Are The Benefits Of Technology Waning?

FallLine writes: "U.S.News and World Report has an interesting and well writen article called the The Slowing Pace of Innovation. It argues that innovation between, approximately, 1900 and 1950 had a far greater impact on the average person (and society as a whole) than innovation between 1950 and 2000. It comments particularly on innovations of the past 20 or 30 years (i.e., cell phones, PCs, the internet, etc.) and compares them with earlier inventions that most of us take for granted (i.e., the lightbulb, sanitation, plumbing, etc). This article is long overdue, in my opinion, as it puts the innovations of today into proper historical context, even when we look back just 100 years."

Comments

Re:This argument is real short-sighted.

[Wyatt Earp]

I thought the article was pretty stupid, typical end of the year...no news...gotta blather about something negative.

Now the argument that not much happened between 100 CE and 1700 CE is just flat wrong. Off the top of my hungover head. Printing Press, Compass, Rockets, Gunpowder and Microscope are pretty important.

I'd say without the lightblub...advanced communications networks or gene therapy wouldn't happen. After all there is a LED blinking in that fibre switch that's sending the light down the fibre that gets these packets around.

I think that invention is moving along quite quicky, it's just that when you are so far advanced it's hard to make things really jump out. It's also hard to sit there as the advance happens and say...wow...that's gonna change the world.

When they sent the first email 30 years ago...did anyone there say...Wow...This is gonna change the world! Nope. When Chuck Yeager flew through faster than sound did anyone say...Wow this is going to change military aviation? Nope. It was just another day.

IMHO you can't sit there and say invention is slowing...or speading up...because invention isn't a finite thing that can be measured that way.

Re:Much room for innovation left

[nathanh]

And if the just about impossible task of developing practical teleportation were accomplished, you figure its impact on society would be to get you to work faster?

It's amazing how the first thought that pops into the minds of people when faced with the possibility of instantaneous teleportation is "wow, I can avoid the traffic going to work". It is incredibly shortsighted.

David Brin wrote a wonderful short story where he theorizes about a world where cheap, reliable teleportation was commonplace. Customs control is impossible, smuggling is rife, crime increases exponentially, police are powerless, war supplies cannot be stopped, privacy is destroyed, people visit the few last pieces of untouched wilderness in droves thus destroying it.

Teleportation would be the end of civilisation as we know it. For the previous person to equate it with something as trivial as the light bulb! I think you were incredibly restrained to not call him a freaking idiot.

What about 150 years ago?

[Pig Hogger]

The greatest, single most important invention in all the history of mankind was the invention of railroads, some 150 years ago.

150 years ago, for the first time in history, it was possible to transport quickly large quantities of merchandise, food, and people over long distances on earth.

The average speed of land transportation jumped more than 15fold, as trains were able to crisscross countries at speeds 15 to 20 times of the usual stagecoaches, trucks or canal boats which were then the norm.

Food could be readily transported from one place to the other to avert famines; the famines that occured thereafter were political in nature, not because food could not have been brought.

For the first time in history, people did not face the prospect of automatic starvation if their crops failed; they could resort on the supplies from elsewhere.

Railroads could supply the needs of ever-growing cities, such as New-York, London, Berlin, Paris or Chicago. Hitero, the size of cities was limited by the same factor any living organism was limited in size: by it's food supply.

It's not for nothing that, around that time, people embarked into railroad building with a quasi-religious fervor.

No, the greatest inventions occured between 1850 and 1950. After that, you only had refinements of existing stuff. Nothing really significant was invented after 1950, except perhaps, DNA genetic engineering.

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No, I disagree.

[FallLine]

No, not exactly. This isn't quite as much a measure of innovation, as it is a measure of revolution. Though the CAT and MRI scans may prove life saving to individuals, on the aggregate the sum of all these recent inventions simply has not had as great on an effect on society as have some earlier innovations. Life expectancies have not, contrary to popular opinion, improved that much in the developed world. Quality of health has not improved that much either.

The question is the net effect and the author answers quite well. It's not disparaging the science of today at all. The article does not say that today's scientists are stupid, lazy, incompetent, underfunded, etc. The article merely puts the benefits of today's science into historical context, and addresses the thousands of internet and technology pundits in one fell swoop.

The media and a great many pundits have been waxing ecstatic about how revolutionary computers and the internet have BEEN (or will be in the very near future). The problem with this kind of talk is that it distorts our thinking and our priorities.

For instance, I never hear the end of the so-called "digital divide." A day never seems to go by when Al Gore, or some other politician, is talking about how we need the internet in every classroom and village (in Africa or what have you). Well as a matter of priorities, basic sustenance, health, and literacy are far more important innovations that have yet to reach these same people. Yet our American domestic policy, insists on spending countless resources today on a "revolution" that is certainly not yet revolutionary. Whether it's going to be revoltionary at all is debatable, but to spend hundreds of millions of dollars networking and providing soon to be obselete computers at great cost is foolish at best.

Similarly, we saw, and still are seeing to some extent, billions of dollars being ponied up for the "internet revolution" though the infamous Dot Coms. Meanwhile other technologies have suffered from lack of funding. For instance, I personally know a few biotech and medical devices companies that had a very difficult time getting capital from venture capitalists and the like, because they were too crazed over Dot Coms. More real dollars have been spent on these Dot Coms than so many other proven revolutions... So yes, not only is this an interesting question, it's a relevant one too. It's a matter of priorities and clear thinking.

Nor does this mean that, since all "basic" needs have been meet, nothing more dramatic can be done. Life expectancy can be increased substantially--medicine is still quite primitive. Issues like traffic jams can theoretically be resolved. AI can be invented (theoretically). Etc. etc. etc. All these things can be HUGE benefits for society that can be _felt_ by the common man--even if he is ignorant as to the reasons. It simply has not happened to as great as an extent in the past 50 years as it was in the 50 years before that.

Well, of course

[johnathan]

Well, of course. Innovations like plumbing and sanitation take care of basic needs. Now that these needs are taken care of, all that is left is to improve our lives in more trivial ways.

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To see the impact, we have to wait awhile

[atrus]

To fully understand the impact of today's society, we must wit another 50 years. Light bulbs were amazing when they were produced, but how many people had one in there house and used it to its full potential? The same goes for computers. They're "amazing" for the commonfolk, but when will it integrate and become second nature in their lives?

Some of the biggest technologies will most likely include e-mail and the web. Yes, the web is far too over-hyped, but it does offer a very large net of knowledge. 50 years ago, you could walk into a library and find a small assortment of knowledge, but if they didn't have what you were looking for, you were up a creek unless you had a lot of time on your hands. The web changes that (or more correctly, will). Simple things like forums or mailing list archives of accumulated knowledge will be the most useful, but thats only my prediction. (Those things are new inventions. A central repsoitory of conversation has never before been attempted. If any conversations were ever recorded in any way (meeting minutes, etc), they were usualy stuffed in a big filing cabinet and never were shared).

inventions take a while to take hold

[q000921]

Most of the inventions that had transformed life between 1900 and 1950 were made around 1900 or sometimes even long before. Likewise, the impact of today's inventions isn't going to be really felt for a long time; we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible once biotechnology and computing become ubiquitous.

That isn't to say that there aren't problems. The article points out correctly that preventive healthcare and public health is much more important to increasing life span than other medical advances. And economic opportunism and vested interests may well keep inventions from reaching their true potential for decades to come.

How superficial the article is, you can see from its concluding remarks. While Thomas Edison was cleary important in popularizing and marketing inventions, much of what he was successful with had been invented many years prior to him--including the light bulb.

It's called "Perspective"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't say, "1 Ghz Pentium 4's" aren't as important to society as the lightbulb, and expect to sound profound.

The reason the 'historical' inventions were so much bigger is because we are only talking about the big ones.

Right now. Computers vs Radio. Which is more important in day to day life? Fast Forward 100 years and lets see how bit of an impact the Internet (or rather instantaneous and persistant global communication) had on society.

This article is fine in that it cuts away some of the hype, but the 'big' inventions of today are just as big as the 'big' inventions of yesterday, (even if the small inventions aren't.)

Another Utterly Idiotic Article

[the eric conspiracy]

It is apparent that some authors consider only those things that they have day to day direct contact with. Any depth of knowledge as to the technological underpinnings of a society seems to have escaped the purview of a modern liberal arts education.

The fact of the matter is that the discoveries of the past 50 well surpass those of the previous 50. Where would modern society be without the laser and the IC? Not to mention the incredible impact the previously unknown field of molecular biology is having on medicine as well as politics. The advances in the field of chemistry have been equally rapid. NMR, GC-MS, polymer science etc. have had a huge impact on modern life.

Not only that, but many of the inventions the cited (automobile, sanitation, lightbulb, etc. were made BEFORE 1900. In some cases CENTURIES before! The ROMANS had indoor pumbing fer crissakes).

Not only that, but it refers to failures in urban planning in the US as evidence of lack of innovation. We, I think if he were to travel on the high speed rail systems of Europe or Japan, he might realize these problems are POLITICAL, not technological.

His argument regarding productivity is nonsense too. Look at the percentage of farm workers in 1950 vs. today. Or the average standard of living. Bullocks I say!

The fact is that this article misses the point completely. Modern technology has surpassed the obvious day of the stinking, belching machine, and moved on to the much more rewarding realm of the molecule. Scientific advances come in the form of fabrics with undreamed of mechanical properties (Aramid etc), drugs that work at an extrodinary level of sophistication, instruments that can image the processes occurring in the body in 3D with molecular discrimination level without using damaging radiation, etc.

HELL, the first world wide satellite television broadcast included the Beatles singing "All you need is Love". Now we bounce signals around the globe without even considering the magic involved.

Of all the articles I have seen posted on /. this has to be the biggest, stinkingest crock of all.

Re:Another Utterly Idiotic Article

[the eric conspiracy]

This article is about the average person.

If you want to talk about the average person, you have to be very careful. The average person is a sustenance farmer in China who has no access to electricity, and does not own a telephone. The biggest things that have affected his life are programs of mass immunization, education in basic health care and sanitation, and better flood and land management practices.

And yes, these have occurred in the past 50 years, not in the time prior to 1950.

For the doubters

[overshoot]

For those of you who think that our advances are as important to peoples' lives as our grandparents' advances, I offer the following:

• When my grandfather was a child, transportation was horse, train, or boat. When he turned fifty and I was born, it was trains, cars, and airplanes. It's still cars and airplanes.
• When he was a child, long-range communications meant paper, at most by telegraph. When he turned fifty and I was born, it meant telephone, radio, and television. It's still mostly telephone, radio, and television.
• When he was a child, middle-class families in the USA routinely lost several children to whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc. None of the families I knew as a child did. Logarithms don't count.
• My grandfather had smallpox scars. I have a smallpox vaccination scar. My children don't -- because smallpox is gone.
• Nobody in his town had indoor plumbing. Nobody in mine didn't.
• As a boy, he read about automobiles. Before he died, he watched Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the Moon live on TV. My kids watch reruns of Apollo 13.

I'm busy making some of our wonderful techie toys, and certainly am not complaining about the graphite knee brace that lets me ski. But let's not kid ourselves: my parents and grandparents changed the way we live in utterly profound ways, and it's going to take something on the order of matter transmission to come close.

Re:Without Doubt, Yes.

[soldack]

"The law of diminishing returns is gripping us?" You compare to sets of clock speeds and claim this means the end of history? Even if you were right about a slowdown (which I think you are not), it would not mean the end. Evolution seems to occur in spurts. If you are right, we are just not in one right now.
Actually, Vinge has been right on. Take a read at the inventions of the year in Discover. Amazing discoveries in food, computers, physics, and about everything else will change the world around us in incredible ways. Technology is increasing at ever increasing rates. There are bumps in the road but it keeps moving. Continuous speech recognition is becoming a reality. I can call a 800 number and ask about movies, get the information I need, and never talk to a human being. Computers are interacting with us in more human way. Most tutorial programs now talk the user through the learning. As computer power grows, the little annoying paper clip will become your virtual personal assistant. It is happening already. Operating Systems and the software around them have become so customizable that each person's system is unique. They gain personality. I am not talking about wallpaper and screensaves, I mean the ways in which we interact. Web sites have moved from static digital representations of print to customized, unique, living, breathing swirls of personal information. When I visit /., yahoo, cnn and netscape, it is my site I find. No one else sees that exact same site. Site are learning our habits. I am finally starting to get spam about things I care about. Amazon usually makes pretty good suggestions to me. Computers are already building computers. Engineers use software to help design the latest hardware. Some parts of software are written by software itself with humans only guiding it to the solution. Society is also changing at a dramatic pace. Cultures shift and change in months instead of years, years instead of decades. Technology has lead this increase in the rate of change. Ideas now move great distances at swift rates. The readers of our posts live in many different places, with varying societies and cultures. As a young girl in Canada and an old man in China interact, they change a little bit. As they change they change the society and culture around them. As those cultures change, the world changes. End game? No, I think the game is just beginning...

Shifting the goalposts...

[Throw Away Account]

He takes inventions made in the 19th century (light bulb, AC power, automobiles, indoor plumbing) and counts them as 1900-1950 inventions because they were made generally available then, but counts inventions not made generally available until 1950-2000 (television, antibiotics) as 1900-1950 inventions if they were first created then.

Then, inventions from 1950-1980 (the Green Revolution, the word processor, the jet passenger plane, spacecraft, satellites) are not counted as "modern" innovations, despite the fact that the article starts by comparing 1900-1950 to 1950-2000.

Finally, older inventions like the telegraph are compared to modern ones like the Internet.

So, this guy gives us an argument that actually reads, "the inventions of 1830-1980 are more important as a group than the inventions of 1980-2000, so we've stopped innovating".

Wow, how profound. I can probably give a good argument that the inventions of 775-1830 AD (a time period similarly 7.5 times longer than the later period being compared to), including the transoceanic ship, the gun, classical physics, calculus, and the moveable-type printing press, were more important than the innovations from 1830-1980.

And, of course, the 7.5-times-longer time period from 7100 BC to 775 AD saw even more important innovation, seeing the invention of animal domestication, agriculture, the wheel, standing armies, writing, etc.