Welcome!
This website is about progress in technology. If you want to see how performance has changed over time, you've come to the right place! And you can see that not only as a function of time: Just search for a curve over on the left or click on a graph below and use the radio buttons to view the trajectories as a function of annual production, or previous cumulative production, or the sum total of these two variables.

Would you like to play with your own datasets? You don't even need to sign up for that (although we'd be happy if you did). Just upload your raw data in any format now, so that it can be processed for online visualization and analysis. We're extremely open minded: there is no technology we're not interested in! Whatever performance metric you have, why not share it with the world? (It does not have to be cost or price, those just happen to be the most common measures used by economists).

What if your files have a lot of missing data? No problem, our system is set up to deal with that, too. Besides, someone else might have the missing pieces somewhere... why not take the first step and share what you have here? If you know about some historical data that you suspect might be relevant, then you can make an important contribution. Think about it: you may be holding a critical piece of the puzzle that will enable this community to better understand technological innovation. For free sign up you only need an email and a password, or you can keep contributing anonymously.

The long-term goal of this project is to facilitate free data sharing and online research collaborations across nations, academic disciplines, industries, governments, non-profits, etc. and we're in the process of building the IT infrastructure that can sustain such an ecosystem. (For example, we're exploring Gapminder visualizations, data hound robots, and other Google projects searching the deep web).

If you use the database please cite the database itself (http://pcdb.santafe.edu) and the following publication: Nagy B, Farmer JD, Bui QM, Trancik JE, Statistical basis for predicting technological progress, PLoS One, 2013, Vol. 8, e52669 link. The database can be used freely with attribution.


Our newest performance curves