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

Slashdot

[SuperJason]

Personally, I blame slashdot. I could be inventing some crazy shit if I didn't have to check this site every 5 minutes.

To Fix It

[DanielMarkham]

The death of innovation is due to apathy.
I was going to invent a solution to the problem, but who cares?

Re:To Fix It

[slashflood]

There is a fine line between (Score:5, Funny) and (Score:5, Insightful).

USPTO

[Asmodean]

Innovation has been patented.

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

[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.

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.

Re:Diminishing Returns

[Seumas]

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.

Re:I Blame regulators

[adoll]

Did Darwin get a business visa to conduct his studies in the Galapagos?

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?

$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.