Recently I have been thinking about the void of innovation of the last few generations. In a nutshell, it seems that we hit the pause button somewhere around the late 80’s. I have been in search of some sort of inspiration or hope, but have seldom found an answer as to what has happened.
I recently went on my honeymoon to Chicago, a fantastic city. We went to the top of the Sears / Willis tower, and looked at the view. It was funny how the tallest building in the United States was build in 1973. It was a great flight to Chicago, riding on the Boeing 737 that was designed in the early 60s. Prior to my generation, every 10 years or so there was an entire new set of music that some loved, and some wanted to forget. Now the decades since the 90s just blend together.
Did we reach an apex, or simply a cultural shift? I highly doubt we are pressing the limits of human comprehension, as even the most skilled / difficult fields are very simple once a few hours in understanding are applied. At some point we lost our way, but it wasn’t just the USA. England, China, Russia are all along on the ride with us, seldomly producing actual innovation.
Remember AIDS, cancer, and the common cold? They are all still here, and despite years of supposed research, we struggle for any answer, solution, or even mitigation strategy. How is the car you drive? Almost any engine in use today was designed fundamentally at or before the turn of the century. Hybrid cars? A joke in their current state (just jam a bunch of lithium ion batteries in there, also developed in the 70s).
I would love it if people could comment on innovations, and what they see that is amazing or that is in development that can inspire. Where do we go from here?
Before we go down a road to the obvious, I don’t believe that Operating Systems are fundamentally different than 20 years ago. My Windows 7 and Linux of today are definitely not 20 years improved (we still use the same tcp / ip protocols (developed yet again in the 60s / 70s), same languages / paradigms (most of which developed in the 60s / 70s) etc. My computer today does little that my 8086 couldn’t do, and is terribly inefficient at doing so. I really don’t count most anything webpage based as an innovation, as it is such low hanging fruit (even google) that I can’t bring myself to include it in with the previously mentioned technologies.
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#1 by Benjamin on January 25, 2010 - 7:29 pm
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Wait…what? We just built the highest building in the world, almost twice as high as the Sears Tower. We just built the largest passenger jet that ever flew. We just built the (by far) largest particle accelerator that ever existed. We are in the process of revealing the secrets of life itself. If anything, we as the human race are accelerating our pace of innovation.
You can’t expect a paradigm shift every couple of decades. The inventors of the transistor couldn’t have imagined to what length we would take their invention. Have we failed because we are still refining an almost century-old technology? It’s not as if the next step (probably quantum computers) is trivial.
I’ll give you manned space exploration, we utterly failed at that since 1970. Still, what we are doing today with unmanned expeditions (think Casini) dwarfs what we have done by putting a few guys on the moon, at least from a scientific point of view.
#2 by David Hammond on January 25, 2010 - 7:33 pm
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I think you may be confusing innovation with mainstream adoption. It’s true that the mainstream is currently using many technologies that were made decades ago, but I suspect that in a few decades the mainstream will be using technologies that are in their infancy today.
Furthermore, it sounds like you’re more interested in technological paradigm shifts, not innovations themselves. Innovations, by definition, are iterative improvements or combinations of existing technologies. We have a lot of innovation going on in many different areas of technology today. Most of Apple’s major products over the last several years have been innovations. You quickly dismissed Google, but Google has been the source of a lot of innovation that matters to techies and everyday people alike. There has been a great deal of innovation in budding technologies like quantum mechanics and nanotechnology. I don’t think we have any shortage of innovation.
But if you want to talk about more revolutionary ideas or applications, I think we need to more clearly define what we mean by revolutionary. You could say that the Internet was revolutionary, but that too was merely a combination and extrapolation of existing technologies. The Web was every bit as much of a technological revolution as the Internet itself, or even the computer. By that measure, I think the work they’re doing today in the ultra-small world of nanotechnology and quantum mechanics will be similarly revolutionary; we just haven’t seen the fruits of it yet.
But yes, these technologies are building on technologies of previous decades, as all of the revolutionary inventions you cited have, as most of mankind’s greatest achievements have. Indeed, I believe that innovation has continued to accelerate throughout the ’90s and 2000s, and that we’re seeing just the beginning of what these innovations will bring us.
#3 by D.F. on January 25, 2010 - 7:59 pm
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Steven,
I’m glad that this lack of innovation topic has been brought up. I, too, have seen little recently in nearly everything. Wheels — fundamentally unchanged since prehistoric times, Bow and Arrow — same, Agriculture — still watering a bunch of plants, and the domestication of the dog ground to a halt a few thousand years ago.
Good natured kidding aside, while I understand what you’re saying, there’s a problem of perspective that those of us working with technology have. Most parts of our technology, the basic parts that we build on, are discoveries. Innovation is what we do with the discovery, the refinement and improvement to these ideas.
Consider the hammer. How long has this simple, yet powerful tool been around for? Should we throw away the hammer because the design is old? Can I reach back in time and pluck a hammer out of the hands of an ancient egyptian and find it a suitable replacement for the one I just bought at the hardware store? The hammers we use today are the result of countless refinements in metallurgy, composite materials, ergonomics, and mass production. Now, If I swapped my hammer with the ancient egyptian’s I think he’d probably feel like he came out far ahead in the deal. Certainly, both of us could use the tool for the intended purpose, but the two are definitely not equal.
The problem that those of us who spend a great deal of time with computers have is that we lose sight of the refinements due to understanding the basic structure of the discovery. Needless innovation over refinement is an anti-pattern that is not frequently called out and the basis for things like countless cell phone power adapters, why I have a boxful of different serial adapters, competing and contrary APIs, and any manner of cruft that we complain about constantly.
I’m still waiting for my flying car and I think its a testament to something going wrong that I am. But thinking there’s not 20 years worth of refining improvements in both linux and even windows and a fairly vast difference in treatments for AIDs and cancer compared to 20 years ago is ignoring a whole lot of progress.
#4 by qhartman on January 25, 2010 - 8:04 pm
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I’d second the above two posts, and add that a lot of the technologies you cite were a result (either directly or indirectly) of research that was done as part of the cold war effort. Once that ceased to be a thing, that money went elsewhere.
I’d argue also that we have undergone a cultural shift where people are more interested in profiting from their little ideas rather than seeing how their little idea can help move other bigger ideas forward. As a result the pace of really big “revolutionary” innovations has slowed, due to the balkanization of knowledge in various commercially-oriented IP portfolios. Contrast this to the much more free exchange of knowledge that happened among major universities working on these problems that drove the innovations you mention in previous decades.
#5 by Dave Mawdsley on January 25, 2010 - 9:47 pm
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Steven,
It’s hard to focus on something innovative when there are so many distractions and annoyances which crowd in even before breakfast. Reading or listening to the daily news isn’t conducive to productive thought or a good disposition either. The milk has gone bad and there’s no butter for breakfast. My wife’s calendar notes that she needs a trip to the doctor for an eye exam.
Just consider the orbit of annoyances which accompany the cell phone. I use my Tracfone only for phone calls, but the advertisements are now coming in via text messages which then have to be deleted. (I don’t text or IM.)
My e-mail accounts have turned into electronic sewers of spam. My “real in and outbound messages” are in about 1% of what my computer shows. Just sorting through the spam filtered stuff for real e-mail takes and wastes time.
Next, what’s with my car this morning?? Something is rattling.
On and on it goes. When can I fix those business spreadsheets I was supposed to have finished? So how can I focus on innovation or get some inspiration?
I think some weeks just aren’t for innovation and inspiration. Perhaps if this Friday’s a slow day, I can work on some Python or Bash scripts for awhile. That’ll be my innovations for this week and for me it’s probably as good as it’s going to get in the short term. I don’t think long term much anymore. Besides, I’m 70 and my stamina is not what it used to be.
#6 by ethana2 on January 25, 2010 - 10:05 pm
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In my pocket I have a Droid…
A 550 MHz ARM CPU.
The most user friendly OS I have ever touched (pun intended).
854×480 px crammed into a device smaller than my hand.
Internet access EVERYWHERE I GO.
Up to like 48 hours of battery life, depending on usage.
16 BILLION bytes of data on a microSD card smaller than a dime.
A 5 MILLION pixel camera, does video too.
Hundreds of installed apps, mostly written in Java, looking good and running fast.
I’m in complete control of the device, even before rooting it one could argue.
Sandboxed apps running on a Linux based OS, virtually immune to.. most everything, it seems so far.
How much of that existed even TWO years ago?! Yeah, that’s what I thought. Go back 20 years and the people making Star Trek couldn’t even IMAGINE such a device.
#7 by ethana2 on January 25, 2010 - 10:18 pm
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To put things in perspective, Calculus has been around for literally hundreds of years.
#8 by ttoilleb on January 26, 2010 - 2:23 am
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Let us not confused revolutionary with evolutionary (ie. innovation). Evolution/Innovation is a logical, predictable progression. Revolution is the creation of something new.
The computer has been invented (revolution), everything since is just a logical progression, get over it.
Man developed the airplane, now, where is that “Beam Me Up Scottie”?
Also, Man figured how to stack rocks to build shelter, now when can I “grow” my house a la the Tok’ra, or Superman (Christopher Reeve)?
Better yet, I really want to vacation on Risa, where is F-T-L?
But yes, certain segments of our life have stagnated mainly due to reasons already stated – risk avoidance – “I want my profit NOW’1
Innovation is constantly happening, revolution only happens by accident. If you live long enough, who knows, you maybe lucky enough to see it happen.
#9 by gdeb on January 26, 2010 - 10:26 am
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Seriously? I can’t believe anyone would think that.
You said :
“I highly doubt we are pressing the limits of human comprehension, as even the most skilled / difficult fields are very simple once a few hours in understanding are applied.”
Ok, either you are extremely/inhumanely smart (but then, you should be aware that not everyone is like you), or you have no idea what a cutting-edge field is like.
For example, I think it would take 2 or 3 years to a mathematician (with a PhD) to get up to date in another mathematical area (for example, from algebra to topology). And I am probably generous. So, for a non-mathematician (like yourself?), you would need at least 5 years of full time work to learn enough about a given field to be able to pretend you know it.
So, do you agree with me, or do you seriously believe you can learn a given field (let’s say, algebraic topology) in a few hours?
#10 by sharms on January 26, 2010 - 11:11 am
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@gdeb – I will definitely concede some fields are more difficult than others, and that calculus may take some time to master (I assume most of the readers already have an engineering background with biology / chemistry / physics / calculus as we are Linux geeks).
But on the other hand, when you get the chance to corner a smart person, through experience I have found most don’t have anything to offer other than the basics. If you want a general understanding of a concept, and it can’t be delivered in a few hours, the person explaining probably doesn’t understand it all that well to begin with.
Some people could take 5 years to explain a concept that Richard Feynman could explain in 5 minutes, it’s all about the presentation I suppose. I also don’t want to portray that in a few hours anything but a general understanding could be achieved, ie I don’t believe all problems are solvable in that time frame. For example, I can understand the general idea of video encoding in a few hours, but it might take years to actually create an mplayer equivalent.
#11 by Marius Scurtescu on January 26, 2010 - 12:51 pm
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I have the same feeling, something went wrong with innovation, or at least so it seems.
It’s been 40 years since a human reached the moon, what happened in that field since? Nothing. (all those conspiracy theories about the moon landing almost start to make sense).
Energy production, transportation, medicine, politics, are all frozen. Big monopolies are probably responsible for most of this, just the nature of the beast. Who knows.
The only area where I can seen some real breakthrough is telecommunications. The internet is by far the most important innovation ever, IMHO.
#12 by Nicolai Hähnle on January 26, 2010 - 2:25 pm
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What a bunch of pessimism. I bet that in 20 years, somebody will write a blog post (or rather, the future equivalent of a blog post) complaining that while we’ve had innovations up until 2010, the following 20 years were void of that.
The fact is simply that on the one hand, you don’t have enough distance from what is happening today to be able to objectively judge it, and on the other hand, you simply don’t hear about cool new stuff being developed today because that’s too specialized. How many people really knew about transistors in 1970? Not too many, I’d wager, outside certain professional and enthusiast circles.
The amount of stuff going on in biotechnology is just crazy. I’m not in that field, but let me just say that the stories I hear regularly from there give me this nice “Wow, I’m living in the future” feeling. Genetic engineering is an everyday technology, for example.
In my own field, amazing breakthroughs have been achieved in the last 20 years and are continually developed, although being a mathematician, this is of course mostly unapplied stuff. Anyway, there’s no reason to be a pessimist.
#13 by sharms on January 26, 2010 - 2:45 pm
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Nicolai – The exact responses I was looking for were ‘Hey, here is some cool stuff that will blow your mind’, I don’t by nature want to be pessimistic about it
#14 by Roger on January 27, 2010 - 3:15 am
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I’d suggest that there is plenty of innovation out there, but it’s not particularly visible/relevant to the average person. Do you keep up with developments in civil engineering? Power electronics? Chemistry? I don’t.
I suggest these as things that have happened since the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microelectromechanical_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy
MEMs have become huge in the past couple of years and are very exciting. Think about everything that has an accelerometer in it these days!
STED means you can image way beyond the diffraction limit if you can use fluorescent dyes in your experiment. In some cases you can get to effectively Angstrom resolutions, which is insane.
#15 by Roger on January 27, 2010 - 3:33 am
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Something else that occurs to me is that what looks like steady progress (reduction of transistor size, increase of hard disk density, that sort of thing) can actually be the result of real innovation even if the end result isn’t particularly innovative.