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Innovation Getting Slower?
Daniel Dvorkin writes "A New Scientist article details the claims of Jonathan Huebner, a Naval Air Warfare Center physicist, that the rate of technological innovation is actually decreasing, not increasing exponentially as some people believe. Huebner says that there are now fewer 'important technological developments per billion people' than at any time since the 17th century! I'm far from convinced, but it's an interesting and thought-provoking article." From the article: "He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead."
Take a look here for an answer to your questions. I don't think it surprising that innovation per billion people has decreased, because a large proportion of people that have ever lived are on the planet right now. We'd have to be _really_ innovative (exceed population growth). In the last hundred years or so, we have TV, phones, radio, airplanes, rockets, nukes, computers, the Internet, etc., so I think the number of innovations per year have certainly increased. The per billion quantity will throw everything out of whack especially when much of them are in under-developed countries.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
They work when you have a relatively small population base, but not when the population is in the billions. (And not when patents keep getting extended to longer and longer periods of time.)
Patents haven't been extended, copyrights have.
During the 1800s there were no improvements to the pistol for about 20 years due to patent restrictions. Patents are supposed to promote science and industry, but often have the opposite effect.
Even in the 20th century handguns haven't really been innovated upon. This is not because of patents, but because there is no market.
If there is a real need for a product, there are many ways to innovate around a patent (excluding software patents which is just screwed up and doesn't really represent what patents should be). That's why even though Viagra is patented there are like a dozen similar drugs a few years later. I work in electronics manufacturing, there is a huge movement towards lead-free processing. Patented alloys makes it difficult, but there are lots of ways around them. In general the shared information of patents outweighs the restriction. All patents do is make you think a little harder.(once again software patents excluded).
I would agree the time of patent protection is outdated due to the time to market differences of the 18th and 21st century.
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I'm sure Galileo would argue with this. DaVinci's study of the human anatomy probably would've also benefited from not having to skulk about to dig up corpses to study for fear of prosecution based on religios beliefs. I'd argue that historically religion has been a hindrance to science. It may not have stopped progress, but it has hindered or slowed down certain advancements.
This reminds me of a quote by the head of the USPO back in the turn of the century (wish I could find a link). He said that everything that could possibly be invented has been invented.
I know what quote you're refering to. It's attributed to Charles H. Duell, who was once the commissoner of the US Patent Office, and is normally given a date of 1899. However, the quote appears to be, at best, apocryphal.
To start with, no one has ever been able to find a definative source that he was the one who said it. The earliest source I can spot is from a 1915 Scientific American article, who attribute it to a nameless 1833 patent office clerk. The quote can also be found (those less frequently, thanks to the wonders of everyone just copying and pasting pages of quotes without checking them) to an anonymous 1875 Patent Office director (which implies Charles Duell's father), and to an anonymous British patent office employee (which is how I first heard it). These alone should be enough to set your spidey-sense tingling.
The truth of the matter is that the quote is completely out of character for Duell, whose 1899 report to President McKinley notes that the number of patents increased over the following year, and suggests that "aid and effectual encouragement" could help in inventors by "improving the American patent system". No mention of shutting it down, no mention of everything having been invented.
The article from which I drew most of this info from: Skeptical Inquirer: A Patently False Patent Myth Still! (May-June, 2003)
(As an interesting side-note, posts on various mailing lists which I found while searching for that article suggest that the quote was first identified as apocryphal by 60 years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the NY Times for Oct. 15, 1995, where this tidbit was mentioned, so I can't check their source on that.)
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
No, patents used to be 17 years, now they are 20 years + various legal tricks (repatent w/minor mods, lawsuits...)
But the problem is that patents have always been too long for software, the proof being that patents are supposed to spur innovation, but for this particular problem domain, innovation seem to occur irregardless of patents. Most software innovations are never patented at all.
-- John.