I was contemplating the impact of semiconductor technology over the last 30-40 years, and I don’t think any other advance has had this kind of impact in recent history, and it has to rank up with any of the big advances. (I’m thinking mainly of computers and various displays, but it goes beyond that. Lasers, too)

And the impact is not just in straight productivity, it’s also tied in to the fact that the tech is deflationary. A basic personal computer costs about the same today as it did 30-40 years ago, when they started to become ubiquitous, while the capability of them (processing power and memory)

If the cost of computing power had risen with inflation or even just been flat, computers would be massively more expensive than they are now, and without that you don’t get the same productivity improvements that we’ve seen.

Printing might be one example that rivals the productivity gains but I’m not sure of how the costs scaled as printing advanced.

Comments?

38 minutes ago, swansont said:

Comments?

Domestication and selective breeding of plants and livestock

Urbanisation

Copper & bronze smelting

Iron smelting

Horse riding

The wheel

Steam power

Steel-hulled shipping

Industrial mechanisation

Mechanisation of farming

Internal combustion engine

The Haber process...

Silicon-based computing is definitely up there with them.

33 minutes ago, swansont said:

A basic personal computer costs about the same today as it did 30-40 years ago

A basic US$2000 computer in 1995, just before Win95 was released, would have used an Intel i486, or Pentium1, with 8-16 MB memory, a 2-4 GB spinning magnetic hard drive, and MS-DOS 6.22 or Win3.1.
If you built it yourself, you could get the same specs for US$500-600 ( I built three for my nephews and niece ),
That US$2000 is worth just about US$4400 today.

In terms of basic productivity software, a Pentium1 will serve just fine, but memory and storage will limit multi-tasking, open windows, and be very frustrating with slow load/store tasks, Of course, any tasks involving image/video manipulation, 3D modelling, etc. would be almost impossible ( they used dedicated RISC workstations for that at the time ).

As for printing, I remember buying a Panasonic ink-jet for almost $400, when now-days, you can pick up a cheap laser printer for less than $100 with much better quality. However, they seem to have adopted the cell-phone business model, the hardware is practically free, but the service/consumables is where they make their money.

Quite a journey in 35 years.
But if you go back 50 years, I used a Burrows mainframe to solve for the energy levels of a Helium atom, using numerical methods, Hollerith punch cards, and fan-fold paper for the 'display'. A Wang minicomputer and an Apple II+ was for everyday use in the Physics Department, and I used a TRS-80 Model 1, with 4 KB of memory ( tape recorder storage ) for my undergrad Thesis ( Raman Spectroscopy of solid Ammonia ).

An even bigger journey, so it seems the 'steps' in this journey are getting smaller with time.

Edited August 2Aug 2 by MigL

2 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Domestication and selective breeding of plants and livestock

Urbanisation

Copper & bronze smelting

Iron smelting

Horse riding

The wheel

Steam power

Steel-hulled shipping

Industrial mechanisation

Mechanisation of farming

Internal combustion engine

The Haber process...

Silicon-based computing is definitely up there with them.

Make your case on how any one of these was deflationary

5 hours ago, swansont said:

I was contemplating the impact of semiconductor technology over the last 30-40 years, and I don’t think any other advance has had this kind of impact in recent history, and it has to rank up with any of the big advances. (I’m thinking mainly of computers and various displays, but it goes beyond that. Lasers, too)

And the impact is not just in straight productivity, it’s also tied in to the fact that the tech is deflationary. A basic personal computer costs about the same today as it did 30-40 years ago, when they started to become ubiquitous, while the capability of them (processing power and memory)

If the cost of computing power had risen with inflation or even just been flat, computers would be massively more expensive than they are now, and without that you don’t get the same productivity improvements that we’ve seen.

Printing might be one example that rivals the productivity gains but I’m not sure of how the costs scaled as printing advanced.

Comments?

I think mass production is pretty similar. Automobiles were largely a rich man's toy until Henry Ford started mass producing them and tractors took over farms within a couple years of Ford beginning to produce them on an assembly line.

23 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

I think mass production is pretty similar. Automobiles were largely a rich man's toy until Henry Ford started mass producing them and tractors took over farms within a couple years of Ford beginning to produce them on an assembly line.

It’s true that mass production was a huge productivity increase, but economies of scale from it have had a much more limited effect. I bought a new car in 1984 for $10,500, which as about the average and nowadays a new car averages close to $50k in the US. (to be fair, it’s a bigger car that represents the average) Cars get better mileage and are in many ways safer, and have more bells and whistles, but it’s still subject to inflation.

…

The background thought for all this is that it seems that inflation at many times has been tamer than predicted and I wonder if it’s because of the deflation from the widespread adoption of semiconductor tech.

45 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

I think mass production is pretty similar. Automobiles were largely a rich man's toy until Henry Ford started mass producing them and tractors took over farms within a couple years of Ford beginning to produce them on an assembly line.

Well I agree with swansont that technology improvements in the semiconductor industry has had a significant effect on relative values in our society.

But npts2020 has hit the nail on the head with mass production, although it started 200 or even 2000 years before Henry Ford and each time around made a massive impact on society. +1

There have been other factors thoug, - wars, the throwaway society, pre semiconductor and even valve communications technology, electricity for example.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Make your case on how any one of these was deflationary

5 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Industrial mechanisation

This led to a major reduction in the production costs of manufactured items.

Ref: Industrial Revolution

Beginning in Great Britain around 1760, the Industrial Revolution had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840.[1][2] Economic historians agree that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history, comparable only to the adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement.[3]

This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and rise of the mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and population growth.

I'm not sure your use of 'deflationary' matches the meaning you intend. I've assumed your intent is better served by 'disinflationary'. An understandable confusion but they're quite distinct and can have very different impacts on the overall economy

57 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

I'm not sure your use of 'deflationary' matches the meaning you intend. I've assumed your intent is better served by 'disinflationary'. An understandable confusion but they're quite distinct and can have very different impacts on the overall economy

I’m not an economist, so I confess to not knowing the distinction, but: costs less over time when adjusted for inflation. i.e. it would have the effect of reducing inflation, since it would tend to cancel other positive i pacts

Any of the technological advances show a jump in productivity, but what I’m looking for is after that. Shipping might be one - as technology was refined ships got bigger, so the cost to ship a certain unit (size or weight) of something has likely gone down. Commercial airline travel seems to have followed this; it costs roughly the same to fly as it did decades ago, but that still falls far short of the trajectory of computing power

39 minutes ago, swansont said:

I’m not an economist, so I confess to not knowing the distinction, but: costs less over time when adjusted for inflation. i.e. it would have the effect of reducing inflation, since it would tend to cancel other positive i pacts

Any of the technological advances show a jump in productivity, but what I’m looking for is after that. Shipping might be one - as technology was refined ships got bigger, so the cost to ship a certain unit (size or weight) of something has likely gone down. Commercial airline travel seems to have followed this; it costs roughly the same to fly as it did decades ago, but that still falls far short of the trajectory of computing power

Solar Energy (Renewables generally,I think)

I think costs have reduced 20% for each doubling of capacity over the past 40(?) years

Following something called Wright's Law ,it says here

Our World in Data

Solar panel prices have fallen by around 20% every time g...

One of the most transformative changes in technology over the last few decades has been the massive drop in the cost of clean energy. Solar photovoltaic costs have fallen by 90% in the last decade, on

Edited August 2Aug 2 by geordief

Some products also require factoring in hidden costs - like social or ecological detriment from them. Plastic is an example - on the face of it, it has gotten massively cheaper to produce containers, but we're now contemplating massive ecological costs from the enormous waste stream it brings, especially single-use containers. We don't really yet have a handle on the hidden costs.

3 hours ago, geordief said:

Solar Energy (Renewables generally,I think)
I think costs have reduced 20% for each doubling of capacity over the past 40(?) years

Not all renewables, but certainly solar panels, are typically made from semi-conducting materials, so they fall into the category that Swansont has mentioned in the OP.

7 hours ago, TheVat said:

Some products also require factoring in hidden costs - like social or ecological detriment from them. Plastic is an example - on the face of it, it has gotten massively cheaper to produce containers, but we're now contemplating massive ecological costs from the enormous waste stream it brings, especially single-use containers. We don't really yet have a handle on the hidden costs.

+1

Perhaps a small addition ?

We don't really yet want to have a handle on the hidden costs.

8 hours ago, MigL said:

  11 hours ago, geordief said:

Solar Energy (Renewables generally,I think)
I think costs have reduced 20% for each doubling of capacity over the past 40(?) years

Not all renewables, but certainly solar panels, are typically made from semi-conducting materials, so they fall into the category that Swansont has mentioned in the OP.

That was my first thought, but I subsequently realised that there is a fundamental difference in that advancement of computer technology is largely based on miniaturisation whereas advancement of solar energy technology is largely based on solar cell efficiency.

Edited August 3Aug 3 by KJW

A further comment would be that technological innovations follow each other in a sensible sequence since they all require some part of previous innovations to be possible or accessible.

Some of these innovations brought great benefits, some less so.

The innovations that were affordable by the general population will show the greatest deflationary impact.

Most of these were the result of mass production in some way. There has been a succession of such examples before and as the Industrial Revolution developed.

Semiconductor devices could not have occurred before we had reliable machinery to make them

This machinery could not have occurred before we had reliable materials to make them of.

Modern very high density electronics could not be manufactured without the sophisticated electronics to control these machines.

19 hours ago, swansont said:

It’s true that mass production was a huge productivity increase, but economies of scale from it have had a much more limited effect. I bought a new car in 1984 for $10,500, which as about the average and nowadays a new car averages close to $50k in the US. (to be fair, it’s a bigger car that represents the average) Cars get better mileage and are in many ways safer, and have more bells and whistles, but it’s still subject to inflation.

…

The background thought for all this is that it seems that inflation at many times has been tamer than predicted and I wonder if it’s because of the deflation from the widespread adoption of semiconductor tech.

I don't agree that you can even compare a car from 1984 with one today to prove your claim. To begin with, by 1984 mass production had been widely implemented in virtually every industry that produces goods for at least half a century so savings in production and sale should have been already been baked in by that time. Leaving aside the fact the model T is a very different animal from cars built 70+ years later, a fairer comparison would be a model T in relation to the cars that came before it. Whether it has had greater impact than computer tech or not is certainly debatable and I am not making a claim either way because I don't have the time and wherewithal to do all of the research required for coming up with a definitive answer. It was merely a mention of a topic I hadn't seen discussed yet in a subject I found interesting.

13 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

Leaving aside the fact the model T is a very different animal from cars built 70+ years later, a fairer comparison would be a model T in relation to the cars that came before it

To align with my discussion it would be the cars that came after it. You get an initial jump in productivity, but what happens to the cost of the capability that came in the few decades afterwards? For cars it might be flat, since cars got faster and added some features

On 8/2/2026 at 1:59 PM, swansont said:

I was contemplating the impact of semiconductor technology over the last 30-40 years, and I don’t think any other advance has had this kind of impact in recent history, and it has to rank up with any of the big advances. (I’m thinking mainly of computers and various displays, but it goes beyond that. Lasers, too)

And the impact is not just in straight productivity, it’s also tied in to the fact that the tech is deflationary. A basic personal computer costs about the same today as it did 30-40 years ago, when they started to become ubiquitous, while the capability of them (processing power and memory)

If the cost of computing power had risen with inflation or even just been flat, computers would be massively more expensive than they are now, and without that you don’t get the same productivity improvements that we’ve seen.

Printing might be one example that rivals the productivity gains but I’m not sure of how the costs scaled as printing advanced.

Comments?

You may be too young to have heard about the computer manufacturer who became so successful he had to find smaller premises

1 hour ago, OldTony said:

You may be too young to have heard about the computer manufacturer who became so successful he had to find smaller premises

Brilliant +1

1 hour ago, swansont said:

To align with my discussion it would be the cars that came after it. You get an initial jump in productivity, but what happens to the cost of the capability that came in the few decades afterwards? For cars it might be flat, since cars got faster and added some features

I think I indicated that there is more too it than that, the car industry being a good example of the effect I am talking about.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

To align with my discussion it would be the cars that came after it. You get an initial jump in productivity, but what happens to the cost of the capability that came in the few decades afterwards? For cars it might be flat, since cars got faster and added some features

Well according to Wikipedia, the price of a new 1910 model T Ford was $780 and by 1924 the cost had been reduced to $290. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

I'm sure mass production wasn't the only factor but cars were also not the only product price that was affected by mass production.