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No More Next Big Thing?
CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead?
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.
Henry Elsworth
US Patent Office, 1844
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
And I'll even go so far as to say the reason why there will be no next big thing - it's our broken-ass patent system.
Someone, somewhere out there has part of your brilliant idea buried in a vaguely worded submarine patent. Soon as you hit the big time - wham. Some greedy patent grubbing jerk will sue you for daring to make use of "his idea" that he's been sitting on not using for the last half a dozen years or so.
Only big business has enough lawyers these days to explore uncharted waters. Which means that business will be in charge of innovation. Which means that no product/idea/whatever will get the green light without a financial analysis conducted by a committee of people who will 99.9% of the time tend to be conservative, or maybe even just plain clueless as to the new idea's implications.
The days of the solo guy in the garage coming up with the thing that changes the world are over.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I would like to throw my weight out there and call Donofrio an idiot, at least in relation to this statement. There are still many Next Big Things that we have yet to achieve (though the ability to achieve such may or may not exist, but we won't know till we try.)
A short list:
- Hovering vehicles
- Anti gravity (which is probably related to the above)
- hand held energy weapons
- teleportation
- economical space travel (think "to mars", or, at the least, consumer viability for going to the moon)
- curing cancer
- controlling computers with our brains
- mechanical prostetics that respond either to brain waves or nerves (we're right on the edge of this one- I believe someone had a really basic, bulky unit working, it just has to become available for the common man)
- growing of artificial organs for transplants (goodbye organ donors!)
- interactive holographic interfaces
- solar energy that's +60% effecient
Okay, maybe that list isn't so short. Sure, many of those fields are being worked on, but nothing concrete and ready for mass use has been created (to my knowledge.) All of those items will help to advance the human race in terms of how we live and effect our environment, as well as populating into space.
Also, I'm still waiting for my damned hoverboard. Back to the Future Part II is full of lies, I tell you, lies! (I realize that the events in BttF2 don't occur to 2015, but we should be seeing regular hover technology by now if we are to meet the deadline of mass production for hoverboards that can be used by everyday kids.)