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."

Comments

What a wacky measure

[cshotton]

So who says innovations per billion people is a legitimate measure of the rate? Innovations per year seems to be the only measure that matters. And maybe the rate appears to be slowing because all of the totally common sense innovations have already been done. The stuff that is left requires a huge knowledge base and a large effort on the part of hundreds to achieve. Maybe innovation rates should be correlated to complexity of the innovation. Bet it's increasing if you do it that way. Statistics can always say whatever your thesis needs em to say. Bah!

Re:What a wacky measure

[IanDanforth]

I totally agree, whats more is that he doesn't say that overall innovation rates have slowed. We have more world changing innovations a year now than ever before. Its just when you look at a "per population" number that it looks bleak. However, as you point out, who cares about "per population?!" These types of inventions affect everyone, their value isn't diluted the more people they help.

Re:What a wacky measure

[soniCron88]

"However, as you point out, who cares about "per population?!" These types of inventions affect everyone, their value isn't diluted the more people they help."

Perhaps because with more people should come more people making things.

Re:What a wacky measure

[ejito]

Perhaps because with more people should come more people making things.

Our new innovations take much more man power to invent than lightbulbs and phonographs. For instance, many countries are funding a massive fusion energy project. That project would never be completed by just a single Tesla or Edison.

Re:What a wacky measure

[ShieldW0lf]

I totally agree, whats more is that he doesn't say that overall innovation rates have slowed. We have more world changing innovations a year now than ever before. Its just when you look at a "per population" number that it looks bleak. However, as you point out, who cares about "per population?!" These types of inventions affect everyone, their value isn't diluted the more people they help.

Overall global innovation rates haven't slowed at all. The statement that we have more world changing innovations per year than ever before I'd call rather questionable though. It is true that inventions affect everyone, although the ever growing artifical barrier to useage that intellectual property represents does deny the benefit of most of them to many people.

The articles premise that each generation of people is less innovative than the generation before them is still a disturbing one, and worthy of note and concern if there is evidence to support it.

It's really easy to chuck out the argument mentioned in the article, that invention is a finite thing and that we are close to discovering all of it, it consequently becoming more and more difficult, expensive, and unusual relative to the human effort put into it.

It's irresponsible to accept it though, because it's an easy out. Accepting this premise rules out all of human behaviors capacity to influence how inventive we are in the future, releases us from any collective responsibility for our decreasing inventiveness, and dismisses our collective capacity to correct the situation should we deem it appropriate.

I can think of a great many other possible explanations for a decreasingly inventive population, and none of them are as vulnerable to Occam's razor as the "we've almost discovered it all" argument.

Re:What a wacky measure

[pcmanjon]

Well I'll tell you why innovations aren't rampant like they use to be. It's the rise of the corporation as the cause.

I mean, people can't innovate anymore without being shot down by some unspecific patent. Companies register MILLIONS of patents and don't do ANYTHING with them.

If companies didn't stiffle innovation and push it back down when it started to get up -- then maybe there would be innovation.

People won't invent unless they can slap their name on their own product. This will cause people to not want to innovate.

It's quite obvious......

Re: What a wacky measure

[Black Parrot]

> So who says innovations per billion people is a legitimate measure of the rate? Innovations per year seems to be the only measure that matters.

Surely it's exponential population growth that gives rise to the (perceived) exponential rate of innovations. At least in part.

Re:What a wacky measure

[ultranova]

I agree, in the modern world to move science forward requierd a lot more effort then before - all easy staff already done. Look at the mathematics , there some complex proofs require dozens of steps and efforts of dozens of people. Or physics - math is becomeing so complex for string theory, that no one exactly understand it.

In my humble opinion, this strongly suggests that the string theory is incorrect.

I base this opinion on the history of science. Back when Earth was thought to be the center of the Universe, the sometimes-reverse motion of planets on the sky was a bit difficult to explain. It lead to absurdly complex system of nested circular orbits. Then, the Sun-centric system was developed, and it was a slight improvement - but only slight, since planets were still thought to move in circular orbits with constant speed. What finally resolved this issue was the Theory of Gravity - it gave a single formula (F=f*m1*m2/(r*r)) which explained all the observed phenomenon in a single simple equation. Or, more to the point, the elliptical orbits with varying orbital speeds follow naturally from that equation, instead of requiring complex math to understand.

The same goes for the theory of Relativity - without it, different observers would observe different laws of physics, the most famous example propably being "what do you see if you move at the speed of light ? You see the light standing still, but that's impossible according to Maxwell's equations, so apparently those equations don't hold for all observers". Despite all the complex implications of the ToR, it actually simplified the way one looks at the universe - laws of physics are nonvariant, even if time and space are not.

Based on this, I conclude that if a theory about the fundamental structure of reality starts getting too complex for anyone to understand, the theory is almost certainly wrong. Or, to put it another way: there is a simpler, more fundamental way of looking at things.

Compare this with programming. You can make a fundamentally flawed design work somewhat by including tons of workarounds and special case fixes, but it would propably be better to scrap the crap and seek for an algorithm that is intrinsically correct.

It seems that the processing power of human brain becoming limiting factor in the modern science, and science is the source of all innovation. So as soon as the human brain considerably augmented, be it a brain-computer interface, smart drugs or something else the rate of innovations will climb again.

Or it could be that people have gotten used to throwing more computer power to the problem, and therefore has less motivation to search for better algorithms. If this is true, then augmenting brain with computers would increase the problem, not decrease it.

After all, the development of both math and technology is mostly a way of reducing the effort required to do something - searching for better algorithms.

Re:What a wacky measure

[ZombieWomble]

Most of the 'complete' string theories are actually quite elegant in their implementation (although it can require some sophisticated mathematical tools to see the elegance, it is still there).

The issues arises when you try to apply them to practical situations, and that's common to pretty much all physical theories - Newtonian mechanics is only exactly solvable for two body problems, QM for specific one body problems, and QED (which most will acknowledge is a neat, elegant theory) isn't even exactly solvable for the no-body vacuum problem.

Mathematical difficulties are common when we try to apply almost any theories, it's not a good reason to dismiss them out of hand.

Re:What a wacky measure

[slavemowgli]

I don't think your conclusions are valid, even though your observations are interesting.

What we've essentially seen is a kind of oscillation between simple and complex - new observations require changes to be integrated into the existing theories, which are then getting more complex, until someone comes along and simplifies them again. Lather, rinse, repeat - the whole thing just keeps on repeating.

What you fail to realize, though, is that "simpler" does not necessarily mean "simple". I do agree that Occam's razor is a reasonable principle, but it does not make any statements about how simple the (likely) solution is in absolute terms - it could still be incredibly convoluted, as long as the other candidates are even more so. As an example, take vertex operator algebras - they're a relatively complicated construct that seems somewhat artificial when you first encounter it, yet they're not only an invaluable tool but also come up naturally when you investigate conformal field theories.

The comparison with algorithms/programming is also weak, since it is perfectly possible to have two different algorithms (with different complexity, in all senses of the word) who do solve exactly the same problem, but it is arguably not possible that you have two different physical theories explaining the same phenomenon that are both true at the same time (although I guess this is a rather philosophical question).

As such, the assertion that string theory must not be incorrect (i.e., not true) simply because it seems too complicated is wrong. String theory may well not be the end of it all, but to dismiss a good working hypothesis that has proven highly useful *only* because the math behind it seems too "complicated" is, simply put, rubbish.

Re:What a wacky measure

[ultranova]

What we've essentially seen is a kind of oscillation between simple and complex - new observations require changes to be integrated into the existing theories, which are then getting more complex, until someone comes along and simplifies them again. Lather, rinse, repeat - the whole thing just keeps on repeating.

Actually, this is pretty much my point. Remember, I answered to a post claiming that modern physics is by neccessity extremely complex mathemathically. I claimed that it isn't, it's just been stretched to the limits of its usability, and the next Big Theory will simplify it back to human understandable level eventually.

As an example, take vertex operator algebras - they're a relatively complicated construct that seems somewhat artificial when you first encounter it, yet they're not only an invaluable tool but also come up naturally when you investigate conformal field theories.

Bad example. If vertex operator algebras rise naturally from conformal field theories, then they are the consequence of a theory, and it is the cft that is the underlaying theory. And I did say that consequences of simple theories can be extremely complex.

Of course, I have no idea what cft actually is, so for all I know it could be the most complex theory ever ;(...

The comparison with algorithms/programming is also weak, since it is perfectly possible to have two different algorithms (with different complexity, in all senses of the word) who do solve exactly the same problem, but it is arguably not possible that you have two different physical theories explaining the same phenomenon that are both true at the same time (although I guess this is a rather philosophical question).

On the contrary, both Earth-centric and Sun-centric worldviews explained the same phenomena at the same time, and even today it would be perfectly possible to patch the Earth-centric view to explain all currently observed phenomenon. It would require an astronomical amount of rings, but it would certainly be possible.

Newton's mechanics were adopted because, as a model of reality, they are much more elegant and powerfull in making predictions than near-infinite amount of perfect circles.

The EartH-centric view is a buggy algorithm which can be made to work by patching it beyond recognition. Newton's mechanics is a newer algorithm that solves naturally all those cases where the Ec view needs patches. That is what I meant with my comparison to algorithms - once a theory has the first special case workarounds applied to it, you know it can't really perfectly reflect the fundamental nature of reality at the deepest level, and it's time to start looking for a new theory, even if the old one might still be usefull in the meantime.

As such, the assertion that string theory must not be incorrect (i.e., not true) simply because it seems too complicated is wrong. String theory may well not be the end of it all, but to dismiss a good working hypothesis that has proven highly useful *only* because the math behind it seems too "complicated" is, simply put, rubbish.

I didn't say it has to be dismissed or that it is wrong - that would be rather difficult anyway, since I don't know string theory.

I did say that, historically, having lots of complexity has been a sign that that particular model is not an accurate description of underlaying laws of physics. It might give correct predictions, but it is simply not the best way to describe the underlaying reality.

Could be

[Profane MuthaFucka]

But WHY is a different question. Maybe we're just dreaming about harder stuff. Nanotechnology, space elevators, quantum computing, and curing cancer through understanding of genetics might just be a *wee bit* harder than figuring out the thermodynamics of a new steam engine design.

Re:Could be

[mbrother]

And maybe we're not counting some easy stuff (Kurzweil's point about the list being arbitrary is a good one). I mean, a science historian probably doesn't count cup holders in cars or soda can pop-tabs as important innovations, because they're simple and obvious in hindsight, but quality of life is better today because of a lot more things than cell phones.

Restrictions should be lifted

[Kaorimoch]

Perhaps the commoditisation of one of the most valuable resources of the world, human ingenuity, to be renamed as something called "intellectual property" needs to be considered and changed for the better. Ingenuity and advance has always been on top of the inventions that came before. The circle became a wheel, the wheel became a cart, which became a carriage and finally a car. By stopping further developments by restricting them, hiding them and/or charging a fortune for them, of course development will slow down. If I were to build a starship to travel into the galaxy, I'd have to settle about 16,000 patent claims and divy up a fortune of funds between thousands of organisations.

Patents... Lawyers...

[Manip]

I was going to post something against patents but I found it had been patented by fifteen companies and some other companies might claim copyright infringement on my work because I will be using similar or identical words.

It's broadening...

[ejito]

There's many more fields of technology than before. Though breakthroughs might not happens as often per person, there's pletny of innovation going on, the resources are just spread out. Our innovation in new fields such as computers can't be graphed by major breakthroughs and inventions. For every researcher, there's dozens of engineers making smaller but crucial progress. It's like looking at the last decade of computers and pointing out only the World Wide Web as an innovation. Hardly an accurate measure of technology progress.

Re:Diminishing Returns

[kidtux1]

I think the more we discover the more we realize we don't know yet. So I'dhave to say I disagree with your comment.

Not a big surprise there...

[Black Art]

I blame patents.

Patents pretty much hobble innovation. 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.)

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.

There is a large amount of huberis involved with the patent process that says "no one is as smart as me, so anyone who has a similar idea to mine must be stealing it". The problem is that when you have large numbers of people working on the same problems, you are going to encounter the same solutions over and over again.

If we continue to have a "first one to patent wins" on a global scale, we will have crippled ourselves to the fastest filers, not the fastest thinkers.

We no longer stand on the shoulers of giants because we are crippled by midgets.

Critical Flaws

[RobertF]

Though it's interesting, this guy has some serious flaws in his thinking. First off, measuring innovation per billions of people isn't very reliable, as a population can rapidly increase or decrease and this doesn't take into account the education level of the population. The list of innovations he plotted is also debateable. I consider the development of Javascript a major innovation, but is that on the list? Think about the thousands and thousands software and hardware innovation that have been made. I don't think it's because they're "insignificant". If it may appear as though there are fewer innovations, that may be because you're looking in the wrong place. Many, many innovations are taking place as we speak, it's just highly specialized. This guy is saying that we'll pretty soon invent everything and be done. 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. This is obviously way, way off target. Huebner is on the same train of thought.

What's innovation?

[Logic Bomb]

Stopping a discussion halfway through and saying, "now, let's define our terms" is annoying as all hell. Still, I'm sure everyone has different ideas of what "innovation" is. If you just mean that it's something new, it seems like there's a lot of innovation. But a lot of it is relatively arbitrary, and certainly not "life-altering" or "revolutionary". The article uses the phrase "important technological developments"; what the hell does that mean, and who decides?!

My feeling is that much of what now passes for "innovation" in the developed world is really refinement. Faster ways of searching for information, endless new ways of distributing capital, methods of communication. Humans face two major hurdles to existence: scarce resources and disease. A true major innovation -- vaccines, mechanized agriculture -- will make one of those problems less of a burden. While it does seem like we're making good progress with modern medicine, I don't think we've made much progress with our energy, food and water supplies in recent years.

Re:Diminishing Returns

[ScrewMaster]

No, that's not true ... it just takes more effort to make new discoveries and inventions because the easy ones have already been made, just like it takes more resources to access mineral wealth nowadays because all the convenient deposits have been used up. There's still plenty of both to go around, but it just takes more work. I wouldn't go closing down the patent office just yet (well, actually I would but not because we've run out of things to invent.)

politik!

[orlando24]

Unfortunately the modern beauracracy and political structure just doesn't value innovation. Patents, grants and research facilities are becoming harder and harder to access. On top of that, multinational corporations are pushing the little guy and his innovative ideas out of the market, so that the only innovation that remains is profit-driven and commercial, which more often than not locks us into the age old cycle of repainting the tiger's stripes and selling him as a new animal because anything too radically new 'wouldn't grab the market'. And government institutions are consistently failing to innovate because their focus is not development, but rather generation of jobs = votes, and any new innovations might risk public sector jobs (NASA, anyone??)

All the great innovations of the past took enormous risks, and sometimes they failed. It's great to see some private companies with the financial backing there taking those risks (Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites...etc) but it's a pity that government makes it so difficult.

Who knows how many brilliant innovations have gone unnoticed because the inventor didn't have the money to run R&D privately and couldn't be bothered with the government red tape...I think that we should be encouraging private innovation because you never know where the Next Big Thing is going to come from!

I don't buy his analysis

[multiplexo]

OK, so it's 2005 and we don't have colonies on the moon, atomic powered flying cars, supersonic transports or fusion power plants or many of the other technologies that the future was supposed to bring. On the other hand we have the internet, which no one really foresaw and which has drastically changed our lives in the last ten years. We haven't cured cancer yet but we've learned a Hell of a lot about the immune system because of a nasty plague called AIDS and we know more about DNA and heredity than anyone would have thought we would 30 years ago.

As far as the number of patents declining I'd have to say that this isn't the greatest metric for measuring technological innovation. From the number of crap patents out there (Amazon One-Click, NTPs patents, etc, etc, etc) I'd have to say that just because lots of patents are being generated doesn't mean that innovation is thriving or perishing (In fact I'd fear that too many patents would stifle innovation by preventing people from experimenting with new technologies).

The reason I have such a problem with Huebner's analysis can be summed up by this one quote from TFA:

Huebner disagrees. "It doesn't matter if it is humans or machines that are the source of innovation. If it isn't noticeable to the people who chronicle technological history then it is probably a minor event."

So, if something passes under the radar of those stalwarts who have charged themselves with chronicling technological history then it really doesn't matter. By this logic a technological historian of the early 1970s would probably have been writing volumes about the space program and nuclear research while ignoring things such as the nascent revolution in semi-conductors that was being created by the folks at Intel and other engineers in Silicon Valley, which by any measure has affected our daily lives as much, if not more than the space program or nuclear research. By admitting this Huebner is, at least to me, showing that his analyses are totally arbitrary and therefore valueless.

Re:I don't buy his analysis

[mbrother]

I also wonder how long it takes for an innovation to be regarded as "important?" Something like high temperature superconductors gets noticed right away. Some other equally important technology might not be recognized for a long time. What's the average "lag time" for this list?

I'm also reminded of how people have argued we were going to run out of this, or run out of that, and haven't because other technologies move in in a timely way. It's an important technology if it keeps us from running out of some key element, but if it's just replacing an older technology, it surely gets missed. I'd be interested in seeing a partial list of these innovations to better gauge what's getting included.

We are a society that is scared...

[jzarling]

We have acheived a level of comfort that people are happy with, and more convienience is now seen as extravagance.

The big innovations, the ones that change our culture fundamentally are going to come at a cost that most people are afraid to pay. Namely religous beliefs.

Stem Cells, Cloning, Space Exploration, Quantam Computing, all these courses of study have the ability to alter views on creation itself.

And most people are not willing to pay that price.

Yay for Truth!

[zeroweb]

I like this guy! From a larger viewpoint, I have always thought that we are not progressing faster than prior generations. Electricity, Lightbulb, Radio, Car, Plane, (the list goes on)...These are MAJOR innovations compared with the relatively minor ones of a P4 processor, the iPod, etc...Think of things in categories. Everything that is new these days is are minor extensions of the old (the computer, or the transmission of data over some kind of wire...) I vote that things are stale and getting staler. However, this view need not carry negative connotations (except maybe for a /. crowd)...After all, don't we have enough already?

Re:Diminishing Returns

[edbulldog]

There's less to discover and invent the further into the future we go.

Yeah... someone said something like this about physics around the end of XIX century, if I recall correctly. This time we must be correct.

What You See is What You Get

[Quirk]

With the science of optics came the invention of the telescope and the microscope, both devices furthered our thresholds of perception. With the passing of new thresholds comes new information, new patterns and the reconfiguring of patterns new and old leads to innovation and invention.

The fields of molecular biology and nanotechnology are two examples of new information opening up and being engineered. New fields of information, and, its implementation, can open up further fields and so on.

Perhaps one of the most immediate problems we face is a deluge of information that must be investigated and peer reviewed. Recently, a post grad, posted on /. that, in his opinion, there are too many Phds. I think there aren't enough Phds, and, further, we don't have the systems in place to gardner the results of the Phds now doing research.

P h d... is that pronounced fud?

Rate per unit of population??!

[sbaker]

Who cares what the rate of innovation per unit of population is? That peculiar measure of progress would only matter if benefits of innovation somehow didn't scale with the population size. The world population is still increasing - so the absolute rate of innovation as seen by consumers of those innovations is surely far better than linear.

But even if you are concerned about rate per unit of population, averaging over the entire planet is a stupid idea. The population increases are in the underdeveloped countries - who (pretty much by definition) aren't innovating much.

If you counted the rate of innovation per unit of population in DEVELOPED countries (whose populations are actually DECREASING) - then you'd see that the rate of innovation amongst those who are actually doing the innovating is still on a steep curve.

Re:Diminishing Returns

[cranos]

Okay here's a simple equation for you:

Invention = (Discovery + Innovation) Therefore to more we discover the more we can innovate and invent.

Maybe it's been said before in this article

[The FooMiester]

But I'm tired of

A: the apologists who say "innovations per capita don't matter, total number matters!". Give it up. People just don't think anymore. American Idol is probably on somewhere, stealing those innovative minds away.

B: people saying "all the easy things have been invented" The only easy day was yesterday, and they only seem easy because they were simple. Just wait, more "easy" things will be invented, and people will slap their foreheads and say "Why didn't I think of that!"

Singularity?

[Eunuch]

No, there will be one innovation that will make everything that existed before a very distant memory--the singularity and transhumanism.

Science is going faster

[DynaSoar]

than technology can keep up.

Technology depends on ecomonimcs. When the next greatest thing is in sight before the previous greatest thing is out of R&D, it forces technology to try to pre-empt or co-opt science. And still technology can't afford to herd up and pay off all the scientists.

"What we need is a Manhattan Project for dumping flash memory data directly to DVD in one flash." Figure the odds.

$16 billion spent on Erectile Dysfunction research

[Ponzu]

I doubt the US is spending even close to that on alternative energy research. Not to diminish the problems of those with erectile dysfunction but a cure for cancer or free energy would probably do a lot more people a lot more good for the money.

The problem is a large proportion of research energy is focused on what will return the most in the marketplace instead of what will return the most to mankind. People lose sight of the big picture in their sprint to make the most money they can and people suffer because of it.

There has to be a balance between altruism and greed and we aren't anywhere close to the middle right now.

Re:USPTO

[appleLaserWriter]

Moderate parent insightful.

The purpose of a patent is to give an inventor a safe period of time in which to economically exploit their invention. In the past, if you wanted to avoid the lawyers, you didn't have to go far. Hollywood was started by people who didn't want to pay the royalties for film produciton equipment, so they just moved across the country. Today it is much harder to steal technology to make new things.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing could be the subject of an entire discussion, but the parent demonstrates more insight than humor in pointing at the USPTO.

Re:I Blame regulators - MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Government regulation is a necessary evil but over-regulating via regulations, sin taxes, hidden taxes, and all out bureracry will slow down or prevent innovation and kill a country's economy.

Simplifying, you are either in the cart or pulling it, when there are too many people in the cart, the cart stops.

Cart riders:
1. Government workers
2. Government contractors
3. Government handout recipients (welfare, food stamps, EIC, free medical care, PBS, NPR, farm subsidies, etc.)
4. Government industry protection handout recipients (radio stations, tv stations, and other industries with multi-million dollar liceising process/fees paid to the government)

Re:I Blame regulators

[log0n]

I agree. Innovation is getting slower not because people are getting dumber but because deviation from red tape results in prosecution or censure.

Re:Communism slows innovation by crushing individu

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep on hearing the same old rehashed arguments about how Communism is here and destroying society. Its like the Red Scare and McCarthy all over again, only that we aren't having virtual lynch mobs for people who dissent against the popular political tone of the day.

It seems that there exists a group of neo conservatives who associate any form of dissent against their socio-political views to be a form of communism. One only needs to look at history to see the sheer stupidity and irrationality of this overhyped fear of communists to see just what they are all about. The book "1984" was once put on a banned books list in the United States becuase it was alleged that it was covertly supporting communism. In reality, the book was only slamming the excesses of the very type of authoritarian regimes that existed both in many hardline communist nations. 1984 offended many of these hardline anti-communists becuase the book dared to challenge and criticize authoritative excesses in government.

I dont know if the people who keep preaching about how communism is creeping into society really believe what they say or not, but they are using the theme as a tool to smear political dissent and rally people with fear against an enemy that really doesn't pose the threat they claim it does.

The continual dumbing-down of our educational system and the increasing banality of popular culture are just two clear trends, now becoming so clear we can look through them to their source.

I disagree.

Firstly, pop culture is being perpetuated by the heavily capitalist market.

Does the government pick and choose which CDs make it into Wal Mart? Does Atty. General Gonzales have a comittee to decide which shows MTV puts on the air? I'm sorry but popular culture icons are defined by the marketplace, not some silly communist influence. Pop culture icons are telling everyone to buy and spend the latest trendy fashions and other goods. Your argument is silly.

As far as the schools are concerned, I don't know how you can blame communism for that either.

The modern incarnation of the public school is a result of capitalist influences (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/histor y2.htm). The "dumbing down" of public schools simply reflects the fact that these are the values that our culture and our marketplace embrace.

Communism, you see, is not "dead." It is not even napping! In fact, it is right out in the open

Okay, show me.

Our nation's newspapers are edited by socialists.

I'll give you credit for liberals in the media. Don't really see an abundance of hardline communists though.

The TV networks spew endless hours of mind-numbing groupthink.

Again, this is a result of the market place. TV networks put on what generates viewership (which, ultimately, drives commercial ad sales).

Society has become so left-of-center that most people do not recognize Communism when they step in it. Even Republicans get down in that wallow, like porky squealing pigs.

Left of center meaning what? That some of us dare question the reasons for going to war in Iraq?

Of course the Democrats have been totally up front about their support of Communism since the FMLN/Contra War. Give 'em a point for honesty, at least.

Who?

This is a reflection of Population Growth...

[popo]

This seems to be more of a reflection of third world population growth than on innovation.

A similar statement could read: "the percentage of educated people in the world is decreasing". (or more directly: the percentage of people *capable* of making innovations is decreasing).

Population growth in poor and developing nations (and the word "developing" is unfortunately only used out of political correctness) is out of control and is at a dangerous tipping point where we could conceivably see mass famines (as in 'millions dead') any year where drought, blight or oppression get ugly.

Innovation is alive and well within the population that can innovate.

Poverty and illiteracy (as a percentage of population) are growing at a furious pace.

Exponential advancement was never very plausible

[infinite.steve]

Exponential advancement was always as unfounded an assumption as the assumption of linear advancement that it replaced. While the death of science has been proclaimed many times before, always extremely prematurely in retrospect, I believe that there is only so much nature is prepared to give us, and as we approach this natural limit we're making fewer and fewer revolutionary discoveries and doing more and more refinement, and as the refinement progresses, as with any refinement process, apparent progress slows as you near an ideal state.

Simple example: there is a really, really good chance that space travel will always be slower than light with no cheats like wormholes ever found, no matter how much we advance, even if we became infinitely advanced, because the laws of physics probably do not permit FTL travel and apparent loopholes may prove completely unusable for anything above the subatomic particle scale.

I am deeply, deeply skeptical of the promise of nanotech. Our capacity to engineer de novo really interesting and effective enzymes (i.e., examples of real nanomachines) is dismal, we're still working on understanding how natural ones work and making our first crude protein designs, and "nanotech" as we usually think of it, little molecule scale versions of machines we're more familiar with, is IMO somewhat chemically ludicrous. Although some enzymes like ATPase actually look and act soemthing like those kinds of ideas and are super nifty. Still, when we get good at real nanotech, I think the reality is going to cut our fantasies down to scale despite being wicked cool.

I recall from reading Analog magazines in the 80s :) that it once seemed very fashionable to assume an exponential rate of growth in human technological enlightenment. Authors and commentators self-conciously talked about the previous assumption of linear progress (which you can see in older science fiction in which centuries are posited for what in hindsight are laughably modest achievements). This led to some predictions for our own time which have not been borne out - where is my flying car, godammit? :)

I thought about it a bit and came up with the hypothesis of an S-shaped curve as the function of human progress, and I believe observation has borne and will bear it out. I was inspired by titrations, which I think progress most resembles. At early stages of the curve, of course, advance is very slow because you need technological advances to make technological advances, it's self-promoting. At some point as you come close to an equivalence point, advance is extremely rapid. But at that point you start to rapidly reach the limits imposed by nature and progress levels off into more and more trivial refinement, but never entirely disappears. It's not exactly analogous but I think the resemblance will prove striking.

Progress looked linear from the point of view of the first plateau, just like the increase in pH before the equivalence point might seem linear in a base titration. Progress of course looks exponential when you are closely approaching the equivalence point. This is still an illusion.

Certain technologies, if they are truly available and do not turn out to be beyond the realm of technical possibility, like uploading ourselves into computers (I think this is easier said than done, because I think the human self only possesses the illusion of cohesiveness to itself, but is not actually unitary or cohesive - I wonder if a human mind is really readable to anything but itself), or immortality, could radically transform our very nature and hence change everything. But barring that, I think the highest goal of our species should be to get through the equivalence point to the new plateau alive and basically ourselves, and we need to hope to hell that that plateau includes, for example, truly sustainable sources of energy.

So, um, summary of long winded spiel, exponential progress = bullshit. No doubt in my mind that there is a limit to what technolog

Education is the engine of innovation now...

[Begs]

The article's premise of per capita innovation is not very useful. Consider if we were to just look at a portion of the technology tree, health care. Would innovations per capita over all history be a useful measure of the continued rate of health care innovations today? I think not.

The absolute rate of innovation is more relevant for a few reasons.

Here's one.

Dissemination of innovation begets innovation. The rate of change influence the rate of change.

Any innovation today can potentially benefit everyone in a relatively short time frame. In the period he touts as the peak an innovation often would take 50 years or more to reach relative universality. Today a useful innovation will reach universality in a tenth the time.

Around 1999 I saw an LCD monitor prototype, about 200mmX200MM in a glass encased cabinet at a technology meeting. It was guarded by a security guard as well. Today, if I have the means, I can go out and buy an 19" LCD monitor for about $400.00.

How long was it for everyone to be able to buy a generally useful camera from the invention of photography?

A more complex benchmark would be more appropriate. Something like the rate of innovation per years of education per per capita would seem to me more relevant.

Re:Diminishing Returns

[TeknoHog]

the more we discover, the harder it is to discover more.

Not necessarily. This kind of thinking assumes that there is a fixed pool of things just waiting to be discovered, and it is getting closer to being exhausted. I believe quite the contrary; there's a nice quote by someone I forgot, that "the greater the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder". For example, the invention of the transistor opened up possibilities for a whole industry of new inventions.

As a scientist, I believe there will always be new discoveries in science, that the supposed pool of knowledge is infinite. Therefore there's an infinity of possibilities for practical inventions as well, especially when we consider that the science in a certain field usually precedes engineering.

In fact, I think the rate of innovation is getting higher, but there's so much of it going on that it's impossible to pinpoint single, major inventions like it was a hundred years ago. Also, many significant inventions are results of many people with many smaller inventions working together, such as the Internet. In those cases it's hard to pin down even what the invention actually is.

Inventions and discoveries are becoming an increasingly important part of our lives, since we are past the struggles of basic survival. Thus it's naturally less noticeable.

The biggest lie that Einstein told

[PsiPsiStar]

I remember Einstein saying that war had never proved itself creative. But in our society, it seems like the inventors of millitary weapons, the NSA etc. are some of the most creative folks out there. They have the funding to be so.

As long as America lives in dread of the millitary strength of its rivals, there will be millitary innovation.

I really don't buy the 'innovation is slowing' argument to begin with. Back in the early 1900s you could make a discovery in physics with a cloud chamber and a few research assistants. Now? You need a team of several dozen physicists at the least and a few million dollars worth of equipment. So if discoveries require more people and more money to make, of course you'll have fewer (per person) but as has been mentioned elsewhere, you have more total innovations for the whole population.

The Bard said it best.

[TapeCutter]

Shakespear wrote, "There are more things in heaven and earth...", and information theory gave his intuition a rigourous proof. So why do people still write (let alone publish) this kind of crap? Do they know nothing of art and science or is it a combination of a little knowlage and a lot of arrogance?

Whenever I hear someone talking about the death or decay of technological advancement, "evidence" is presented that the really important stuff happened X yrs ago (where X >= 50). A trully revolutionary discovery is rarely seen for what it is until years later when people have had time to investigate and digest the implications. Even when it is immediately acknowlaged, (eg: Watson & Crick), it takes decades/centuries, to work out the full implications and utility of such a discovery. Maxwell's equations were not particularly "useful" until ~80yrs later when Edison created his Electiric light company and begrudgingly hired a mathemetitian or two. My generation (baby boomer's) were the first to really feel the importance of Darwin on our society and it may yet take another 150yrs to be fully absorbed into our collective phyche.

There are also alot of people in this thread complaining that IP laws are killing innovation. IP laws are killing the profit to be made by a "small shop" creating innovative gadgets. IP laws cannot stop people such as Eienstien, Maxwell, Turing, etc, finding fundemental insights that in turn drive the technological innovations that corporations so desperately want to profit from. There is however a good argument that when IP laws adversely affect communication between individuals and groups then technological progress will naturally slow down.

Einstien's equations have been tested to death but yet there is still something "wrong" with our understanding of gravity (on a large scale, "it just don't add up!"). I don't have a crystal ball but I assume in another 50-100 yrs, something like string theory, (at the moment only "useful" as a head scratching excersice), will be seen as having a profound influence. It will be used as evidence by unimaginitive writters to show that physics is dead, they will be sure to point to Godel, Turing and [insert your favorite genius here] as proof that most of the really important stuff has already been discovered.

Lifespan matters

[Hao Wu]

Today, one is often 30 years old by the time you earn a PhD and do interesting research. There is so much to learn, it takes many years to reach the "cutting edge".

Re:You are closer than realize

[menkhaura]

America (and other countries) almost need a revolution.

Almost, you say? With all this ridiculous patent crap, intellectual property, citizens suing each other or big corps for the slightest mistake, or trying to forsake all the responsibility for bad things that happen to them (McDonalds suers? Tobbaco Co. suers?) At least people still have freedom of speech, but how long will that last? How long till they sue you because some dipshit patented the metaphor you are using, or your accent (patent number 131313: Method for expressing irony using certain combinations of words), or some other such irrelevant thing? Damnit, they are patenting clicks these days! When will the people rebel? When it is too friggin late?

Re:I Blame regulators

[hoxford]

No, those are perfect examples. Pushing boundaries implies and *requires* risk that unpleasant things might happen as a result. If you try to make everything completely safe and prevent any mistakes nothing innovative will ever happen. Bureaucracies don't innovate. Committees don't innovate.

In each of those examples the good far outweighed the bad. It's a shame that Curie and Cook had to make those sacrifices. But just like many other explorers and boundary-pushers they contributed huge amounts to humanity. And at the time, Bell's monopoly probably did far more good for the communications infrastructure in this country than it did harm.

Population is a very deceptive measure

[leereyno]

There are two problems with attempting to relate population to innovation:

1) There are over 6 billion people on earth right now. In fact, most of the people who have EVER lived are alive right now.

2) Most of these people live in 3rd world ratholes where "innovation" is limited to finding ways of keeping a roof over your head and food in your belly. In some cases you can add finding ways of avoiding the local warlord's henchmen.

Measuring how much innovation there is per billion population is nonsensical because most of those people never have the opportunity to contribute anything. As far as innovation is concerned they don't even exist.

If he wants to attempt to model the relationship between population and innovation, he needs to limit the population in his model to that of developed nations with strong educational systems. If he ever gets around to doing this, I already know what his reaction is going to be:

"Doh!!!"

Lee

Re:I Blame regulators

[Fred_A]

It has nothing to do with regulators. Investors want a return withing three months. Everything has to be short term, nobody wants to do fundamental research because there's no money in it, anything that hasn't got an immediate and obvious market value goes straight down the drain.

Technology has gotten so complex that launching a new product (let alone a new field) on your own is getting next to impossible, so investors are a necessary evil. But investors aren't interested in helping you, they are interested in making money, both goals aren't necessarily compatible.

Unless public funds are used for research, there is a fair chance that innovation will indeed slow to a crawl (just see what's happening with pharmaceutical labs). There are too few corps that see long term.

Re:I Blame regulators

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Some might argue that the cost of innovation now is prohibitive. The fair assessment of this article might be that all the "easy" innovations, or all the "cheap" innovations have already been discovered.

What happened to standing on the shoulders of giants?

The branches are being fleshed out now, but the trunks are all there in plain view. If that is the case, then innovation isn't slowing because of societal reasons, but is slowing because there's less new shit to discover, lending credence to a simple universe.

Are we really so arrogant as to believe that our society today is reaching the peak of human achievement?

I truly hope not.

Re:I Blame regulators

[BewireNomali]

why does everything end up with some form of personal attack?

I've actually studied a lot of physics. How this is relevant is uncertain. My argument is that the branches of physics in which we stand to make these discoveries ALREADY exist. We've already discovered those branches. If each discrete branch of physics is a tree, one argument might be that we've discovered all the trees and are now determining the branches and leaves. The details.

String theory? Not new. Dark Matter? That was Einstein's cosmological constant a hundred years ago. Shit, we can already theorize about how to manipulate gravitational wells to bend time. I can sit down and think of fifteen different things I can apply a hypothetical gravitational lens to. My nine year old nephew understands what a Bose-einstein condensate is, which was actually predicted in the 20s.

That's precisely my point. This is what nanotech seeks to solve. Despite what seems like our limited knowledge, our knowledge is far more vast that our ability to engineer. So if innovation is described as when the possibility of something new comes within our conceptual grasp, then innovation proceeds faster than ever. But if innovation is defined as our ability to make something tangible that is new, then we are moving at a snail's pace.

Cell phones are still telephones. We still sit humans on top of controlled explosions to send them into space.

lots of "garage software" still coming

[peter303]

Products like MicroSoft BASIC, VisiCalc, Napster, BitTorrent, etc. were made by one or two clever guys. I dont see that slowing down. It take imagination and sweat to invent the next great thing.