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Innovators Are Older Than Ever
GrokSoup writes "A new study shows that great achievements in science are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago. Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, the author shows that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century. This runs contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s. It is also welcome news to those of us who have not yet, ahem, done our Nobel-winning work."
look at the professor in futurama...
Because these days, everyone is expected to waste three or four years memorising things that can easily be looked up, rather than actually learning anything useful or cutting edge in a degree.
Or the Nobel commision just take 60-80 years to get around to honouring the scientists and the fact we live longer now on avergae so we have alot more time to relax into it... I would know better but i dont fancy paying for the paper.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
If we had any brains in our heads, we'd be exposing 8-12 year olds to ground breaking work, when their brains are still maleable.
Play Command HQ online
When you're young, all you care about is partying and getting laid.
Perhaps the percentage of the way through your life that you do your best work has not changed.
Is this really supprising considering that people, on average, are living longer today than they did 100 years ago?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I hardly think this is surprising, given the sheer volume of knowledge and understanding a researcher must absorb to make any advancement at the cutting edge of science today. It really does take around half a life-time's worth of study.
I think the reason for this is that any new invention/discovery now takes years of reading and understanding the basic work that has already been done. Scientists in the past did not have so much background literature/work that they had to comprehend as the scientists today have to. This is of course not saying that their discoveries were rudimentary or inconsequential, but just that they did not have to spend so much time understading already done work.
farhanahmed.net
Maybe it's because we're working later in life and abstaining from retirement longer so the younger generation has to wait a while longer to get their shots in their fields. There's also probably a lot more a student has to learn than they did 100 years ago before they can even start working on groundbreaking projects.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
These people grew up in an era devoid of video games, tv, government-mandated mass advertising / marketing, and centralized media.
Back when people actually read books.. and evolution wasn't such a bad word.
This is related to the problem with Innovation vs Invention. Big business and the older folk mentioned here may be masters at twisting linguistics and taking credit for "innovations" like business model patents and restrictions on technologies, unlike the old-skool philosophy of inventions based on and leading to information sharing and broad education.
Well, yes, for sheer intellectual heavy lifting. But that doesn't mean we start forgetting things faster than we learn them.
As the population stays healthier longer, you'd expect experience-based advances to have increasingly older authors.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Life expectancy in 1900 for the American male was in the low 50s. Now it's in the high 70s. It stands to reason that the average age of career achievements should be higher. I sure hope the National Bureau of Economic Research didn't use any federal grant money to come up with this valuable insight.
6 years... WOOOHOOOO!
Well technically, since time doesn't move backwards, isn't EVERYTHING older than ever?
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Could it be that now, we have more professors taking credit for innovation produced by the students under them?
Could it be that the Nobel committee is favouring older, more worldly innovators over younger, brash pups?
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
I'd say the easiest explanation is that as the existing fields of research get deeper and deeper, it simply takes longer to get to the cutting edge. During the renaissance, someone like Leonardo could be on the cutting edge of dozens of fields, whereas today, in a field like mathematics or physics, the sheer amount of back-reading you have to do will take you well into your twenties. An interesting question is whether human potential for discovery is ultimately going to be limited by our lifespan or the fact that we 'peak' during our twenties.
There's still time for my work on the "Virtual Portman Pouring Hot Grits Down Your Trousers" to be recognized...
Not surprising at all. The number of scientists is so much larger than before and the literature is so expansive that nearly all obvious things are or have been tried by somebody at sometime. Typically, it takes many years of trial and error (mostly error) before a young turk realizes this and starts to be able to narrow down the approaches that might actually work.
Perhaps even more important, is the amount of technology that is required before cutting-edge research can be done. With the possible exception of algorithm research (even then clusters help), this technology is not available to the general public. The young scientist will only have access to this technology in his/her "training" phase (which in biology is usually most of the 20's) while under the supervision of a more established scientist (who would get most of the credit should a breakthrough occur...). Even after starting up a new lab - it takes a few years to get everything in place and funding set up before you can try out those new ideas etc...
I don't know how many other countries this is applicable to, but in Denmark, at least, the average age of people graduating from the universities (with the Danish equivalent of an MSc degree) is 29 or so. Presumably they aren't ready to participate in any cutting-edge research of the kind which might land them a Nobel Prize until then. Of course the corpus of knowledge in any given scientific field increases with time, and thus researchers are forced to spend a lot of time keeping up with things rather than innovating.
I think therefore I am. Therefore, I think, I am.
It's because people are getting married later than before.
works now favours older more senior staff so its hardly surprising if they then scoop the plaudits. Funding is increasingly "targeted" making younger researchers fight against stacked odds. Of course when we are talking of public money its hard to argue against the position that money should go to long proven performers. Add to this that academic promotion is largely a matter of dead-mans shoes for anyone who isn't a genuine genius (ie. for people who are merely extremely good at what they do) and there is an aging workforce then I think that could quite easily add up to an average shift of six years. In short I can't access the full text but I think this is a result of policy more than anything else. There are a lot of big ideas floating about but having the means to make them stick is another matter.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
So, our bodies and especially our brains are in better shape to handle their tasks. Increasingly, the prime human age for technical and scientific breakthroughs will increase.
The flip side is that because we live longer, we must work longer. Everyone seems to be pursuing a longer life, but almost no one wants to work past the age of 65. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you live longer, then you must work longer. That's the rub.
I wonder how this comapares to the ages at which they get married? There is that theory that once you get married it's hard to have the singlemindedness that leads to great achievements. Of course, it's hard to seperate cause and effect, because a lot of scientists wait until after they've had some career success before getting married.
sigs are a waste of space
So, the most interesting discoveries are made by people who have masters degrees? Six years is the time it takes to get a master's degree, get a grant and start doing serious work these days. By comparison the Wright brothers were able to work in a bicycle shop. People did not seem to need the same levels of funding to accomplish similar tasks a century ago. I wonder why?
The effect mentioned would simply seem to be a function of longer lifespans and the sorting effect of the education industry.
Of course, I also bet that scientists live longer these days. I also bet that the "scientists making breakthroughs" are coming from a more diverse background now.
maybe that's because our life span has probably increased by 6 years or more. is this that suprising?
Think of all you learn as of power tools. Sure you can go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of tools. Will this make you a good carpenter? No. You don't know how to use the tools and how to produce stuff people may find useful.
Same with science. In order to do research you have to know your tools. Math, physics, chemistry, etc. Four years is not enough to give you these things even on the most basic level. I've spent 6 years getting my M.Sc. degree (not in the US) and I wish I could go back and spend a couple of years more, knowing what I will need in the field.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I now have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay off, so going back to school is not an option financially.
If you're a student right now, absorb the knowledge as efficiently as you can. Go really deep into subjects, understand them on the most fundamental level. Know how to use your tools. You sure won't be able to recall the most intricate details of what you're studying right now three years down the road, but you'll at least know where to look.
who just celebrated his 40th birthday, I for one welcome our new geriatric intellectual overlords.
Seriously -- doesn't this make sense? 100 years ago you went around and dug in some rocks and junk piles and you were discovering stuff. Put a magnifying glass on a drop of pond water and it's a whole new world. Nowadays the _baseline_ for inventions has grown much more than before.
For instance, my invention deals with measuring how well intellectual processes are being performed at an organization. To get to where I'm at, you have to first invent IP, then process control, then computer technology, etc -- and for me to come up with it I had to understand enough of that previous work to mutate it into something useful for people.
What concerns me is that with more and more specialization, there seems to be a dearth of "cross pollenization" among sciences. Sure, there are specific programs, but it's almost impossible to find people with a truly broad and moderately deep general knowledge of sciences. My opinion only -- we've got a lot of brillant people but lack enough people who think outside the box and put the pieces together.
Schools should be hammering away the three R's... reading, writing, and arithmatic.
Instead, kids are in college learning what should be taught in highschool. The class names might stay the same, but the curriculum has changed.
And dare I say, class size has something to do with it? If a smart kid is in a class of 15, they will have more time to ask questions than if they are burried in a class of 35.
The smart kids will keep reading later in life. They will spend much effort undoing the teaching society forced on them. And eventually, they will make their great discovories; just later in life.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I am not able to comment on this article, because I can't read it. Is the increase of six years statistically significant? What is the sample size? Who is judged as a great inventor? I don't know, all I can see is the abstract.
But, I guess most of the stories posted here are opinion articles. So this one does not seem so bad in comparison.
My genetic programming website: http://www.helpmefigurethisout.com/
"It's time to leave science to the 150-year-olds!"
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Who are the "innovators" explored within this journal article?
Only engineers, developers, and scientists?... or are product and industrial designers also taken into consideration? These people innovate and invent for a living. Moreover, older designers typically fall into positions of direction and administration.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Most good programs nowadays in real majors don't require much memorization. 2nd rate schools or brainless majors will require memorization, but you do little memorization studying physics or chemistry at a good school.
Right, based on the increase in life expectancy, you would expect innovation age to increase by more than six years. I think there is less big innovation by older people because they realize the expected payoff is not worth it. You gamble your time, money, and energy, and you sacrifice other things in life. And what do you get? Are you really happier after you are famous in some technical circle? Innovation age growing more slowly than life expectancy could be evidence that people get cleverer as they age.
You can read the complete paper here:- ben/htm/AgeAndGreatInvention.pdf
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones
Typical, confuse education with innovation. Great talent always reveals itself late in life. Obviously a younger crowd here.
From TFA: "innovative activity is greater at younger ages, although great achievement before the age of 30 is not typical. Rather, a researcher's output tends to rise steeply in the 20's and 30's, peak in the late 30's or early 40's [emphasis added], and then trail off slowly through later years (Lehman, 1953; Simonton, 1991)."
/. that this 20's stuff was nonsense because it certainly isn't true in my field (biochemistry). Most people are pushing 30 when they get their Ph.D.'s; I'm the youngest of my entering class at U. Oregon to get my Ph.D. (in June) and I turn 30 in October. Hell I know a guy here who didn't get his until he just turned 40!
I was pretty sure when I read the write-up on
Gee this is a wonderful submission. People are supposed to discuss the topic an abstract with about 10 sentences, unless you want to buy it for $5.
Can't the guy do a little more research to post some other like articles that we don't have to pay for?
Well, I guess no one RTFAs anyway so maybe this isn't any different.
And steal their old people...err innovators
The Nobel comission generally waits before awarding someone the price. Sometimes many years, like 10, or more.
The reason is simple: They don't want the price to be awarded because of something which "doesn't work". For example, while a new invention/discovery may *seem* really awesome and useful and groundbreaking at first, sometimes it is discovered, a few years down the road, that it wasn't, or worse - that it was completely wrong, or even that the researcher was faking his discovery to get more funding.
People live longer now, so we'll have more old inventors.
"So who has been doing all this inovatting?"
Mask removed from young man who has been tied up.
"It's old man Johnson!!!!!"
"Yey and I would have got away with it if it wasn't for you pot smoking, music swapping, lazy kids."
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
Wisdom and intuition come from experience. Knowledge accumulation takes time.
Only people without wisdom or experience think most breakthroughs come from people in their 20s. When a technology is new (think: early part of the CS boom) younger people have a lot of energy and do make breakthroughs but those are almost always procedural, not conceptual.
There's a lot of truth to the saying that old age and treachery beats youth and energy. I'd exchange the word "wisdom" for "treachery", however.
The young bull says, "Let's run down there and f@%# that young hefer!" The old bull says, "Let's walk down there and f@%# them all."
It's because science has become so complex these days that the big advances are made by large teams, and only the leader gets the prize and/or kudos. To become a leader of such a team requires years. It is as much to do with reputation and experience in many fields now, as opposed to just pure brain power and creativity.
The time to learn all the previous knowledge so that you can add to it has increased a bit too.
Getting a PhD is just the start...
I think there's definitely a certain type of mathematical/scientific work that is most likely to be done by someone very young. A classic example would be the three groundbreaking papers Einstein published in 1905, at the age of 26. Nobody else had the guts or the mental flexibility to come up with relativity, or the photon theory.
But then again, you have, say, Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat's last theorem. That's a project that took many years of intense work in total solitude, and a young person just wouldn't be able to do it without committing professional suicide -- Wiles could do it because he had tenure, and could afford to fail.
Find free books.
There was an interesting article on this topic on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2082960) two years ago. The article points out that the stereotype of the mathematician as a youthful prodigy is no longer the rule but the exception. It includes an interesting quote by mathemtician Henri Poincaré: "[L]ogic and intuition have each their necessary role. Each is indispensable." By logic, I'm guessing he means a more deliberate method of arriving at an answer, something that does require those years of learning and research, while intuition refers to that singular moment of clarity, the very thing that might've struck a twenty-year old mathematician a hundred years ago. So what's changed? Like Poincaré says, both are indispensable. You can stay in school for twenty-years, memorizing every theorem, every proof, every fundamentals of mathematics to heart, but if you don't have the capacity for intuition, you are never going to come upon something new. Likewise, even if the potential for greatness is in you, you won't be able to achieve it without first laying out your foundations. And that's all there is to it. There's simply more to learn, and without that learning, you'll never have a chance to exercise your intuition.
Einstein was a bit of a fraud. He copied most of his work, his wife did lots of it, and he never cited any previous work in his papers. (i.e. never wrote a reference) The media loved him though...
Ever wonder why he never won a nobel prize for relativity, supposedly the greatest intellectual achievement ever?? Because he didn't deserve it. His brilliance was at getting away with it!
"Using data on Nobel Prize winners and great inventors, the author shows that the age at which noted innovations are produced has increased by approximately 6 years over the 20th Century. This runs contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s." ...unless the age used to be 19-23, of course.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
I'm guessing you're either still in your teens or trolling. But just in case neither is true:
There are multiple forms of memory. There wil be certain things you need to know without looking them up and there will be things which you need to be familiar enough to have an idea as to whether the information exists - an index - "I know I've seen that somewhere" and be able to track it down quickly. There's also short-term memory - memorize the information for a test, the dump it. You might have to refresh that material for mid-terms and finals, but your brain as at least seen it [once|before].
When I was an EMT half a lifetime ago, would you have preferred I not have memorized some of the things I knew? "It hurts!" "I know, I know. Hold on, I'm reading as fast as I can."
EKG: ______________________________________ oops! (I need to study with Evelyn Wood!)
Can you name a profession where you wouldn't have to waste time memorizing things which could easily be looked up? Oh, and make that a job you'd be willing to work at, long-term (until you retire). That way, you can't claim something like putting nuts on a screws at an assembly line. Obvious things, such as a DJ, where you'd claim all you'd have to do is swap discs (although it's not even that difficult) don't count, either.
You will find it to be very difficult to find a job where you are mentally challenged, don't have to memorize anything[1], and can look things up on a whim, where you'll be effective (doing the right job right) and efficient (doing the right job with good speed).
____________________
[1] Perhaps you'd like to employ the techniques in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" ???
And those who claim they've taken (or will have to take) subjects which will have no effect upon their lives when they get out of school, I feel sorry for them as they must live uneventful lives. I can go through every course these people would consider to be worthless and show how I've used them. And that's from attending a Liberal Arts College. I took as much, if not more, computer science. I see a lot of people coming into interviews with a CS degree and it becomes apparent they have a degree in computer programming. They are not the same thing.
Or the people deciding what's innovative are older than ever...
...it is simpler just believe that a supreme being does it all. Knowing things is just too much work...especially these days. So hypothesizing... As the age of actually contemplating complex concepts rises, the more likely it will be for the layman to misunderstand how things work. Will this cause a shift back to superstition again?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clark
Most scientists peek in their 20s.
Most scientists pee in their 20s.
Author & Researcher of article "Innovators are Older Than Ever" turns 60.
One recent study confirmed that scientists' productive years ended when they had children. Apparently some genetic mechanism kicks in (to protect the kids?) and creativity goes out the window.
all the innovators are older because they're the innovators of yesterday growing old. It seems today educational system kills innovation. Anyway I'm going to study for MCAS cya later
Some people believe 1-1=3 and for the sake of being politically correct, we should respect their differences
It makes sense. If you want to see from the shoulders of giants first you have to climb onto their back. And they just keep getting taller
Typically, it takes many years of trial and error (mostly error) before a young turk realizes this and starts to be able to narrow down the approaches that might actually work.
No, creative research doesn't work that way, at least not in academia, from my experience on both sides of the student/staff fence.
PhD students are no older today than in earlier times, and in their final year, each of the competent ones are the world's peak thinkers in their particular disciplines. It has always been so, and it must be so, because originality of work is a requirement for a PhD to be granted.
The reason why it doesn't take students any longer than before to reach PhD thinking level is simply that research is not ever done from first principles in all areas of a scientific discipline. Instead, the latest stable theories are taken as axiomatic in peripheral areas, and only the specific and narrow area targetted for original research is dissected fully for detailed examination.
This approach can continue indefinitely, regardless of the ever increasing size of the past body of knowledge. You won't find researchers getting any older because of it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They haven't even established existence and smoothness of them. Besides, everyone already knows the div is 0--like, duh!
All it really means is that the current scientific community is better than ever at crushing or ignoring the groundbreaking work of new minds. As always before, what is currently accepted is not as right as some of the work being put forward. Its just that, like always before, no one is listening.
The other main reason is these days science requires big resources to test an idea or investigate a concept. For example 1984 Physics Nobel prize was given to Carlo Rubbia and Simon Van der Meer for "their decisive contributions to the large project, which led to the discovery of the field particles W and Z, communicators of weak interaction". Carlo Rubia was not the actual discoverer but he was the project leader and it was his idea (Simon Van der Meer was the project leader in the accelerator side) and he was the one who puffed and puffed until everything got build. You have to be pretty senior and with credentials to go around puffing and getting people to take you notice.
If you take another example.. the invention of the transisor by John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Other scientists in the early 1900s had seen the effect but they had not suceeded in reproducing the effect. It took a company with great resources for them to have everything necessary to make it work. I think the purity of Germanium being one. Again to have such a previldge position at a young age is pretty rare.
Even Isaac Newton.. he was young when he came up with the tools he required for creating the models.. but it took him a good deal of 20years after that for everything to actually fall in place and for Principia to be written. If you read James Gleick's biography you can see his confusion and the mighty struggle he has. Apart from trying to understand the physics behind it he has to develop a method of investigation which today we take for granted. Slowly, as he is being pushed by his critics, he irons out the wrinkles in the work.
Cheers, A.
"A new study shows that great achievements in science are produced by older innovators today than they were a century ago"
Maybe, then, we can improve our grammar. The example, above, illustrates my point.
This makes sense.
To get into a zone where someone can be innovative s/he needs to educated, needs to have had experience and have formed judgment.
It seems that once a person is in this zone s/he will stay there until judgment from experience deteriorates into rigid thinking ( "set in their ways" ) or the raw physical health of their brain declines.
I can't speak to the former issue, but in regards to the later issue there seems to be more options for staying vital longer for the person who is willing to take care of him/herself.
When I was a kid a 70 year old was most likely a used up shell of a person waiting to die in a chair somewhere and 40 year old was a frumpy over the hill person.
I can't count the number of fully cognizant, fully functional 70 somethings I have met and I have lost track of the number of 40 somethings I have seen smiling after hearing "wow, you are over 40 ??!!".
Given this, it seems reasonable that if a person plays his/her cards right that s/he can expert more time in the "zone" once s/he has overcome the barriers of education and experience to reach it.
It is kind of ironic that at the same time degenerative diseases that were once the domain of older people, like diabetes and heart disease are now popping in 30 & 20 somethings.
I just graduated last yr with a software engineering degree and one in computer and communication systems.
I found it quite depressing that sometimes a lot of instructors are more interested in their research work than on actually teaching you the material. They would just teach the top level stuff and expect us to understand the material. They just make u use packages like MATLAB to plot a few graphs and expect u to know how it works.
Like for example, when I learned about JPEG compression, I learned the theory behind the math/concepts, the math involved, the steps on how to compress and I was expected to understand how it worked without ever implementing it.
Or when I took the DSP course and I was learning all these crazy math concepts. Our labs were in Matlab where we had to plot all these graphs, and matlab did all the work. So I learned how to do the math, but I had no idea what I was doing.
I work as a programmer doing communications programming on the server and microcontrollers and I learn most of my stuff from an EE at work who is basically my mentor.
Everyone seems to have missed the obvious: the reason that the average age of innovation is going up is because innovation has all but ceased among the videogame-playing and ecstasy-dropping youth now.
Compare:
./ has started using
CAPTCHAs ?
s/cross pollenization/cross-pollination/
Google-as-a-spell-checker-verdict:
826 vs 243,000
Show domain after URL is broken! See above. This comment is viewed best w/o that option in Preferences.
What's the average age of people in the US these days... forty-something or other iirc? A century ago, most people didn't even LIVE that long, and practically nobody was healthy enough after thirty to do creative work.
What I'm really waiting for is the first 40+ Miss Universe. You KNOW it's going to happen...
the reason is simple,it is one word...MONEY! The inventor age is older because now days it costs alot to get patents and kickstart an invention. The teenagers and 20's folk have all the kick ass ideas, but they got no cash. (I am one of them) That's life!
The life is longer that a few years ago, that should impact in the math.
>Linux is not user-friendly.
It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
If we had any brains in our heads, we'd be exposing 8-12 year olds to ground breaking work, when their brains are still maleable.
It wouldn't do much good. 8-12 year olds don't know enough to understand the existing knowledge base and extend it to new areas.
And it sounds like even early 20 somethings are having trouble knowing enough to understand and extend ground breaking work. This could represent a serious problem in the making.
If the original "golden age" conjecture is right, then people above a certain age are generally incapable of much ground breaking work. The trouble is, it is taking longer and longer to learn enough of the existing knowledge base to extend it to new frontiers.
Some time in the future, our best and brightest may consume their entire "golden age" coming up to speed, leaving only greatly diminished capacitate available to explore the new.
A possible solution might be identify those with talent early on focus their learning so that they are ready to do research, at least in a particular field, much sooner. I wonder, though, if this sort of shepherding may crush the very gifts we want to nurture.
Using the wheel as a metaphor is pretty close to perfect when you're talking about reinvention.
There's virtually no past experience on which the wheel was based.
Improving someone else's design, as is often done in programming languages, isn't reinventing the wheel. It's improving it. You're creating the product from scratch, but the idea of the product is taken from the old stuff. Same with the eight bit adder.
How many students create an eight bit adder with absolutely no previous experience in math or science? Even given a knowledge of what a transistor is, I don't think any students are asked to make an 8 bit adder without first learning what a half-adder looks like.
I'm not just arguing semantics here. My point is that there is something that has traditionally been called wheel reinvention (and this, I believe is what the grandparent post was talking about) that is, in fact, useless. You can't just assume that because you haven't learned what to do that you will probably come up with something new and better. This is very, very rare, and generally only occurs in areas that haven't been explored much anyway. It's usually the other way around.
You have to immerse yourself in the current knowledge before you can figure out how to reject it.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Once upon a time a lot of scientific breakthroughs were made by lone geniuses. Now a lot are made by teams. It takes time to rise to leadership of a team, so these people will tend to be older.
I could easily imagine this effect alone would explain a change of six years in the age of people credited for breakthroughs. Unfortunately we can't tell for sure unless we pay for the article to see their methodology, and I for one am too cheap.
Viagra
Anyone else notice how the brightest most innovative thinkers existed near the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, that can't be a coincidence.
;-)
Gatto might say that its because Carnegie and Rockefeller got together and brainwashed the public with forced schooling. Into that ragu mix he might spread a few more interesting tidbits about sociology, industrialism, and separation of children by age groups. Then he might go on to rave and spit about stupefication of textbooks, and group brainwashing brought loveingly to us from the hindu cabal caste systems by Bell and Lancaster designed to supress most of the population under the thumb of an elite 10%. For an encore, he'd go on to battle with you about the role of Prussian academia and its centralization and supression of thought and science.
But, personally, I just think that at some cosmic level, our galaxy has shifted in such a way to result in widespread stupidity.
Or, maybe its something in the water. (or cows?)
I shudder to ponder how much education and experience one will need to build/operate/maintain spaceships and flying buses during the Jetson's era.
That's a bit of a myth, one of the big problem in today's post-industrial world seems to be how to keep people employed when it takes less and less people to do the same or more work. I've read a couple of good articles (in swedish unfortunately) about how automation is being avoided because it would result in increased unemployment.
It seems that the hard part about going from a world where everyone must work to a world where only a few truly willing must work is to get people to make the change, perhaps it's simply so ingrained into our heads that one "must" work (even when there is no work to do)?
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Gee, maybe it has something to do with people living longer now than they did a century ago, d'ya think?
This runs contrary to accepted wisdom in science, which says that most scientists peak in their 20s. I've never heard that said by anyone ever before now. The comment doesn't even make any sense. Most scientists are still getting their first doctorate by their mid 20's and by 30 they'll have only been in the real world for a few years.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought it was easier to live on almost no income in the past ... today, it's definitely NOT!
I believe I have some good idea's, but because I need money to live and I also want a social life, I just don't have the time and resources to bring my ideas to life (so to speak)...
Munyul
Anyone who has a gizmometer gets my vote.
Charles Jo
In the beginning of my career, mid 90's I was at my job one of the major innovators for the environment, and reading this, I probably still am at my current one ;-)
Yes. Everything's been tried before by someone. http://free.seekon.com/Strongheart10/ . I hope someone plasters that across my Epitaph: http://www.newpath4.com/forsalespacecraftenginecon stantpowertheory.htm and http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopini ons/forums/editorialsoped/opedcolumnists/johntiern ey/index.html?offset=186&fid=.f7535d8/186 . Someone slap a 5 on this thing for Funny.
given life span has increased by at least 12 years over the last century, i am not at all surprised.
"The mind is an excellent engine for generating entirely unprecedented associations between almost unrelated concepts and reasoning." Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! http://free.seekon.com/Strongheart10 .
We so many individuals competing for the research money you need to stand out. The only way is to work with-in the structure to the point where you are at the top and/or recognized. For example would you give a 20 year old a 10 million dollar budget to research something??? Or would you give it to a 40 or 50 year old?
It is also the guy that is in charge that takes all the credit not the lowly worker. Case in point the inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, was not the individual but the finical backer of the lab that did the research. I have my doubt Thomas Edison did much hands on work rather it was group effort of his lab which he over saw and financed.
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