Trigger words: invented
Indicator sentences: I'm a little confused by your use of the word 'invented'. Reading through the rest of your posts it seems like you mean something closer to 'discovered' or 'theorized'.
Negotiation parts: Something like a battery, for example, was invented thousands of years ago, does this mean that new and more efficient types of batteries don't count as a technological advancement because they're 'refined' and not 'invented'? What if it's a completely new type of battery, or one using a radically more efficient method of storing the energy? With what limited information on batteries I have, I still recall reading news story after news story about new research and studies coming out on better batteries. There's a whole lot of research going on in things like [Carbon Nanotubes](http://www.nanomagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&id=1160:carbon-nanotube-technology-produces-up-to-tenfold-increase-in-lithium-ion-battery-power) that provide vast amounts of power compared to current batteries. Computer controlled cars are also getting bigger, and yet I believe there's still a ton of room for improvement there. Consider if we were to automate *everything* on the road. Collisons and other accidents would go way down, so low that we might start to wonder why we're even driving around a few tons of metal just to get us from A to B. Cars might get smaller, lighter, they could be roomier because we wouldn't need things like a dashboard or a steering wheel. We might not even need to look out the window at all. Imagine reclining back in a lounge chair while in your 'car', facing another passenger who is also reclined and relaxed, having a conversation while you commute to work or whatever. Imagine the entire thing is powered by solar energy, both from the top of the car and from electric charging stations set up throughout the world. Would you consider this type of transportation system 'new' or just 'refined'? Interesting read, and also I didn't explain myself properly so your fuzziness is completely understandable. To be honest my problem is that I considered a lot of new technologies as "refinements" instead of the what they were. In other words, when I wrote the OP I thought of the smartphones as a refinement of cellphones and not as new technology. I was fundamentally wrong when I wrote the post. My true intention was that we have reached a peak and though we would continue to get new "refinements"(new technologies) in things we already had, we already had obtained the type of technologies we will be using for centuries. For example, sure we would send better and better rovers to Mars, but we would never be able to send astronauts because the technologies(different engines, faster travel, cryogenics maybe) to get them there and back would never be developed. Of course after reading all of the posts I got a sense of things that are being developed.