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When a Tech 'Breakthrough' Isn't Really
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'More than 8,600 press releases have been issued over the years with "breakthrough" in the headline, a majority of them by computer and electronics companies,' Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. He examines whether hyperbole and hype has robbed the term of much of its meaning, focusing on a recently announced 'breakthrough' by Intel involving optical computing. From the article: 'Having been inside Intel's laser labs, I need no persuading that the company is doing important work here, and an Intel spokesman says the development is indeed a "breakthrough" because it shows how real-world optical products can be made with silicon. I wonder, though, how many more breakthroughs we will be reading about before optical computing becomes ubiquitous.'"
I was so excited when I RTFA that I immediately had to post a comment saying that this is simply the BEST article that I have ever read on Slashdot and it will probably be seen as THE breakthrough in human-to-human communications that we have all been waiting for.
I am not exaggerating
The word 'breakthrough' is definitely used too much.
I'm always skeptical when it's used in a present tense. For example, "The Segway is a breakthrough in transportation technology."
When the Segway first premiered, I heard this. Yet, it has been anything but a 'breakthrough' nor has it changed my life in anyway (with the exception of some humor at the Segway's expense).
My point is that you can only really use the term in the past tense when something really did signal a breakthrough. Like the invention of solid state transistors. At the time, did they really realize how big it was? Maybe, but that's not always the case.
Breakthroughs are also sometimes relative, for instance Srgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band might have been a musical breakthrough for rock but mean little to computer scientists. Likewise, proving Fermat's last theorem might have been a breakthrough for mathematics but meant little or nothing to a musician.
So, in the end, I think 'breakthrough' is used prematurely but it also is used relative to fields a lot. I don't think the author bothered to look at the thousands of uses of the word to see if it was followed by "for physicists" or "for medicine" in which case they might have been genuine breakthroughs in that sense. The difficult breakthroughs are the ones that do affect everyone (like the transistor or radio) but they are becoming harder to pinpoint as many inventions these days aren't actual inventions but instead integration of already existing inventions to form a new utility for those devices.
My work here is dung.
To an MBA, a "breakthrough" is anything that will make them more money (or in the case of marketing, anything that they *hope* will make them more money).
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Breakthrough: any significant or sudden advance, development, achievement, or increase, as in scientific knowledge or diplomacy, that removes a barrier to progress.
As long as there are barriers to progress (and they never seem to run out) we will have breakthroughs. As the saying goes: "If the Shoe Fits..."
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
The word "breakthrough" is actually no breakthrough itself. For years companies have used keywords to attract attention in consummer aspects. It was done years ago when companies used the word "Extreme" in absolutely everything that was being released to the public. (I wonder where Billy got his inspiration for W!ndows XP). By the end of the 90s everyone was using words like "Millenium" (LOL) and numbers like 2000; Example: "PruductName 2000! Out this Fall". And so the word "breakthrough" is nothing more than a marketing decision for some companies today.
The FA is stating that we overuse the "breakthrough" word to advertize a tech that is still years away from market, and of course editors are happy to show us another great story.
As technology helps make new technology, it is expected for progress to hasten. So major milestones are reached more often and more quickly. Using press releases as a litmus test to measure claims of "breakthroughs" is a little much to ask, IMO. I expect a press release to be biased and grandiose - there's no surprise there. So while maybe the term "breakthrough" is being used a little liberally by corporations looking for investment, I fully expect to see major milestones reached at an accelerating pace.
There are two sides to this...
First off, more breakthroughs than ever are being made these days. Our technological advances are being made at an almost "silly" rate. We have made so many more in the past century than in the millenium that preceeded it. Why? Better education, greater body of knowledge, and of course computing doesn't hurt. So yes, there are alot of breakthroughts taking place.
However, the term is also used as marketing hype. It still has a buzz to it after all these years of being misused, so I don't think companies will stop using it as a marketing scheme.
In reference to IBM in the article... they certainly use the term "breakthrough", and much of what they do deserves recognition as such as they have pushed the envelope with their R&D. Of course Intel has also done a fantastic job. Some of what these companies do isn't necessary ground breaking work, as it has been done before. So I find it difficult to determine if the term should be used still since the work has been done before, but the difference is that when one of these large companies does it, it is so much more likely to succeed.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
The problem is that the word "breakthrough" has more than one meaning.
1. An act of overcoming or penetrating an obstacle or restriction.
2. A military offensive that penetrates an enemy's lines of defense.
3. A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology.
(From www.answers.com)
Press release writers can legitimately use the word to mean the first definition (a solution to a problem), while implying the third (emotive, hyperbolic) definition even if it doesn't actually mean it. As such, it is a very useful word to make your company look like it is leaping ahead of the competition and deserving of funding, whereas a press release which sticks to practical unemotive language and doesn't "big-up" the company is wasting an opportunity to generate interest and investment.
No wonder it's an overused word - it makes your company money.
I actually do research in optical computing, but the problems aren't unique to that field. I'm always getting pressured to use words/phrases like "novel", "highly accurate", "unique", etc (basically just non quantitative positive adjectives) to make the titles of my talks or publications more sexy or provocative.
It's annoying becuase they are just noise words. If something is really unique, a breakthrough, etc, those adjectives will be applied to your product (research, idea technology, choose your noun here) by others. Your job as an engineer or scientist should be to report the facts on your (noun here) in an unbiased and neutral fashion, giving meaningful benchmark figures regarding what it allows you to do. It's okay to focus on the strengths, but provide quantitative data, not meaningless adjectives and buzzwords. Fortunately more and more journals are stating not to use such meaningless drivel in their guidelines.
In my research, whenever I see phrases like "good/excellent agreement with...", instead of "this shows a standard deviation of X%", I automatically assume someone is just putting a shine on lame results. This prejudice is pretty accurate, but of course not 100% so. I'd estimate 90% or so.
The problem of course is the overly strong influence marketing has on us. Richard Feynman had a pretty good rant about this stuff. We really need to start punishing people/institutions for insulting our intelligence with this noise. He was more concerned with advertising campaigns which insult our intelligence, but the same trend has broadened itself.
In the end, I think it's important we become more cognisant, thus more resistant, to transparent marketing techniques. When an institution is singing its own praises, be skeptical.
On a tangent, if someone tells you "this is a quantum leap in XXX!", reply "so you mean to say it's the smallest possible change you can make?"
Not just the word "Breakthrough", but "Controversial", I hear that EVERY STPID EPISODE OF BONES THAT FOX MAKES. "Next week, on a controversial new Bones."
It's like, what? Did you run out of otherwise reasonably descriptive words to describe this episode, because you use it so much, I can't hardly imagine that "Bones" would be watched by anyone unless immediately after they feel an intense need to call their best friend and discuss at length the moral issues involved with creating a 3D CG representation of a dead person based on the bones. I mean, clay worked fine, but when you have to solve crimes on a deadline, I suppose CG would let you get it done faster.
This reminds me actually of in College, I had a friend, and we talked about how there are certain words that only advertisers use. Like "Hearty", when was the last time you heard anything but soup in a commercial described as "Hearty"?
"MMm... this Captain Crunch is really hearty today, Mom!"
No, it doesn't happen. Advertising people just learned some derived language of English I think. (My apologies to anyone on Slashdot who might be an advertising person, but... come on, hopefully you aren't coming up with this stupid stuff.)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Can we also add "Revolutionary" to the list?
A breakthrough is
1. An act of overcoming or penetrating an obstacle or restriction.
2. A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology.
While optical computing is a neato thing and it will probably make a splash in the computer world by enabling high performance systems to basically do things faster, is it really going to change the way we do computing? I mean, over the years, we have changed the way we do computing from a hardware standpoint. Things have advanced, technologies have come and gone and we have seen great strides in manufacturing techniques that have given us very small systems that you can carry in your pocket. But have we really changed the way we do the computing or are we just advancing hardware?
Optical computing isn't really a breakthrough in the sense that it will make such a difference that we will have to rethink how we program systems to utilize this technology the best that we can. Then again, much of the things being listed as breakthroughs really aren't.
What would it take to make a breakthrough? Well, cars that drive themselves safely and reliably. That would be a breakthrough because it would defintly change habits for people. Cheap, affordable space travel would be a breakthrough because it would change how we traverse the globe and even open space. Those are just a couple of things that would make an impact that could be considered a breakthrough. They would not only change the way we do things but they would also progress technology by making it available to a general consumer. That means profit margins which bring dollars for R&D to continually improve the technology.
Optical computing is, again, a nice advancement but a breakthough, unlikely. It's not changing how we do something, it's just offering a different approach and it won't advance anything until it gets cheaper but, by then, it'll be eclipsed by the next "breakthrough". In the same line of thought, the biggest blunder of a breakthrough in recent history is the Segway. While yeah it is a neat idea, it's not going to change anything. It amounts to nothing more than a scooter with a gyroscope in it and if the idea was so great to begin with, wouldn't we be using scooters already? There are just inherent problems with the idea because there are sacrifices and concessions that need to be made just to make the statement that the Segway will change cities forever. Where is the incentive to make that change? A Segway isn't a breakthrough because it's answering a question that nobody asked.
Cure cancer, that's a breakthrough. Solve traffic congestion, big deal. It will be a temporary fix until more people get Segways and just move the congestion to a different area. Along the same lines, find a way to use a different sepectrum of light to build a laser that at least triples the density of media storage space, that's a breakthrough. It changed everything from how we watch movies to how we store pictures of little Jimmy and little Sally on thier first day of school. It also advanced technology forcing the rest of the industry to find ways to use that technology to the best of its ability. It also changed other industries because now people have the ability to store large amounts of data. That changed everything from DVD players to digital cameras and we are seeing gear that is not afraid to use large amounts of space to provide much more content because there is media out there that can handle it. Finding a way to make a computer run faster, that's not necessarily a breakthrough. All the major chip manufacturers have been doing that for decades. Using optics is just a different way, not a breakthrough.
"As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements'; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
Thoreau, of course, was a technologist and business entrepreneur whose process for combining clay with graphite was a breakthrough in the development of pencil "lead..."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Actually in my opinion we haven't really made much progress in the recent decade at all.
1942 manhattan project
1945 first a-bomb, + hiroshima & nagasaki
1947 transistor invented
1949 Comet (passenger jet) Unveiled
1951 electricity from nuclear power plant
1952 US Airforce orders B52
1955 U2 Tested
1956 first O/S
1957 silicon wafer, FORTRAN, sputnik
1958-59 first IC, ALGOL, LISP
1961 VTOL, first man in space, CTSS
1962 spacewar computer game
1964 computer mouse & windows
1968 Douglas Engelbart demos the above, hypertext, collaborative computing and more
1969 feb Jumbo jet (747) first flight
1969 apr concorde first Mach 2 passenger jet first flight
1969 apr QE 2 ship first voyage
1969 Jul first man on moon
1969 Multics
1971 intel 4004
1972 C
1973 skylab, ethernet, UNIX, work on TCP/IP started
1974 Altair and Scelbi
1975 apollo & soyuz dock
1976 viking landings on Mars, Apple I, ethernet launched
1977 voyager 2 launched, Apple II, commodore
1978 visicalc, vi
1979 wordstar
1980 TCP/IP RFCs
1981 space shuttle, IBM PC
1982 BSD gets TCP/IP
1983 Apple Lisa
1983 "Unix Review compares six Unix-compatibles for IBM PCs"
1983 GNU project
1984 Apple Mac, X Windows
1985 Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Microsoft Windows
#Stagnation starts
1986 chernobyl, challenger blow up
1988 stealth fighter
1989 stealth bomber
1990 WWW (hypertext revisited)
1991 Linux started (UNIX rehash)
1992 Windows NT, NetBSD, FreeBSD
1993 Mosaic
1994 webcrawler
1995 Windows 95, Altavista
1996 pathfinder mars rover/lander (viking rehash)
1997 google (good but not really a great leap )
2003 spirit+opportunity mars rovers
Looking at the past 10-20 years I can say there really hasn't been as many leaps. Most are just rehashes of the same thing done before. Some not actually done better just more popular. Linux is just UNIX revisited. Just go look at the video of Douglas Engelbart's demo in 1968 and you'll see we haven't really made that many advances in the computing fields.
As for aerospace:
All NASA can do is try to stop the space shuttles from blowing up.
They're talking about going to the Moon again (so 1960s). Then there was all that fuss about sending probes to mars. Oh wow, like wasn't that done in 1976?
Then there's the supersonic jetliner and big passenger jet... Heck the 747 design is still being used to this day (and it works pretty well too).
Only thing new so far is the space tourism innovation by the Russians. Where on a regular schedule anyone reasonably fit and healthy with USD20 million bucks can go to space.
Automobile tech? No breakthroughs. Now if there's practical gasoline/hydrocarbon fuel cell+filter that'll be a breakthrough.
Nuclear fusion/fission? No significant progress at all.
They've already spent billions and decades on hot fusion with not much to show for it, maybe they should just spend a bit more time and money investigating the cold fusion stuff - even if it isn't fusion, there's evidence that it could be an interesting phenomena. Or just spend some billions to make fission better.
AI has been a field for bullshit artists.
But medical tech has had some advances. You can now actually implement brain augmentation, telepathy and telekinesis with current communications/computing and medical technology. But the DMCA, RIAA and MPAA etc may hold the progress back in that field (they'll want a penny for your^H^H^H^H_their_ thoughts or more). And then there's the threat of lawsuits of course.
Still TB and many other diseases seem to be threatening to make a comeback, so it's not been that great either.
Lifespans are up mainly because infant mortality is down, and ER treatment is much better.
Now, tell me of something really innovative in the past 10 years. No hypersonic jetliner to be seen. When the Concorde came out it was definitely not a rehash. The first man on the moon in 1969 was not
- GPS
- nanotech
- cloning
- lasik eye surgery (one of the greatest inventions in the world if you previously had poor eyesight)
- global finance
- advances in manufacturing materials (polymers, alloys, etc.)
- You seem to ignore the internet as a whole. While the bits and pieces examined by themselves are not technological breakthroughs, the system as a whole has COMPLETELY changed the way in which our world communicates and does business. To ignore the impact it has had is shortsighted.
- the Patriot missle system
- Wordstar...you included a damn word processor on your freaking list!! I understand it was popular at the time but come on man! I believe all the medical breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years trumps that silly word processor. Oh that's right, you live inside a small bubble consisting of space and computers. Nothing EVER happens outside of those two subjects.