I always think of "golden ages" as arising naturally from a random distribution of "big breakthroughs" and similar. It's not unlikely that you'd get some clumps of many breakthroughs followed by time with very few breakthroughs. And we call these clumps "golden ages." And of course, the fact that they're not independent events, but that one breakthrough might precipitate another, just reinforces this.
So I don't think "golden ages" are going away any time soon.
To expand on what Osmium said, a "golden age" is more like a "goldrush age": A big breakthrough opens up a new conceptual frontier, and the golden age is scientists rushing in to homestead and start mining the new landscape.
This isn't to say that all progress is done in goldrushes, but the most basic and, therefore, best-known work of a given field will be done in that period.
There's no continuum because some things are harder, others are easy.
Computers have evolved pretty much "continually" since the personal computer era, but they took some time to be invented.
Quantum mechanics evolved "quickly" once we found out there was such a thing as quantum mechanics, up until them it was a lot of "banging heads" and freewheeling.
Not to mention delays because of other constraints: wars, political instabilities, etc
Comments
Why do you think there will be or should be a golden age, rather then continuous progress forever?
http://beginningofinfinity.com
I always think of "golden ages" as arising naturally from a random distribution of "big breakthroughs" and similar. It's not unlikely that you'd get some clumps of many breakthroughs followed by time with very few breakthroughs. And we call these clumps "golden ages." And of course, the fact that they're not independent events, but that one breakthrough might precipitate another, just reinforces this.
So I don't think "golden ages" are going away any time soon.
To expand on what Osmium said, a "golden age" is more like a "goldrush age": A big breakthrough opens up a new conceptual frontier, and the golden age is scientists rushing in to homestead and start mining the new landscape.
This isn't to say that all progress is done in goldrushes, but the most basic and, therefore, best-known work of a given field will be done in that period.
Yes
There's no continuum because some things are harder, others are easy.
Computers have evolved pretty much "continually" since the personal computer era, but they took some time to be invented.
Quantum mechanics evolved "quickly" once we found out there was such a thing as quantum mechanics, up until them it was a lot of "banging heads" and freewheeling.
Not to mention delays because of other constraints: wars, political instabilities, etc