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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."
I wonder by how many billion the population has grown since the 17th century? Does the article account for the exponential population increase mondially?
I call crap on this. There is still so much that we do not know. And as we discover new areas there will be new bursts of innovation.
Considering that there were fewer than 600 million people in the world in 1600, I'd assume fewer "developments per billion" today.
Sorry, I just don't see anything to be concerned about. The per capita rate of development may have gone down in the last 200 years, but the numbers have gone way up.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Eh... no.
How about this: the ratio of revolutionary innovation to evolutionary innovation is decreasing.
Yeah, but you also have to admit that the more we discover, the harder it is to discover more. Remember, a couple centuries ago, Franklin was inventing hundreds of things. Well, yeah, because it was easy to invent - say - water flippers or a snorkel back then. I mean, how hard is it to say "hey, if I had a straw in my mouth pointing up, I could breathe underwater"?
But today, the easy inventions are over with. The majority of the things some general jack-of-all-trades in his garage could invent have been invented. Even the personal computer, invented in a garage, has already been invented.
If you want to make some great discovery today, you're not going ot be doing it in your garage or while going about your business. You're going to be doing it in relation to funded research, government grants, a decade in college and many degrees into it. So, yes, of course innovation is "slowing down". Because you spend so much of your life just "catching up" to the knowledge that is now needed that you're a geezer by the time you've got enough behind you to start "inventing" or "discovering". Discoveries aren't cheap. You can't just stare at the sky a few minutes every night to sketch solar flares in your log book to document the behavior of the sun. You're going to need a billion dollar facility with computers, staff, and a big ass telescope.
So yes, perhaps innovation seems to be stagnating in general - but that's largely because the entry-point for great discoveries and innovation is so high now.
I dunno, I feel thermodynamics was equally as hard to formaulate. The steps required from the base platform of knowledge were just as steep as those required for the stuff you mentioned.
The breakthroughs in the mathematical methods required to solve the problems are just as various, just as thought provoking, and the solutions will prove to be just as ingenious.
If indeed "innovations are slowing" due to their increased complexity, then can we extrapolate this trend to say that, sufficiently far in the future, innovations will be so complex and require so much time investment that we begin to narrow our breadth and increase our depth of understanding? And if so, is this in fact slowed innovation? As others are noting, perhaps the measure of innovation is misunderstood.
Unlike copyrights, the length of patents has remained constant. However, the types of "inventions" that are patentable is increasing: seeds, genes, business methods, and, of course, software.
In response to your comment about "first one to patent wins":
Have you ever heard of Elisha Grey?
Have you ever heard of Alexander Graham Bell?
Alexander Graham Bell got to the patent office two hours before Elisha Grey. As a result, Elisha Grey could not build or sell his own invention -- the telephone.
Did Alexander Graham Bell get a broadcasting licence from the CRTC?
Did Mme Currie have a permit to work with radionuclides
Did Captian Cook put up with this crap when he commissioned his vessels?
I think that- any innovation that works inside a computer, he'll just call it a "minor innovation."
So, if we write code that can quickly automatically reconstruct 3D models from video footage, and put it into every computer, it'll be "just another computer program."
If we write really smart translation systems, and hook it up to speech-to-text and text-to-speech, it'll be "just another computer program."
Make any machine, but make it run inside a computer, and it'll be "just another computer program."
Just a minor innovation.
But I don't think we can afford to think of things that way.
These are really big innovations. Just taking an existing innovation, and just putting it into everybody's hands: should count for something.
But I think people are fooled, because they just see a geek and a computer. "Oh, nothing new. He's still sitting in his chair at his computer."
Anyone who thinks that all innovation is captured in patents is clearly not involved in the design process. I've got a bunch of patents but the coolest ideas we NEVER commit to a patent unless there is an overriding strategic/competitive reason. Innovation is best kept secret and imbedded. Most innovation is invisible to the user and it simply does not pay in most cases to reveal an underlying technique to the whole world who can then modify the process in some small way and gain 90% of the benefit of the patent. And there is no patent police- you have to find a clear violation. All this and you get a whole 20 years from time of filing- and you have to pay to maintain the thing too. Most innovation has a lifetime that is only a few years at most- so really you get maybe 10 years max of real utility before you are overcome by events. This report is pure crap and is based on an incredibly blinkered perspective. Innovation- and by that I mean real workable ideas that can be used in the marketplace and have been debugged- is exploding. The changes in materials alone will swamp you. It is barely possible to stay current in say polymers and metals and their associated processing techniques- throw in optical materials and its all she wrote.
Pick up a textbook about digital signal processing or communication theory. The concepts are straightforward to understand because they involve linear systems. When systems are not linear, we try to linearize them because linear systems are more easily grasped by the human mind than non-linear systems.
We have already picked off all the fruits of linear systems. The next step, nonlinear systems, is a tad more difficult. So, innovation will slow.
I presume that other endeavors outside of signal processing face a similar situation.
As a last example, consider physics. Newtonian physics was the low-hanging fruit. We can see its application in almost everything from cars to buildings to aeroplanes. Beyond Newtonian physics is a very difficult, non-intuitive step: quantum physics.
As integrated circuits become so small that quantum effects appear, humankind will face a brick wall, and innovation will slow to a crawl. Of course, there will be bright ideas. Science-fiction writers also have brilliant ideas, but implementing them will not be feasible.
In order for technology to be developed efficiently, it must be framed in a way that is intuitive to the mind. This intuition gives brilliant people a way to reason about a problem and to find a neat solution. Linear systems and newtonian physics are intuitive and fit well within the mental framework of the human mind. Nonlinear systems and quantum physics are quite the opposite.
Everything that is new these days is are minor extensions of the old
Anti-retroviral medication, designer drugs, endovascular stents, non invasive diagnostic imaging... Some fields are exploding exponentially. 20 years ago we had a very hazy idea of how virii worked. Thanks to HIV, not only do we know how they work but we've taken great steps towards creating drugs that block its replication - and these drugs can even be applied to other virii (Hepatitis B and lamivudine, for example).
This is something completely new - the ability to create drugs based solely on our knowledge of a biochemical pathway. Used to be trial and error - for some reason people who take "x" develop this, this and this, lets find out how "x" works, and try to apply it to some disease. Now it's the other way around - this disease is caused by "y", lets find or build a drug that binds to some receptor and prevents that.
Or how about me being able to use a spiral CT scanner and software to build a 3-D image of your entire digestive system and take a "virtual" tour of your intestine, to find that tumor? This is amazing and also completely new. Before, you got the knife. Now you just lie still on a table for 20 mins. I can inject you with some radioactive material and get a dynamic, moving image of your beating heart - in 3D, and SEE where all the blood is going (and where it's not). Wow.
I could go on and on, and this is just in ONE field. My point is, there ARE some pretty new and radical things out there, you just have to look in the right places.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
More to the point... more and more people can be born... but if the edge of innovation requires internet access, reasonably powerful computers, access to chemistry labs, sub-atomic research facilities... then the rate of innovation is more likely to grow at the pace of GDP, or the amount of R&D investment, or something like that, not at the rate of which people in the third world are born (nothing against them, by any means, but internet access seems like a bare minimum for innovation these days).
I don't know why the article referred "nanotech" as nanomachines or molecular assembly. To quote: "Drexler says nanotechnology alone will smash the barriers Huebner foresees, never mind other branches of technology. It's only a matter of time, he says, before nanoengineers will surpass what cells do, making possible atom-by-atom desktop manufacturing."
Pfft... talk about uninformed people. Better go to http://news.nanoapex.com/ and get REAL information. (Yeah I know, Drexler is the father of nanotech - but Drexler's nanotech is NOT the nanotech that countries are investing billions in R&D. Too bad for him, tho)
Nanotechnology isn't just about molecular-level manufacturing. It's about nanoelectronics, nanomaterials for energy storage, new diagnostic machines with nanoscopic precision, analysis of biology in the nanoscale (a completely UNEXPLORED field so far), new materials for permanent artificial bones, filters which will separate the salt (and microorganisms) from seawater at the molecular level... and of course, your 6-million-dollars bionic eyes. Yes. All of this is possible.
Now, Want a real-world example of technology innovation?
Vehicle with the highest fuel efficiency sets new world record . "PAC-Car has now achieved its goal: it finished the course at the Shell Eco-Marathon taking place on the Michelin test track at Ladoux, France, using only 1.07 grams of hydrogen."
Hey, if that's not innovation, I don't know what it is.
Now think of the advancements in say, molecular engineering (chemistry) that will be possible by the time we start comparing home computers by their teraflops.
So, innovation getting slower? Yeah, right.
From the f*ing article....
"In an effort to find out, he plotted major innovations and scientific advances over time compared to world population, using the 7200 key innovations listed in a recently published book, The History of Science and Technology (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). The results surprised him."
Um..... let me just interject my interpretation: That book won't likely have the key innovation for the last, say decade or so, because they aren't widely known yet until they impact us. For instance, Einstein's first theories weren't widely considered important/innovative until years AFTER he developed them and us dumblings could finally tune into his wavelength and say "AHA! They are useful."
Or like Arpanet might have been viewed as a cute military playtoy in the 70's...... until it evolved into the internet.
"Rather than growing exponentially, or even keeping pace with population growth, they peaked in 1873 and have been declining ever since (see Graphs). Next, he examined the number of patents granted in the US from 1790 to the present. When he plotted the number of US patents granted per decade divided by the country's population, he found the graph peaked in 1915.
The period between 1873 and 1915 was certainly an innovative one. For instance, it included the major patent-producing years of America's greatest inventor, Thomas Edison (1847-1931). Edison patented more than 1000 inventions, including the incandescent bulb, electricity generation and distribution grids, movie cameras and the phonograph."
Do we really have to get into a discussion of why Patents are not the best measurement of progress?
There is the story that a US Patent Office official said in 1843, "The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." Well, it's a story.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Patents hobble revision. If an idea is truly novel, then it will not be hindered by the patent system.
blame blame blame, let's just blame everybody but ourselves. maybe it's YOUR fault for not making any contributions to human innovation yourself.
as much as people bash patents, it would probably be worse without them. just imagine what it would be like without patents. it would be hell, and although the patent system is extremely flawed, until someone fixes it you can't just get rid of it. without the patent system, every invention made by a small group of people or ONE inventer would just be stolen and sold by a large company.
that kind of copying and stealing of ideas would discourage independant innovaters more than they are now. they wouldn't bother inventing anything at all, because they would know someone would steal the idea and they wouldn't see a dime out of it.
Patents you say? Is every country in the world hobbled by a patent system similar to the US? If there is demand for a product, patent or not it will be filled. Whether homegrown (in my case US) or imported from some country where the patent law does not care as much. Patents do have their problems, but stifling innovation IMO is not one of them. In fact by reading the patent you know what the other person did. Now you can even work with the patented info and make your own enhancements.
The hard problems are not being cracked.
The researcher is flat out wrong. His criterion of "major innovations" is actually equivalent to "easily understood innovations" because significance is in the eyes of the beholder, and his beholders (technology historians) aren't specialists. Viewed in that light, the article's claims rocket up in the "duh" factor. Innovation isn't slowing down, the ability of the laymen to understand what innovation is occurring is no longer sufficient.
Even granting that innovation per capita is dropping, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were, the researcher misattributes the root cause. He talks about what innovations are "economical" without considering what factors would go in to determining that limitation. Long story short - the limitations of the human brain play an important role: how fast it can learn, how much memory it can retain, how fast it can communicate with the outside world, etc. If innovation is slowing it is likely because we're running in to limitations inherent to the human brain as it exists today. Just look at how long it takes before a person can learn enough to make a meaningful contribution to a chosen field today as it compares to yesteryear. Hell, the fact that we have to specialize to the degree we do today compared to the days of Galilei, Newton, Franklin, and the like speaks volumes about how far we've come. Without any changes to the system (education, research, etc) it is obvious that the time will eventually come when a human being simply cannot live long enough to learn what's necessary to make any contribution whatsoever no matter how early they specialize. Fortunately, there's hope. Whether the advances in the human brain come from genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, developmental modifications (think something along the lines of mentats from Dune), or just better teaching methods, they will come. Once we have achieved enough of an understanding of the brain to improve our ability to augment it in a widespread fashion (that is, cheaply), innovation per capita would pick up again.
And I see no reason why perfecting some technology along those lines isn't economically feasible with our present limitations. In fact, I'll be astounded if something significant doesn't happen in this avenue within the next century.
BlackGriffen
One thing:
Erectile dysfunction was a very important problem for mankind for tens of thousands of years. A tremendous amount of cumulative effort was spent with hundreds of different folk-remedies over the centuries -- several of them no-doubt fatal.
Then some drug company cured it a couple of years ago. The problem was more-or-less gone from that day forward.
And you're complaining about it and belittling the accomplishment.
Maybe not the best examples.
o yage_.281776-1779.29
Bell - Created a telephone monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
MMe Currie - Exposed to radiation and died of Leukemia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madam_Curie
Captain Cook - Killed by natives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_cook#Third_v
"the original 17 year (right?) patent limit is just too long"
The problem is more insidious than that. As long as there is no connection between patent duration, investment cost, time to develop and time to generate ROI, patents encourage investment in low or zero-cost 'inventions'. The value of the patent becomes only the monopoly, the costs to obtain the monopoly detract from ROI, and you end up with patented inventions that would have been invented even with only time-to-market incentive, as those are the most profitable and least-risk investments, with or without patents.
"I am not anti-patent"
I have become anti-patent. Now, dont get me wrong, I'm not anti-ROI, but I consider patents to fail utterly at accomplishing their intented goal, and as such they should be entirely replaced with a completely different system that rewards actual investment in R&D and risk taking.
We have things like the first attempted Nuclear fision reactor that is going to be built in France and will take 10 years to build.
In order to build something like this, you can't have earthquakes, so the west coast is out. The east coast has a high population, so you don't want something like that, as a "just in case" type thing.
That leaves the midwest if you are talking about the USA. There isn't a high population density there, no earthquakes, and if you go underground, no problem with tornados or severe weather. That means the only people who would object are all the people who protest any new technology.
There was a time when the government would push to stay ahead of the rest of the world when it came to technology and science. Putting a man on the moon for example was done to stay ahead of the world, not because of any financial advantage it might give.
George W. Bush needs to wake up and start supporting innovation and advancement in this country again. There is NO reason why this country couldn't have the first fusion reactor if the government supported the idea of providing the electrical power we need and getting away from oil.
that'a fair argument. the cost of innovation now vs. the "sweet spot" period in the article.
Edison innovated in his shed out back. The cost might have been significant in his day, but not prohibitive.
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.
The other thing is this. There are a lot of books circulating about criticality. A big idea in criticality is complexity arising from very simple origins (Gutenberg-Richter Law). So there is the idea that the TREES of our major technologies going forward have already been discovered. 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.
un burrito me trampeó.
Viagra was actually meant as a drug for hypertension, then angina, before you know what. http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/mdd/98/novdec/viagra. html
Many of the anti-psychotics were originally for epilepsy. Unfortunately innovation doesn't usually come from highly focussed research. The discovery of new drugs and technologies is more haphazard than that, and those that fund research are aware of this problem.
In early America, hundred year investments were very common. Why? Because it was not *yet* common practice for the government to tax to oblivion people's property/ investments. Now, one would be foolish to make such a long term investment, because its only a matter of time before the government finds that they can make lots of promises to other people in order to procure their votes. Subsequently, those promises are funded with tax money from wherever there is money ... in this case investments.
So dont blame investors please. They are simply a symptom of a much bigger and much more burdensome system. One in which I suspect the parent poster fully endorses.
We had the capability to bring malaria under control, if not all but eliminate it.
But then, some people decided to effectively ban DDT.
Yes, and that was a mistake. We were using too much of it, then we recognized that it was having very serious effects on the ecosystem, and we overreacted.
At this point, we can use satellite imaging/GPS, etc. to target the areas where it would be most effective. Using DDT was highly questionable back when it was first banned, but now it seems irresponsible to not use it in measured doses.
That's my position. Following the thread, it appears that your position is simple: We had a solution, which we gave up for no good reason, and rather than looking for a better way to save the millions who die each year from malaria, we should go back to perfecting the technology to turn Grandpa Bud into a sexual dynamo.
That's the impression you're leaving in my mind, anyways. Feel free to correct me if your position is more reasonable than you're letting on.
Then again, it's your first post. I really don't expect to hear from you again.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!