacy, unless someone finds an existing name, or a better one. Comments are welcome.

This is a common enough experience. Every time a new flash drive, iPod, or hard drive comes out we are totally blown away by it’s memory or power. But why don’t we expect the same advances in farm chemicals, recycling techniques, energy production, waste disposal, or medicine? Though computers probably give us the largest advances, other industries do advance too.

I will try to avoid this fallacy, and all other fallacies, even if it means more research is necessary and having my prejudices challenged.

–Dave