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Innovation's Role Is Sorely Exaggerated
Strudelkugel writes "The New Yorker has a book review describing our common misunderstanding of the value of technology and its ultimate uses. The reviewer notes that the way we think about technology tends to ignore older objects of technology. Quoting: '[W]hen we do consider technology in historical terms we customarily see it as a driving force of progress: every so often... an innovation — the steam engine, electricity, computers — brings a new age into being. In "The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900", by David Edgerton, a well-known British historian of modern military and industrial technology, offers a vigorous assault on this narrative. He thinks that traditional ways of understanding technology, technological change, and the role of technology in our lives, have been severely distorted by what he calls "the innovation-centric account" of technology.'" Money quote: "Seen in this light, my kitchen is a technological palimpsest."
Reading the effing article, his point seems to be that we overstate the impact of new technology, seeing as we still use mostly old technology, even after the new technology has supposedly "changed our lives forever".
He throws up a bunch of examples, like the fact that the army is still using horses in Afganistan, because they're efficient. And that "huge" innovations, like the V-2 rocket in WWII weren't as pivotal as people think they were (no mention of, you know, the tank).
Basically, he's saying that what people view as life-changing technology isn't always...That the real world changing technology isn't always something that is obvious at the time.
Basically, I think he's full of it. Sure, we often don't recognize the significance of certain innovations which end up shaping our whole world. And then there are things like the cell phone, the internal combustion engine, and the personal computer...Technologies which actually are as influential as we think they are.
Sure there are times where we jam high tech where it doesn't belong, and there are past innovations which are just as valuable today as they were decades ago. But that doesn't immediately invalidate our perception of technology as a driver of change. He talks about the pneumatic tube mail system they used to have in the big cities, and how people thought it was a great thing, and how it's now a non-thing...The thing is that system served a need, and was superceded by better technologies that allowed society to fulfill that need in a more meaningful way.
So society drives technological innovation, yes, but it absolutely depends on the right innovation coming along at the right time, and there is a certain amount of serendipity in that.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I tend to think of this an American problem. An excellent analogy can be made, for instance, between American and Japanese technology. American companies concentrate on hitting "home runs". This is exciting, wins you the occasional game, and makes "superstars". Japanese companies concentrate on "singles". They concentrate on the long-term game plan, and make numerous small improvements to their technology. We see history the same way. How many people know who hit the most home runs in baseball, versus who has the highest all-time batting average? How many people know who developed the atomic bomb, versus who developed the first machine gun? We are very much a glitz and glamour, or "home run" society.
The commonest error is the failure to recognise that innovation it is an innately incremental and collaborative process. Technological progress, like almost any human endeavour, is a social activity. The greatest philosophers and innovators have always recognised that they were standing on the shoulders of giants.
The current IP-obsessed culture inhibits collaboration, and hampers the natural process of innovation in society.
Fortunately, initiatives like the Free Software movement have shown that innovation can thrive without creating artificial monopolies.
On a similar note, why does everything need to be re-engineered? As I get older, I find I appreciate older technologies -- even things as simple as a shovel. For example, new shovels have hadles made of plastic, with a rubber grip and cost $70US. It *might* last me a couple years. On the other hand, I can borrow my grandpa's shovel, with a hard-wood handle and no rubber grip, and do the job just as well. I pick one of those up for $5 at a garage sale and it'll probably out live me.
New innovation doesn't always mean better, just different.
One thing that people note about most predictions for future technology is that they rarely come true, while the technology that actually makes a difference seems to "come out of nowhere" before it's suddenly everywhere.
The reason is that people are fixated on the new and amazing promises of technology, but the thing is that those are new and amazing simply because nobody actually does things like that in normal life. All real advances of technology are the result of changing ordinary everyday things because those are the things people do all the time, and a little improvement has a big effect.
Giant airplanes like the Boeing 747 or Airbus 380 are not world changing because they are giant flying things, they are world changing because they let people travel more effectively. People like the idea of flying as entertainment but almost nobody does routinely it for its own sake (some do in private planes or gliders), but people travel all the time. The fact that it's in the air is incidental.
But many people only see the flying, and not the travel, and think that flying is the world changing event. So they miss out when they try to predict the next world changing event. For example with computers, everyone thought the world changing event would be amazing hypercool virtual reality, but it turned out to be email. I mean, really, even if VR worked, who would have time for it beyond a few video games each week, and what would it change in your life? But how often to you communicate with someone else? Compare and contrast.
Same with robots. The world's most successful robot is a puck-shaped vacuum cleaner.
The next big technological advance will be something where you don't notice the technology. It will just spread until you wonder to yourself "I wonder what ever happened to cable television/flat tires/floppy disks?".