From article:
"He’s right that from a purely technological standpoint, it’s odd that small arms by and large haven’t progressed beyond mechanisms anchored firmly in the 20th century."
Because of reliability and cost efficiency. Adding technology that drastically reduces reliability while increasing cost isn't going to win in the marketplace.
More importantly, leaving all the negatives to "smart gun" technology aside and saying there are NO reliability issues with new technologies for the sake of argument, the application of new modern technology, electronics, or materials science to firearms
wouldn't give us any more function.
It won't shoot more bullets, it won't give us more capacity, it won't shoot them more accurately, nor with higher velocity or more force, and the one possible goal that modern technology could give us, lower weight, rapidly reaches a point of diminishing returns because of the negative impact ultra-low weight/mass has on recoil mitigation.
And the places where modern technology does give us advantages, or at least potential advantages, holographic sights, electronic video recording sights, thermal sights, night vision/light amplification sights, or integrated ballistic computing laser rangefinding scopes all already exist and those market segments are being exploited as we speak.
And people are still grinding away on the ammunition side too. The Etronix electric primers reduced lock time and pre-ignition shake of lock movement, but it wasn't enough of a gain to be worth it. The Natec PCA spectrum, and the most recent attempt at polymer cased ammunition from PCP... still not ready.
Much work has been done, whole governments threw their weight behind caseless ammunition with the HK G-11 and Dynamit Nobel, it became
good enough to be fielded just before the reunification of Germany, but they never
completely fixed the cook-off problem to 100% satisfaction.
Unless you've got man-portable railguns, coilguns, or lasers that are as or more effective than current chemical projectile weapons, and Joe six-pack can afford them, there's really nothing "modern technology" has to bring to the firearms market, other than tiny incremental refinements in alloys, plastics, automated machining technology, corrosion resistance, coatings etc.
Nibbling around the edges that might improve the bottom line and the shooter's experience, but it's still just nibbling.
