Are There Any Real Inventors Left?

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is running a story about invention and innovation, suggesting that there have been no truly new inventions in a long time. 'Consumers are presented with an "invention illusion," which is really little more than a marketing tool to give the impression of "breakthrough" products. This is a difficult cycle to break, particularly with the media's appetite for sensational stories, and it is hampering opportunities for credible companies without sexy stories. It also means that many entrepreneurs are looking for innovation in the wrong places and pursuing new product design ineffectively.' It leads to the question: what are the most recent things you can think of that have been actual, new inventions? Or has the high-tech revolution just been iterative innovation?"

Comments

iterative innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nearly all innovation is iterative. It has always been that way, so I've been told.

Re:iterative innovation

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Indeed. Standing on the shoulders of a giant and all that.

I think what TFA refers to by "true invention" is a big enough, or sudden enough iterative innovation.

In this day and age, all scientists and innovators talk to each other all the time, and are aware of each other's work. There is no guy working for years in secrecy in his shed anymore. Hence the perceived - but false - lack of "true invention".

Re:iterative innovation

[Dunbal]

I think what TFA refers to by "true invention" is a big enough, or sudden enough iterative innovation.

And I think it just shows a complete lack of knowledge on behalf of the writer, since there are many industries full of completely new inventions - from pharmaceutical research to medicine to the defense industry. Some of these have broken new ground. Of course since they are also highly specialized areas, you won't know about them unless you're in the field(s). But just because no one has invented the light sabre doesn't mean invention isn't happening.

Re:iterative innovation

[GameboyRMH]

Those little, academic inventions are what the author is calling "not real invension." He wants the good ol' days back when an inventor pulled back the tarp over the first powered airplane or horseless carriage and wowed everyone with something completely new. But he's not getting them back, because:

1. Diminishing returns, part of the "standing on the shoulders of giants" effect: As time goes on, invention requires more advanced equipment, more investment, more education. The Wright Brothers could put together everything they needed to build their powered aircraft* in a bicycle shop from materials that could mostly be bought at a hardware store and the equivalent of maybe BSc-level education at most, with the equivalent of what today would be considered an upper-middle class hobby budget. These days you need supercomputers, research hospitals, giant particle colliders, a very solid PhD-level education and many millions of dollars as a bare minimum to push the boundaries.

2. IP laws: They've turned the world of invention from a Wild West frontier to an Orwellian police state within the last century. Act surprised everyone.

*I know, they were not really the first.

Re:iterative innovation

[Nutria]

BURN COAL TO DRIVE A STEAM ENGINE. ... nearly 200 years later we haven't really moved on at all.

The problem is that heat-steam-rotation-electricity is the easiest, most efficient industrializable method of doing the necessary work in places where there aren't rivers that can be dammed.

We've run up against physical and practical realities, and so have settled for "good enough". Every field eventually reaches a plateau; after a time of rapid advancement, boundaries are hit that can't be breached either at all or without expense that we aren't willing to bear.

Commercial aviation is a great example: sure we *can* fly beyond Mach 1, the Concorde proved that. But where's the Concorde now? Why didn't it conquer the world? Because it's too expensive to push those molecules out of the way. The cruising speeds we hit 45 years ago are good enough.

Re:iterative innovation

[gr8_phk]

Seriously, the processor powering the computer most are using to read the statement about the lack of invention is the result of dozens of fundamental discoveries and inventions over the last decade.

No. No they're not. And that's what the author means. The transistor was a fundamental invention. Photo lithography for printing transistors was a fairly fundamental improvement on the transistor. Now I agree that there are lots of things needed to continue shrinking circuits. Dual patterning, tri-gate, materials improvements. And there are processor design improvements as well, some of them kinda fancy. But this is ALL incremental improvement on the integrated circuit which is over 40 years old now.

We had bulletin boards on 8-bit processors using 1200 baud modems in the 1980s. Slashdot is nothing more than a fancy HTML BBS. Where is the "fundamental" change?

Seems like a meaningless distinction

[jbmartin6]

Any invention is just an addition to preexisting technologies. Bell et al. didn't invent the telephone in ancient Greece for a reason. There was all sorts of work to be done with sound, electricity, and magnetism first. The telephone was just adding voice capability to the telegraph, right?

Steve Jobs and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly they invented the portable music device, the tablet computer, the cellular phone and the personal computer. No other company has done so much to enrich our lives. In about 3 years time we'll see that they will have invented the television too.

Re:Steve Jobs and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't forget the round-cornered rectangle!

Sensational indeed

[Maury Markowitz]

"particularly with the media's appetite for sensational stories"

What, like claiming there are no new inventions to get the digerati all a-twitter and drive traffic to your site? Like that, you mean?

I have asthma. Over the past 35 years I have witnessed the slow and steady destruction of this affliction. I started with drugs that were expensive and did little or nothing to actually steady my attacks. Today I use something called Singulair which I take once a day and essentially makes my asthma disappear. It also mutes down all of my allergies, I can pet cats without any side effects now.

According to the BBC, this is not an invention. That's because we had drugs before, and we have other ones today. Clearly this is not *really* any sort of progress, right? The fact that my life, and millions of others, have been utterly transformed is just an illusion!

How would they know?

[roman_mir]

AFAIC there are plenty of inventions, most people aren't noticing them because these things today are much more specialised in nature. What they are really looking for and can't find is huge, gigantic breakthroughs, an antigravity device or perpetuum mobile of some sort. They can't see what is not immediately obvious, and what is not immediately obvious does not become a stand alone product in its own right.

I even disagree with the supposed lack of 'cross-sector innovation'. There is probably more cross-sector innovation today than ever before in history, that's because the Inernet allows people to read about solutions that are found and used in other sectors and apply those to themselves. What this guy, Paul Martin says, is that there is "no recognition". Well, shit, that's the only thing I agree with: there is no recognition.

Well sure there is no recognition, and he is the first to lack vision to recognise just how much 'cross sector innovation' is actually happening today compared to decades and centuries ago.

Inventors don't go public anymore.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

The reason you don't "see" any inventors is because of the massive hoard of lawyers that would come after any public inventor.
People who invent tend to keep it to themselves, because they'd never turn a profit after all the lawsuits.

You just need to know where to look

[sl4shd0rk]

People like this are the modern day inventors.

[0] - http://makerfaire.com/
[1] - http://makerspace.com/
[2] - http://www.instructables.com/index

The lone inventor is a myth

[lcrocker]

The stepwise refinement, collaboration, and remixing we see today is the way it has always been. Everything you ever learned about "Person X invented thing Y" is wrong. Such statements are made by history books to make a good story, and have no connection to reality. Edison was a smart and hard-working guy, but he didn't invent the light bulb or the phonograph out of thin air, nor did Bell the telephone, or Marconi the radio. They all played a role, but hardly a unique one.