Martin SeegerI notice in a lot of discussions that I need to write down how I proceed when something new or revolutionary is announced in the press or the internet. So here it comes....
1/5
Framework for Evaluating “New” Technologies
Why this framework is necessary in the era of internet journalism
Internet (and increasingly classic) journalism rewards speed and excitement far more than accuracy and attention.
This creates a structural bias toward reporting spectacular claims before anyone has checked whether they are physically plausible, technically feasible or economically meaningful. A simple evaluation framework helps counter three typical failure modes.
What the framework shall achieve
- Provide a simple list to work through for every announcement of new technologies or products.
- Help to reduce the spread of misleading narratives that shape public opinion and policy debates.
- Spread the understanding of how an idea becomes a working product.
How does this works?
Go through the gates in the proposed order and check if the new product/technology passes that check. If it doesn't, you can skip the rest of the gates. Often failures at an early gate are masked in reporting the hypothetical profits in the future if society just pours enough funding into it.
Update:
If a technology passes all three gates, it is still not a guarantee it will come to pass.
There may ethical, political, environmental or other reasons that may prevent it.
But if it does not pass all three gates, it just will not find widespread adoption.
2/5
Gate 1: Does it match physical realities and laws?
Before anything else, a technology must obey known physics. Ideas that violate conservation laws, thermodynamics or basic material limits usually fail long before money or engineering enter the picture.
Examples of failures
- Perpetual motion machines: Countless patents were filed that attempted to produce free energy. All violated the first or second law of thermodynamics. None worked.
- The Dean Drive: and similar “reactionless” propulsion concepts. They claimed thrust without expelling mass, which contradicts conservation of momentum.
- Cold fusion as initially announced in 1989: The Fleischmann and Pons experiment proposed fusion at room temperature but the claimed reaction rates contradicted known nuclear physics and could not be replicated.
3/5
Gate 2: Does a working prototype exist and are the engineering problems solved?
Even when a concept does not violate physics, the gap between an idea and a working system can be enormous. Some technologies fail because no one manages to build a prototype that performs as promised.
Examples of failures
- The Lilium Electric Aircraft: The physics of VTOL is real, but the company never produced a reliable, certified prototype despite years of promises.
- Theranos blood testing: No physical laws were violated, but the engineering requirements for accurate multi-analyte testing from tiny blood volumes were never solved. The prototypes never worked as announced.
4/5
Gate 3: Does it work economically at scale?
A technology can be physically valid and technically feasible but still fail because the business case collapses when it is scaled. Costs of materials, energy, logistics or maintenance can kill an otherwise solid idea.
Examples of failures
- Supersonic passenger air travel (Concorde): The aircraft worked and did not violate physics, but the economics of fuel burn, noise restrictions and maintenance made the business unviable.
- Vertical farming for commodity crops: The biology and engineering work, but current energy and infrastructure costs make it far more expensive than field agriculture for low margin crops like wheat or rice.
- Hydrogen cars: Physics and engineering are fine, but storage, distribution and fuel cell costs made battery EVs far more competitive at scale.
5/5