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."

Comments

Hmmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

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how people thought it was a great thing, and how it's now a non-thing...The thing is that system served a need, and was superceded by better technologies that allowed society to fulfill that need in a more meaningful way.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.

Re:Hmmmm.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Basically, I think he's full of it. It's the New Yorker. What do you expect?

Re:Hmmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

I like the New Yorker...On occasion. Their movie reviews are almost perfect: if they love it, I'll hate it, and if they hate it, it's probably worth watching.

But they're about the last people I'd trust on a technological issue. The article reminded me of the "Luddite" column from Wired.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Canthros]

The tank first saw use in the Battle of the Sommes in WWI, which is why, despite being very important, it's not actually an innovation of WWII.

Sorry, nothing to offer except nitpicking just now!

Re:Hmmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

Wellllll, I agree and disagree. You're right about when they were introduced, but the tanks of WWI weren't the tanks of WWII. In WWI the role of the tank was basically to provide light fire support, and a slow moving wall for soldiers to walk behind while it crossed the land between the trenches.

Not that that wasn't absolutely huge, because it was, but it wasn't anywhere near as decisive as the role of the tank in WWII. Tanks and airplanes were the big winners as far as military tech in WWII; they'd both been introduced in WWI, but they really achieved their potential in WWII.

Re:Hmmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

Nah, the V-2 was crap. He's right about that. Strategic bombing was much more damaging and accurate; the V-2 was primarily a terror weapon--just an explosion out of nowhere on a clear day, and then after it blew up, the sound of it's passage would catch up and you could hear it coming in.

Freaked a lot of people out, but didn't do all that much damage. Couldn't be aimed accurately enough to take out a strategic target. There is some debate on how worthwhile strategic bombing was in general, but the V-2 especially was much less worthwhile as an innovation than the late planes and subs that the Germans were capable of producing; subs that could run underwater the whole way, and the first true jet aircraft.

Compared to that, the ability to toss a bomb across the Channel is small potatoes.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Cadallin]

However, despite that early use in WWI, it was not until WWII, and Germany's use of blitzkrieg tactics, that the tank would radically revolutionize warfare. That time was necessary for military theory to catch up to the tank's true implications for warfare. And while the V-2 rocket would utterly fail to save Germany in WWII, its descendants would be (and still are) critical in the development of the Cold War, and remain dominant in modern warfare.

One of the things that amazes me is that Robert Heinlein, admittedly like so many others of his time, completely failed to see the implications of the modern computer. His view of the computer was consistently that of a better sliderule. Although, I'm somewhat ignoring his ideas of Computer intelligence here, which arose by the end of the 50's. He was still imagining computers solely as massive installations, existing solely for special purpose uses, or as master control systems. Despite the fact that he was so prescient in so many others ways. And he was in the Navy, one of the first places to see widespread deployment of mechanical computers, although admitted these were not General Purpose and were for the calculation of ballistic trajectories for long range gunfire. He foresaw the profound impact of Computer Aided Design in Drafting, although he imagined it as a special purpose device, rather than an application of a general purpose computer. It wasn't really until the 1980's when visionaries really started to get a grasp on what the computer really meant.

Re:Hmmmm.

[White Yeti]

I'm reminded of the TV series by James Burke. They really affected my young and impressionable mind. His various shows celebrated both the serendipitous and the slow-building contributions of knowledge and technology that led to modern things and thoughts. I can still picture the chains of wooden "punch cards" controlling the weaving pattern of a water (maybe steam?) powered loom, and the "Connections" between so many old and new things. If you can find them, his "Connections" and "The Day the Universe Changed" series are great.

I think it boils down to a lack of history. We learn history for the first 20 or so years of our lives, we live/make history for another 50 years, and we try to teach OUR history to the young'uns for our last 10 or 20 years. How would the world be different if we all lived 200 years? The gap of generational knowledge would be longer, but would still exist. We'd still be left with "When I was a kid, 190 years ago, all we had were internal combustion engines. And we LIKED 'em!"

Re:Hmmmm.

[altoz]

I think his point is that there's a lot of new technologies all the time that don't fulfill their hype. The V-2 is a good example in that during the war, it was thought as the magic weapon that would wipe out the enemy. It's not that there aren't technologies that do deserve the hype, but that the technologies that inevitably end up changing our lives aren't necessarily the ones that did. He also makes a point that innovation isn't necessarily unique. Basically, that had email not been invented, there might be something just as efficient that would have been made. Since this author believes that the same things get invented regardless (albeit with different parameters), attaching such importance to the innovation is therefore not as warranted.

Some examples of hyped technologies right now:

stem cells
quantum computing
nano-tech
anything fusion related

Are any of these going to change our lives the way they're hyped to be? Perhaps, but there's a good chance that something else from left field will do much better at the same things these technologies promise to do.

Of course, speculating on such things is mostly futile since we can't know a world that would have been (at least without some weird quantum technology). We only know the world that is. Thus, I don't know if saying that innovation is important is unwarranted. However, this article does point out that our placing so much importance on innovation is also unwarranted.

Re:Hmmmm.

[DarenN]

Good points.

I personally believe the problem with "innovation" today is that it's marketing - rather than something genuine. Every product, from Bounty kitchen rolls to the latest TV to make-up is "innovative" and "futuristic" and will "change your life forever".

Amazingly, none of them do. Many of the significant innovations are less tangible - the tank is a product built on the application of innovations such as the internal combustion engine, electricity (for factories), mechanised metalworking machines, and, perhaps most importantly, product line engineering. Products generally aren't innovations, although they can be innovative (a minor distinction, I'm aware, but important enough).

Anyway, the thing is that world-changing innovation is relatively rare, and take time to catch on (eg, electricity or computing), and products based on known principles are not innovations, they're innovative. It's different. Think about it.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Weedlekin]

" the tanks of WWI weren't the tanks of WWII"

I presume you're thinking of "lozenge" tanks such as the British Mk. 4 with side-mounted guns. These were specifically designed to cross trenches and large shell craters, and are still the finest vehicles ever made for that particular role, being capable of traversing terrain and climbing vertical obstacles that would immobilise a modern tank, despite having 100 HP engines that gave them a power to weight ratio of only 3 HP/ton. Early designs had a turret, but this was discarded in production models for the side-mounted gunnery because it allowed "female" (machine-gun carrying) tanks to fire downwards into a trench while crossing it, while providing "male" (cannon equipped) variants to engage two separate targets simultaneously.

Not all WW1 tanks were lozenges, and some looked quite a bit like early WWII designs, e.g. the Renault FT-17 with its rotating turret and tracks that lie under its body instead of going over the top. Over 4700 of these were built, and the US army bought a fair number of them -- about 2,500 were still in service in France in 1940, and actually scored several kills against German tanks (which were mostly lightly armoured Pzkfw 1 & 2 types in 1940).

"In WWI the role of the tank was basically to provide light fire support, and a slow moving wall for soldiers to walk behind while it crossed the land between the trenches."

This is just plain wrong. British tanks at The Somme and Cambrai were used to storm enemy lines, in both cases with considerable success, although only 49 were used a The Somme itself. At Cambrai, an attack planned by the visionary J.F.C. Fuller smashed through the previously impenetrable Hindenburg Line to a depth of five miles, the biggest single territory gain in the entire land war. Fuller's plan was in most respects classic Blitzkrieg, using mixed tank and infantry formations with air and artillery support (combined arms) that simply bypassed heavily contested positions, the idea being that the could later be mopped up after the fast-moving front had cut their supply lines. Unfortunately for Fuller, the British in typical fashion completely failed to exploit the opening that he'd made.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Weedlekin]

"However, despite that early use in WWI, it was not until WWII, and Germany's use of blitzkrieg tactics, that the tank would radically revolutionize warfare."

Heinz Guderian, the father of Blitzkrieg, credited J.F.C. Fuller and Liddel Hart as the originators of the theories behind it. Fuller had already used Blitzkrieg-like tactics at the Battle Of Cambrai in 1917, and the British pursuit of retreating Germans during late 1918 began to look very much like it indeed, with rapidly advancing tanks being supported by troops in a growing number of armoured personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery, and aircraft, all of which the Germans fought desperate rear-guard actions to stop. The war ended before Fuller's 1919 plan for a fully mechanised army could be realised, but his post-war writings about it and the strategic and tactical advantages it could offer would ironically end up inspiring a new generation of German theorists, while both the British and French military authorities decided to build armies that were beautifully suited to fighting a static trench war. As is often the case in military history, the losing side ends up learning a whole lot more from the experience than the winners, who have a propensity to use the last war as a basis for planning the next one.

The tactics of Blitzkrieg were thus not only already in place during WW1, but actively being used, albeit in a piecemeal fashion by a few visionaries who received little support (and in some cases outright opposition) from people higher up the command ladder. Hitler acknowledge this by inviting Fuller to his birthday party in 1939, where he said "How do you like your children?" while they both watched Germany's mechanised army and airforce parading past them.

"That time was necessary for military theory to catch up to the tank's true implications for warfare"

It was actually more a case of technology having made Blitzkrieg practical in a way that it hadn't been during WW1. Technology in 1918 was more or less up to the job of attacking fixed positions from other fixed positions that were a few miles away, but tanks which can only move at walking pace, have a 1 in three chance of breaking down every five miles, and eat so much fuel that they can only carry enough to go 20 miles wouldn't have been very useful for invading another country, and the aircraft of the time were also severely limited by their engines in speed, range, ceiling, and the amount of ordnance they could carry.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

If the British had repeated the air raid which destroyed Hamburg several more times (e.g. on Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, etc.), the war might have ended sooner.

(7) Albert Speer discussed the bombing of Hamburg when he was interrogated in July 1945.
We were of the opinion that a rapid repetition of this type of attack upon another six German towns would inevitably cripple the will to sustain armament manufacture and war production. It was I who first verbally reported to the Fuehrer at that time that a continuation of these attacks might bring about a rapid end to the war."
link

It is likely that the a-bomb was to sole cause of the decision by Japan to surrender. Of course, the general situation in 1945 played a huge role but the Japanese military officials were prepared to use the entire Japanese population to defeat the Allies. Other factors considered by some to be important:
1. Russian attacks - a great deal of the news of the Russian success arrived in Tokyo after they agreed to surrender and the Japanese were prepared to fight the Russians. The Japanese military wanted a negotiated peace which left them in power.
2. Lack of fuel and supplies - The Japanese military was prepared to fight on. They had 10,000 planes (5000+ for kamikaze attacks on shipping, landing sites, etc. and 5000 for normal activity), multiple (thousands) fast boats for kamikaze attacks on shipping, at least a million men ready to defend the south coast of Japan, etc.

Eventually a naval blockade, bombing attacks on infrastructure, etc. over several years might have led to the defeat of Japan. Alternatively attacks which yielded huge numbers of American casualties (well over 2,000,000 if the entire country had to be taken) could have ended the war in a year or two. The Japanese considered it honorable to fight for their country. When the A-bomb removed their ability to fight against soldiers, they agreed to surrender because there was no point to fighting on and it was not honorable to die pointlessly with no ability to hurt the enemy.

Information technology

[the_kanzure]

The RobotWisdom timeline is an interesting find and illustrates nicely our progress in information representation.

I wonder

[homey of my owney]

I wonder how he wrote his tome. Seems like that quill got plenty of use.

It's an American Thing

[Puls4r]

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.

Re:It's an American Thing

[drinkypoo]

From the oh-so-black-humor department: I'm pretty sure more Japanese know who invented the first H-Bomb than know who invented the first machine gun, too.

Re:It's an American Thing

[MightyYar]

I guess the term "problem" is all about perspective. American entrepreneurs are not afraid of failure, and failure is not shameful in American culture - indeed we relish a good comeback (wasn't Bill Clinton the "Comeback Kid"?). It isn't so much about being forward-thinking, it is about caution and fear of failure.

As for the atomic bomb versus the machine gun, I'd wager that Richard Gatling is at least as famous as any of the Manhattan Project scientists, save Einstein - who was famous anyway.

Re:It's an American Thing

[Adambomb]

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."

I don't take advice about technology from writers.

[SadGeekHermit]

Most writers can barely boot their computers. They also idolize people who have been dead for hundreds of years; most of them have a bust of Shakespeare hidden somewhere about their apartment, and consider him to be the sine qua non of literature, even though he was actually his era's equivalent of a Hollywood screenwriter. If he was alive today, he'd be doing Buffy episodes.

Seriously, this sort of story stinks of sour grapes. Most of the arty-farty crowd can barely pay their rent, and they've long envied the successes of the technical sector. Even back in school, while those of us who were able were studying differential equations and calculus (and the arty were saying things like "math is hard") it was that way. Try telling some lit major about your new file server, see how interested he is in it. Good luck; you'll be lucky if he or she sticks around for more than five minutes.

Technologists change the world on a regular basis. Writers complain about it, then wax nostalgic about it, and finally dismiss it as overblown. Has it ever been any different?

Feh. What a lot of hot air.

a technological palimpsest?

[192939495969798999]

you scrape off and reuse all the appliances in your kitchen for something else than their original purpose? Hmmm... reminds me of the classic quote: "I don't think that means what you think it means."

Standing on the shoulders of giants

[replicant108]

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.

Kind of like the layman's view of evolution

[circletimessquare]

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.

New and/or Innovative isn't always better...

[mnslinky]

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.

Re:New and/or Innovative isn't always better...

[King_TJ]

That's because the designers of the newer shovels don't consider "longevity" nearly as high a priority as you do. Most likely, they were only interested in making whatever type of shovel improved their profit margins the most. They quickly discovered that the shovel promising more comfort during its use sold well next to traditional shovels with no rubber grip or plastic handle.

In essence, the majority "outvoted" you with their pocketbooks, thinking they'd rather have a shovel that isn't as likely to tear up one's hands during use, even if the plastic handle might break off after a few years of use.

If everyone thought the same as you do, the plastic handles and rubber grips would disappear, as everybody ignored them.

(I'd also add here that you illustrate the point that people often don't make the smartest purchasing decisions. Sometimes our options are on the store shelves because they successfully fool the majority into buying them - rather than because they're the "best" products.)

Elsworth Monkton Toohey

[grimflick]

Couldn't have said it better. That is to say that Toohey might have said the same thing. Toohey is the Anti-Hero of the Ayn Rand novel 'The Fountainhead', and had such disdain for the common man that he would say such things to get people to decide to actually abandon the time saving or life improving devices they already had - since they had at some time used the thing that had been superceded. Like saying that because I had been to the mall sometime since I had first shopped at amazon.com that I must have decided that the mall was better than amazon, and as such I should abandon using Amazon forever. In My Humble Opinion Toohey would make such an argument just to make my life more difficult. The author of tfa seems remarkable similar. I suggest critical reading, and caution.

ooh I think you're talking smack about ME

[nomadic]

He's a historian; he's looking at the actual historical effects of what have previously been regarded as incredible innovations, and finding in the grand scheme of things those specific inventions they haven't really been as important as most people think. It's not an anti-technology

Seriously, this sort of story stinks of sour grapes. Most of the arty-farty crowd can barely pay their rent, and they've long envied the successes of the technical sector.

Actually all those arty-farty subjects came in real handy in law school, so don't worry, I'm doing just fine rent-wise.

Even back in school, while those of us who were able were studying differential equations and calculus (and the arty were saying things like "math is hard")

You know, my first job was as a sysadmin and I never had to do any differential equations or calculus. Don't think any of my programmer friends had to either.

it was that way. Try telling some lit major about your new file server, see how interested he is in it. Good luck; you'll be lucky if he or she sticks around for more than five minutes.

There isn't anyone on the planet who would stick around for more than five minutes to hear about your file server, technical sector or not. And if you're telling a "she" about your file server, you really have to work on your pickup skills...

James Burke

[splatterboy]

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.

Innovation when you're not looking

[John Bayko]

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?".

Re:I don't take advice about technology from write

[cpt kangarooski]

most of them have a bust of Shakespeare hidden somewhere about their apartment

Well, they need some sort of way to open the hidden door to their secret lairs.

User adoption

[athloi]

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.

Re:If we don't innovate, we're dead

[Hatta]

In the 1800s, economists predicted that society was doomed because we were sure to run out of the materials we depend on for survival. That didn't happen because we innovated and found ways to do without materials that might become scarse.

Correction: That hasn't happened yet.