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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."
The RobotWisdom timeline is an interesting find and illustrates nicely our progress in information representation.
There is this notion of evolution being this steady march of progress resulting in us, humanity. This view of evolution, and the steady simple view of the march of technology and progress, might be called a dumb, harmless way to look at history/ natural history. The layman doesn't need to know the details, he just needs to know the basics to the kind of questions everyone asks. And if the answers are presented in such a way that glosses over subtle complexities, so be it.
The most important subtle complexity is the answer to the question: "What is the f***ing point?" The simple dumb answer is "progress." The real answer is "just get the f***ing job done." That the job gets done with more and more complexity is merely an after effect, not the point of evolution or technological innovation. But the common layman's answer needs a driving force to dumb down the narrative, and progress has become that mythical answer, and it's mostly a harmless replacement in how to think about evolution/ technological change.
I mean, technology and innovation are intertwined. Duh. The article doesn't dismantle the idea of technology and innovation being intertwined, but merely tweaks the concept by pointing to old technologies being retained, and new ones not always working out. Well no shit.
Likewise, evolution doesn't care one stinking bit about what creatures are made, there is merely deviation from the average complexity of an animal, and occasionally the animal gets very complex. Like our brain. From evolution's point of view, it's just a statistical aberration in terms of complexity to get the primary job done: surviving death and breeding a new generation. Increasing complexity isn't the point. All evolution cares about is that we successfully breed, or not. From evolution's point of view, human beings, horseshoe crabs, and slime molds all do a good job of that, and so we are equivalent successes. That we do it with a lot more complexity than a slime mold means nothing at all. That horseshoe crabs have been doing it for billions of years while we only a few million or less means nothing at all.
Same with techonology and innovation: who cares how complex, as long as the f***ing job gets done. So some technology hardly evolves, old ones are picked up again after years of neglect, etc. It's a subtle and complex versus simplistic and quick way to sample a deep and gigantic field of inquiry, and if mythical concepts like "progress" have to be created as a driving force in order to bridge the difference between intense study and quick overview, so be it, it's a harmless mental substitution.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The TFAs author is barely techonogically and historically literate. A few books by science historian James Burke would help immensely (Connections, The day the universe changed, The axmakers gift etc.) It would be a start.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
I don't think the writer is arguing against innovation, but his point is that until there is a use for an innovation and people are ready to use it, it will languish. Among other things, his argument explains why the technically-superior Betamax was replaced by VHS and why the technically-superior Amiga lost out to the Macintosh. The technology was better, but the use wasn't there.
All of us who use or develop technology can learn from this by keeping our focus centered on the practical. What group of users will apply this technology toward what ends under what circumstances? As a developer/technical writer, I am force to think of the user perspective constantly, and it has caused helpful changes in my technique.
Like most books, this is probably an overcorrection, a "the sky isn't blue, but a shade of purple, OMGWTF" where a truly scientific viewpoint might be more subtly stated. However, that's just selling books for ya. I think there's a good valid point here the open source movement and any developer can't afford to miss however.
technical writing / development
This is something that came to mind after the article concerning Soviet Era videogames. Your "home run" society rings close to the "high score" society. I wonder how different things could be if being the alpha werent seen as such a driving force.
I forget the comedian on Dr. Katz who said it but it was referring to fans at sporting events shouting "We're number 1! We're number 1" "No, you're a little confused, THEY'RE number 1, you're fat and drunk."
Ice Cream has no bones.