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The Post-Idea World
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an opinion piece in the NY Times:
"If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it's not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don't care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can't instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé. ... There is the eclipse of the public intellectual in the general media by the pundit who substitutes outrageousness for thoughtfulness, and the concomitant decline of the essay in general-interest magazines. And there is the rise of an increasingly visual culture, especially among the young — a form in which ideas are more difficult to express. But these factors, which began decades ago, were more likely harbingers of an approaching post-idea world than the chief causes of it."
My big idea is that I do not even have to RTFA to know that this is one of those pieces which is all about the world going to hell in a handbasket, no, this time for real. We are always less smart/less moral/less disciplined/less tough than our imaginary forefathers and apparently always will be.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I think there are plenty of good ideas -- small, medium, and large -- today. For example, see TED.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
TFA to me says more about the media failing their role as societal and intellectual catalysts, than about a shortage of ideas as such. There are big ideas out there, you just don't hear about them from the media.
At the risk of opening up a political flame war, even the political parties here in the U.S. have big ideas built into their platforms. What level of service and what level of taxation do we really want from our government? How do we distribute the costs of government? Why is illegal immigration a problem and how do we address it? What are the costs of dealing with global warming, and what are the costs of not dealing with it?
It's just that no one is having an intelligent discussion about these topics. They prefer to stake out a position on blind faith and then denounce everyone who disagrees. Seems to me more like a lack of discussion than a shortage of societal challenges or of ideas to deal with those challenges.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Max Planck was told in 1874 when looking for a university course "it is hardly worth entering physics anymore because there is nothing important left to discover”
This was long before the days of the atomic model, quantum mechanics, radiation, wave-particle duality etc. All that good stuff that brought us all our shiny electronics and the internet,.
The same is still true - the more we know the more we realise that there's a lot more we still don;t know. Just in the last week I've read about gravity dipoles in qyuantum vacuum fluctuations, and discovery of very dark planets to name but two (ok the latter is a discovery rather than an idea, but we'll now need to work on explaining it, which may lead to new tech., or it may not). It just takes a very very long time for these esoteric ideas to turn into actual useful every day stuff.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
In way way does cheaper, smaller, faster not serve mankind? Efficiency is important for all of us - in fact it's what is keeping our bloated population alive. We're not going to get more resources through magic!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's because they were more into patenting others ideas rather than coming up with their own.
Too many comments so far are missing the point: the article isn't about lack of new "things." The article is about a lack of critical thinking.
It used to be that, in the past, magazines and newspapers and other "common-man" publications would have essays about heady topics. Now you just get articles about how to get rich quick, how some superstar or politician has done something, or some other essentially mundane topic.
Even the "debates" on economics, social norms, climate change, or intellectual property are very sparse on respectful discourse and are instead filled with emotional responses. There's an interesting quote to which I cannot recall attribution, along the lines of "If you get angry when you're defending your topic, that's probably a sign that you don't feel it can stand on its own merits." The lack of temperance in such discussions - from all viewpoints - is fairly damning.
Modern society seems to frown upon thought for thought's sake: if you can't monetize it, why bother? I'd say that "modern society" in this case has missed the point: earning wealth is not the only goal.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Yeah, this article's basically of the "Everything that can be invented has been invented." ilk.
IMO this mentality is usually due to the fact that the authors are far abstracted from the realms of innovation within science, business and general subcultures of society. All sorts of amazing things are being thought of, written about, developed and researched, but are out of sight of the main stream New York Times journalism.
From the article
"It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy."
They have a point. And it's a real problem, because when some new problem comes along, society seems unable to deal with it.
Consider the current messes. Nobody in public life expresses a good understanding of the current economic situation. The political consensus is "it's just a big recession". It might be a permanent situation. (Japan had a real estate crash in 1989, and neither real estate nor the stock market ever came back. To some extent, the current US model of capitalism is broken, yet nobody is proposing a better model. (Should we have a tax model that doesn't favor debt so much? The US taxes companies' dividends but not interest paid on debt, stock buybacks, or executive compensation. As a result, most companies don't pay dividends and borrow too much.)
In the 1930s, it was very different. All sorts of big ideas were proposed to deal with the Great Depression. Some of them were nutty, like Technocracy. Some of them were implemented, like the Works Progress Administration. It was a tough time, but the problems were discussed and solutions tried.
There's a fundamental assumption that economic growth will continue. That may be incorrect. Looking ahead, we have big issues. Some major natural resources run out in the next few decades. There's no cheap source of energy even being seriously talked about. No new source of energy has been developed in the last 50 years. (Nuclear reactors and solar cells are now more than 50 years old.) Demand is going up as China modernizes. Now what? We have no clue how to run a post-oil world with 6 billion people. World oil production peaked in 2005.
At venture capital conferences, I'm not seeing new great ideas. More like endless me-too presentations. (Way too much "social networking". I've seen a pitch for a social network for cats.)
We're seeing regression in developed countries. Israel used to be a modern country dominated by kibbutzim with a strong work ethic, the people who "made the desert bloom". Now, Israeli politics is dominated by the religious right (the "ultra-orthodox"), who are a welfare-supported dead weight on the country. The Islamic world's religious right is at least as bad. (It's amusing to observe how much the Jewish and Islamic right wings resemble each other. Oppress women, check. Anti-education, check. Anti-progress, check. Old Testament mindset, check. Old guys in black with beards in charge, check.)
Most people have not cared about new big ideas throughout history.
Well, maybe, and maybe not. I think you might be surprised at how widespread Enlightenment ideas were in Europe. Faraday used to give public scientific demonstrations that were widely attended. However, what matters I think more is that the elites of our society, those who make the important decisions are increasingly seeing the world through dollar signs. The Public Interest is less important to them, and private interest is their dominant concern. They backhandedly acknowledge the Public Interest by saying that it is served by everyone acting in their own private interests. This is a profound shift from the Enlightenment approach, that led to the rise of our modern democratic systems. Enlightenment philosophes like Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire tried to balance the Public and private interests; they believed in liberty and justice for all members of society. Today, politics seems to be an exercise in maximizing the gross national product.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)