you know, it's a little late, but thank you for posting this comment, I actually just really read it and love it. You said what I wanted to say only better... :

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
you're all thinking in terms of rational explanations. what if there is none and the thing still works? if particle entaglement experiments have shown us anything it's that not only is all matter just energy but that everything in the universe is interconnected. the point is, we don't know shit yet. the behaviour of particles at quantum level shows bizzare results we are unable to backup properly with our newtonian ways. as we discovered that observation inevitably affects the results of experiments we were no longer just voayers looking from the outside into this newtonian rube-goldberg apparatus we call universe - we are the apparatus. our current description of reality is a sketch at best. i like the work David Bohm did with Karl Pribram on holonomic model of the brain and his ideas of the role consciencesness has in this universe. another wacko i like is David Deutsch and his four-strand theory of everything.
a quote from wiki about his theory:

"It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles."

which reminded me of another fine post here on the sift, a Wired editor Kevin Kelly's TED talk about remarkable similarities between the evolution of biology and technology.

you're all thinking in terms of rational explanations. what if there is none and the thing still works? if particle entaglement experiments have shown us anything it's that not only is all matter just energy but that everything in the universe is interconnected. the point is, we don't know shit yet. the behaviour of particles at quantum level shows bizzare results we are unable to backup properly with our newtonian ways. as we discovered that observation inevitably affects the results of experiments we were no longer just voayers looking from the outside into this newtonian rube-goldberg apparatus we call universe - we are the apparatus. our current description of reality is a sketch at best. i like the work David Bohm did with Karl Pribram on holonomic model of the brain and his ideas of the role consciencesness has in this universe. another wacko i like is David Deutsch and his four-strand theory of everything.
a quote from wiki about his theory:

"It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles."

which reminded me of another fine post here on the sift, a Wired editor Kevin Kelly's TED talk about remarkable similarities between the evolution of biology and technology.

choggie, I'd argue that you can get the same level of quality still in any product or service, and with very little effort.

The example I give is this video:
http://www.videosift.com/video/TED-What-does-technology-want
At 12:00, Kevin Kelly points out that technologies virtually never go away. He did a little experiment, leafing through a century-old catalog, and found that every product was still available.

Kevin Kelly has another good talk on the future of the scientific method at the Long Now Foundation:
http://longnow.org/projects/seminars/

Better yet, check out his 8-part dialogue with Kevin Kelly, Wired editor/founder at large, over at Jewcy.com (http://www.jewcy.com/dialogue/2007-05-29/can_the_internet_be_saved). I think it safe to say he comes off somewhat for the worse, though if you you read it through, at least you'll get a sense of where he is coming from.

Another longish vid, and some folks will find this booorrrrinnnnggg, but I like sh*t like this. This is Kevin Kelley giving a lecture on the history of science. Description from page is below. So far he hasn't even mentioned Thomas Kuhn. If you're at all interested in this topic, the history of science, you must read his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

Kevin Kelley has a cool site I like to check on from time to time. Kevin Kelley's Cool Tools http://www.kk.org/cooltools/
================
The Next Fifty Years of Science

Google TechTalks May 9, 2006
47 min 53 sec - May 9, 2006
Kevin Kelly

ABSTRACT The scientific method which provides us with so many ... all » technological goodies does not resemble the science of 1600. Ever since Bacon, science has undergone a slow evolution.

Landmarks in the history of the scientific method are the invention of libraries, indexes, citations, controlled experiments, peer review, placebos, double blind experiments, randomization, and search among others. At the core of the scientific method is the structuring of information.

In the next 50 years, as the technologies of information and knowledge accelerate, the nature of the scientific process will change even more than it has in the last 400 years. We can't predict what specific inventions will arise in the next 50 years, but based on long-term trends in epistemic tools, I believe we can speculate on how the scientific method itself -- that is, how we know -- will change in the next five decades.