Where Is The Innovation?

Ripped_Edge asks: "In pondering the looming economic slowdown, I had an interesting discussion with some of my friends. The end result of our conversation was that, since the release of the web browser, there has been no innovation in any field of science or technology. Why? I'm not saying that there hasn't been a huge amount of distance covered over the last nine years (I don't want a 14kbs modem to be considered fast again) but it seems all the progress made has been simply incremental improvement. Could this fact be the cause of the slipping stock market? Was there really so much money floating around that people did not need a revolutionary idea to be financed?" Ah, it's another occurance of that new buzzword, recently co-opted by our friends in Redmond, but is there a grim truth in this query? In between the DMCA, the UCITA and the rampant cluelessness over at the US Patent and Trade office, maybe people are just afraid to innovate unless they are sure they can control what they create (or at the very least, can make a buck off of it...)? Or has the innovation been quietly happening in the background of our lives, and the changes are just too subtle for us to notice?

"In posing this question to the slashdot community I'm sure to receive some blistering flames claiming that I'm too narrow minded in my view of what innovation is. But think carefully, can you really name something developed in the last nine years that came out of left field, shook the world by its roots, gained acceptance and you can't live without it? I consider innovations to be things such as the wheel, fire, airplanes, mechanized warfare, the radio, television, PC, and the Internet.

In looking at research being done now, I again see only a path of incremental improvement. People simply take the next step, no one jumps. Quantum computing might have a chance, but it looks like it will fall the way of hot fusion, physically possible, but not commercial viable.

If the Internet is supposed to facilitate the exchange of information, why don't we see more innovation? Is it just that the innovation has become so complex and abstract that a simple-minded person like myself is blind to it? Or for the past nine years have we just been walking along thrilled at the way things were going? (If the latter is the case, a recession might be good to stoke the fires of original thinking)

Has there been innovation (not the Microsoft defintion, but real innovation) in the past nine years? Is it too much to ask for a ground breaking idea in nine short years? Why hasn't there been more inovation with the advent of the internet?"

Comments

Snails Pace

[Wyatt Earp]

I think part of the problem is that people don't like to think that innovation takes time.

You talk about UNIX evolving slowly, but look at the Auto and the Airplane. All three are from the 20th Century...yes there were some earlier auto examples, but for the most part nothing really happened until 1898 on...so I'll say the 20th Century.

The Auto - Very slow development until Ford, revolutionized the entire industral system. So a good 20 years with slow evolution.

The Airplane - From 1903 until 1915 really very little was done with the airplane. Sure it could fly up to 150 miles per hour and cross the English Channel or the Alps, but it was still *very* dangerous and impractical. But between the wars airplanes started to evolve, by 1940 most of the world's airforces had mono-planes, although most still used biplanes till the end of the war (Germany, UK, USSR, Japan, US). But that's a full 37 years after the first flight. 37 years to go from Kitty Hawk to 400 miles an hour. Even during the war, US and British crews had to stop for fuel during Atlantic crossings, nearly 20 years after Lindberg flew non-stop.

Technology has always evolved slowly, look at handguns, the best designed handgun in the history of firearms was designed before the first world war and "prefected" in 1911. Not much has happened with that in 90 years.

The capitalization of Technology hasn't slown it down, it's always been slow.

I don't know where you've been, but...

[color of static]

That sounds like a rather web-developer centric world view. As I use the web for little more than a reference tool and communications tool, let me assure you that the rest of the scientific and technical world is making leaps and bounds. Partly helped by the increase effeciency of tools like the web, partly by other advances (although I would find a web browser hard to term an advance as it is just a tool to standardize interfaces into one user "experience" :-)).
The new technology in the semiconductor field alone has made the browser a usable tool. Do you remember using Mosaic in the early 90's? It was stripped down and still slow on anything short of a high end workstation.
What you are seeing is that those improvments that require you to make a paradigm shift for greater effeciency are "breakthroughs" (the web, a car 100 years ago, etc). Really all technology is just improvments on other technology. Some require change onthe users part, others are hidden from them to make their life better. All in all, the web browser is not the biggest breakthrough in the last 9 years, it just has the biggest social footprint.

Hindsight 20/20

[GusherJizmac]

Only upon looking back does it appear that innovation just "happened". The reality is that things grew incrementally. Think of the web browser:

• ftp
• archie
• gopher
• lynx
• Mosaic
• Netscape
• IE

None of these in and of themselves are revolutionary or particularly "innovative". They build on previous work. That is how the human race advances; by building on previous work. Innovation just doesn't happen overnight, and innovative ideas don't always immediatly catch on.

There's been enough significant enhancements in most of our lifetimes to realize this.

Jesus wept...

[gowen]

there has been no innovation in any field of science or technology.

Man, thats an ignorant point of view. Just the list of biological advances (can you spell "genome") could fill this text box. Virology, stem cell research, gene splicing. Go pick up a copy of "Scientific American" or a "Nature" and stop asking such stupid questions.

Nice troll

[f5426]

Innovative products rarely take the world at a storm the few years after their creation, so it is a bit recent to see any technological breakthrought made in the last 10 years (but, if I had to name one, cell phones is probably the biggest one since civil airplane)

> But think carefully, can you really name something developed in the last nine years that came out of left field, shook the world by its roots, gained acceptance and you can't live without it

Fermat theorem proof, of course.

Cheers,

--fred

Because...

[pogen]

since the release of the web browser, there has been no innovation in any field of science or technology. Why?

Everyone's too busy downloading pr0n.