Ask Slashdot: What Was The Greatest Era Of Innovation? (nytimes.com)

speedplane writes: The New York Times is running a story on innovation over the past 150 years. [The story starts at the end of the American Civil War with the newly completed transcontinental railway in the 1870s. Then it highlights the profoundly different lifestyle of the 1920s, the end of 'The Great War' and the beginning of the Great Depression. By the 1970s, many of the transportation and communication changes from the 20s became fundamental parts of daily life. The story ends in 2016, an era in which human life has changed the most in the last 46 years.]

We're in the golden age of innovation, an era in which digital technology is transforming the underpinnings of human existence. Or so a techno-optimist might argue. We're in a depressing era in which innovation has slowed and living standards are barely rising. That's what some skeptical economists believe. The truth is, this isn't a debate that can be settled objectively.

What do slashdotters think is the greatest era of innovation?

Comments

Start of WWI to end of WWII

[tomhath]

The world went from the horse and buggy age to the jet/atomic age in 30 years. Huge innovations in electronics, transportation, medicine, everything, in one generation.

The biggest improvements involve the past sucking

[Kjella]

Sorry, but you could live quite okay in 1980 without the PC, Internet, cell phones and whatnot. Go back and consider what life was like before you had phones, TV, cars, electricity and so on and you'll find many aspects of life sucked or was incredibly inconvenient. If I compare computer games made in 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015 what will be the biggest difference? The first decade, of course. Cassette/LP to CD was a much bigger leap than CD to MP3/AAC, VHS to DVD was bigger than DVD to BluRay and so on. No internet to dial-up was bigger than dial-up to fiber. It's nice that we make things even better and more efficient and convenient, but there's a diminishing return. Which is not to say I feel we're done and won't make much more progress, but for the most part we're swapping out something that worked quite okay already for something better.

You have to name times AND places

[Applehu Akbar]

A surge of innovation occurs when sociopolitical conditions, infrastructure, education and sources of wealth mesh in just the right way. Victorian Europe was one such time, when Britain, French and Germany blasted into the industrial age by feeding on each other's inventions. The US from 1865 to 1914 and 1942 to 1970 is another example. In these cases, war pushed technological development which nourished a generation of peace and civilian development to follow. Right now, it's China. Will India be next?

Early 20th C

[tsotha]

My grandfather didn't see a car until he was full grown, and before he died we had transistors, nuclear weapons, antibiotics, and had landed a man on the moon. It's not even close. People in the 1950s and 1960s thought we'd have ray guns and FTL ships by now because they were projecting from the state of innovation in their time.

We're jaded

[grasshoppa]

Obviously we're jaded; were we not, we'd recognize that since the advent of the internet, our ability to share data has revolutionized the world and our own capabilities. There is no real end to this in sight.

Our greatest days are in front of us, not behind, as people truly begin to leverage the communication capabilities of the internet.