Re: @Ledswinger
So we really should be asking: WTF are we doing wrong? Why is our society unable to build stuff which does the job to the same extent as the Spitfire,
I'll take a guess: Structural Unemployment is what we are doing wrong.
We have at our disposal thousands of bright young things from the finest and most expensive universities ready and willing to work at any project. We have wonderful design tools, that really do work, can run on any recent computer (except Mac) and are affordable to a very modest budget.
However - there is not that much actual Work and what work there is, is quickly dispensed with, because, businesses these days are frighteningly efficient and the tools are really cheap and powerful.
So, what will we do? Usually, I see this a lot on the big projects I happen work with, the "solution" is to make everything very big and very complicated. Always use "big-iron" / "enterprise" tools, be very heavy with the "bondage & leather" processes A.K.A. project-, requirements- and change- management, and generally leave no stone unturned if it is suspected that a phd-thesis could be hidden underneath.
Maybe 10% of the resources allocated actually goes into the actual end-product that the project is supposed to deliver. But, thousands of engineers and con-slutt-ants earns big salaries and can take out mortgages, which creates moneys for the banks to waste. So, we don't have a recession.
I can, at my kitchen table, design and have manufactured electronics that only 10-15 years ago would require a team of engineers and some kind of factory. The web-2.0 douchebags can do even bigger feats in terms of money with a few developers in an attic office (The other side of web-2.0 are IS - which are now murdering quicker, faster and for less resources than PIRA did).
We are swimming in resources and capabilities, but we haven't solved the problem on how to change society to the new realities.
*) "enterprise" - A product that ejects warp-cores and who's crew generally spends entire episodes on barely getting out of self-created messes. Perfectly fitting.