The issue is not innovation, per se. the Issue is more like "progress" or improved lifestyles, culture, families, etc. The critique of the past 10 years is that there has been plenty of <empty> innovation. Lifestyles are "worse", despite more stuff. People are living in the same houses, but they are 3x as expensive. The mobile phone was very useful, but the crackberry/iphone has become more of a ball and chain, than a tool of freedom. The internet has turned into a giant blinking neon light, meant to be stared at, so our attention can be "leveraged" by advertsisers. Every thing that is meant to be an improvement ("contextual, personalized content") has an orwellian alternative case (GPS Tracking, DeepPacketInspection, rogue cookies). So the issue is not "innovation" per se. It's innovation on the upside. Innovation that is absent the downsides. Much (if not most) of the innovation in the past 10 years has been on these downsides. Thus, the things that are better (ipods, retina displays, amazing batteries,macbook air, dslr, etc) are sort of bitter sweet. [Flamesuit Donned!]
> The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the printing press.
In the words of Jason Scott:
> It is not unreasonable to say that a person putting up a web page might have a farther reach and greater potential audience than anyone in the history of their genetic line.
The article just doesn't apply for the developing world. The China, and India of 1990 was completely different from what it is today.
Speaking from experience, 20 years ago most people in India did not have a phone and it was impossible to get a home phone without string-pulling and bribery. Now 50% of the population has a mobile phone; no bribes. 30 years ago, Sugar was rationed and you could buy a 1 kg of Sugar for a household per month. Now, there is plentiful Sugar.
Things that Developed countries take for granted - Fridges, Washing Machines, Microwaves, Dining tables, TVs, personal transport (cars, motorcycles), better access to health care, better access to education, simply did not exist or was out of reach for most. I'm not saying that they are now available to everyone, but the reach has expanded.
20 years the politicians made promises that Rice would be available at low rates, now they make promises that TVs would be available at low rates.
If that's not a revolution, I wonder what is. Heck even electricity is still a luxury in India.
This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age:
...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror.
This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the
Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-
seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the
present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards
into the future.”
He went on to say this, in 1969, the year of the crewed
Moon landing: “Because of the invisibility of any
environment during the period of its innovation, man is
only consciously aware of the environment that has
preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully
visible only when it has been superseded by a new
environment; thus we are always one step behind in our
view of the world. The present is always invisible because
it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of
attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an
earlier day.”
He goes on to cite some examples of stuff that seems banal and boring because we're just so used to it:
There are six people living in space right now. There are
people printing prototypes of human organs, and people
printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh
and the human electrical system.
We’ve photographed the shadow of a single atom. We’ve got
robot legs controlled by brainwaves. Explorers have just
stood in the deepest unsubmerged place in the world, a
cave more than two kilometres under Abkhazia. NASA are
getting ready to launch three satellites the size of
coffee mugs, that will be controllable by mobile phone
apps.
Here’s another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more
than 11 billion miles away, and it’s run off 64K of
computing power and an eight-track tape deck.
In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously
unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the
surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on
Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this
is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on
your phone, because this is the present time and these
things are happening. The most basic mobile phone is in
fact a communications devices that shames all of science
fiction, all the wrist radios and handheld communicators.
Captain Kirk had to tune his fucking communicator and it
couldn’t text or take a photo that he could stick a nice
Polaroid filter on. Science fiction didn’t see the mobile
phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass
windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things
happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn
wizards.
That, by the way, is what Steve Jobs meant when he said
that iPads were magical. The central metaphor is magic.
And perhaps magic seems an odd thing to bring up here, but
magic and fiction are deeply entangled, and you are all
now present at a séance for the future. We are summoning
it into the present. It’s here right now. It’s in the room
with us. We live in the future. We live in the Science
Fiction Condition, where we can see under atoms and across
the world and across the methane lakes of Titan.
The point is that the difference between 1900 and 1960 is fundamental on every level.
Carriages -> Cars
Land Travel -> Aerospace
Iceboxes at best -> Modern refrigeration
Pen and Paper -> Computers
Newspapers -> Ubiquitous electronic media.
Living at the mercy of infectious diseases -> Antibiotics/vaccines.
Coal (at best) -> Nuclear
Outhouses -> Modern Plumbing and sanitation
Etc. You could make similarly great comparisons between 1840-1900.
What do we have now? Looking at atoms? WTF does that matter in any practical sense? And even if you want to get sciency, it's clear that 1900-1960 was when the big changes in physics occurred, at least since Newton.
All of the big practical changes since 1960 have mainly served to isolate us, as amusing as they might be.
To me, it feels that it's the everyday life that isn't changing much.
* I got my first computer 16 years ago
* I bought my first mobile phone 9 years ago
* I drive a car that is 18 years old
* I still shop in physical stores
Today :
* I can surf on 20 different websites at the same time as downloading a movie in 1080p
* I can search wikipedia from my phone
* I can have a car that parks itself
* I can shop for some things on the internet
But these aren't revolutions. I like what I got now and wouldn't trade it for what I had 10 years ago, but it hadn't changed my life much. They are improvements that I've come to like. I feel that with so much knowledge and some much technology a real revolution should come faster. I'm not nostalgic, I'm impatient.
Life now is clearly better and more interesting than it was 100 years ago. But the pace of innovation is much, much slower. 100 years ago cars, household electricity and recorded sound were all brand new. Every one of these things represents a huge leap forward, giving mankind entirely new capabilities. And all of them were developed and brought to market in the same 20-30 year period.
What have we produced in the last 20-30 years that's even close to providing that kind of new capability? The only recent innovation on that level is TCP/IP, and we've been iterating on that ever since.
"Things are good now" is never a reason to not get better. We've gotten very good at making incremental improvements, but fallen way behind on the pace of breakthrough innovation.
Let's not confuse lack of visibility with absence. Most engineering these days happens at invisible scales. An old railroad bridge might look impressive, but the cell phone tower next door is actually a much more complex structure. (You'd have to look at it with a microscope and a debugger, though.)
Let's not discount universal access to information, first of all. I'm 28 and when I was in high school 10 years ago, it was right about the time you could now find the quadratic formula by searching the Web, but before you could Google how to write a resume, find a good doctor in your area, or read blogs about developing better study habits. I think the world must have been a little darker before the Google age.
Then there's universal distribution of software (the web, mobile devices) and the relative ease of developing niche apps today. The transformation of the world by (good) software is just beginning.
I think this is sort of a 80/20 situation, where the last 20% of the project is taking 80% of the time to complete -- the project here being the "migration" from the physical to the
digital world. That's why change is not so palpable. This project is a great one nonetheless: we're redefining how humans relate to each other, how we handle and share knowledge, how we collaborate. I think these changes affect society in a more profound way than some great new device or technology.
I honestly think that this line of thinking is now outdated. There will be a mental revolution for those who believe in this, because the rest of the world believes we are already in a revolution.. Stop being negative, make room for the people who are ready to innovate. Quit hating, in less words. There are generations who are adapting to this new environment, even if they don't realize it.
I'd say this: stop focusing on the negative and start being creative-- this article is just a bunch of bullshit excuses that will in itself slow innovation. Feed the hungry, don't kick them when they are down. "We" young entrepreneurs need inspiration now more than anything, not criticism. Big ideas are going to happen, regardless of you believing in them (yet).
The tools we all have access to is unbelievable. If you don't feel like the future is already here, and it's just prime time to start making the new generation of innovations using these tools, you're going to be left in the dust.
Innovation never goes anywhere it just needs time to adapt, I think.
Come and see me 5-10 years from now, and maybe I can say I told you so.
Looking at the comments, I find it kind of odd that this issue is polarizing. What exactly is the nature of the divide between the extremes of the people who think we've had no progress vs those who think we've had considerable progress?
I would hazard a guess that the "substantial-progress" crowd is assuming that physics and chemistry have been largely figured out and there's nothing else to do there except tidying up some loose ends and working with what we've got and the only place progress could possibly come from is through information technology manipulating what we have.
The no-progress crowd are waiting for the next big fundamental breakthrough like the discovery of the microbe, quantum physics, and electricity.
I still don't understand why the vitriol is thrown around on this one so hard by the "substantial progress" crowd. Maybe they think that the "no-progress" crowd are a bunch of lunatics for believing there are fundamental things that we could discover that could significantly increase our understanding of the fundamentals of physics, chemistry or biology.
The reason that I agree that there is low innovation is that innovation eventually results in economic acceleration. Think industrial revolution.
However, innovation has not stopped if you consider that in the last century we have Ford Motor company, fast food, marketing as industry, rock-and-roll, Sony Walkman, Levis, iPod, etc. There is a ton of innovation.
But unfortunately, it needs to be disruptive innovation that changes how efficient we are and improves quality of life. Writing new webapps does not do that. Designing new iPhones does not do that.
Something else to consider is that the time is ripe for something other than technological innovation. What if we could better understand the world we live in and come closer to God? What if we could overcome the 50/50 political divide causing so much hate in our country from both sides? What if peace could be reached with all countries? That would also be innovation, because we can't seem to figure out a way to do it currently.
The real lack of innovation is in the social and political structures we have to live with. And those are a product of primate brains that evolve at a much slower rate than our technological sophistication.
Right at the moment, the dominant political regime on this planet is still concerned with areas of land under military hegemony, and is apparently completely incapable of dealing with things like keeping this planet habitable over the short term, much less the long term.
We have paleolithic brains dealing with state-of-the-art environmental problems in the context of 17th century political institutions and 20th century financial institutions in a society run by people who would like to retreat to 12th century religious values because THE FUTURE IS SCARY AND UNCERTAIN.
Like someone said, we are in one whole joojooflop situation here.
Having globally usable handheld networked computers with location capability and voice and video communication capabilities that is simple enough for the average person to use is a pretty big innovation of the past decade.
Just look at the latest smartphones, they are amazing. That much computer, network, sensor and display power in that size of a package is incredible and real innovation even if it has been evolutionary over the last couple of decades rather than a single point revolution.
It has made room for a massive amount of minor steps in app development filling in the space created by the modern phone. There is still room for improvement, more accurate location will open further possibilities
What is innovation? The author seems to focus to much on the dramatic or thing that directly impact our lives. While there are a lot of things that don't directly make our lives more meaningful (Halo,etc.), there are amazing advances that have made living today so very exciting!!
Better response to heart disease, (near) instant medical record sharing, targeted cancer treatments, human genome, anti-smoking research & bans in 27 states, functional MRI, robots performing surgery
http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/1...
snopes.com gave people accurate so that we don't have to rely on crap information- no matter how good it sounds.
Doctors can better diagnose patients thanks to information available on PDA.
GPS- now that's amazing. Google "GPS saves lives" seriously!
Cell Phones- also saves lives, makes contacting someone infinitely easier. How did truckers know to call home if there was an emergency at home? Much more difficult!
Ham Radios, Satellite Phones, hearing aids, pacemakers etc. Amazing devices that have done so much for us!
All of the tiny details made it possible to disseminate information, keep better contact perform incredible medical breakthroughs & decrease poverty worldwide. (Cell phones, internet, square, etc. facilitate economic development)
I'm an IT graduate. I look at the amazing inventions in my field. It feels like they all came less than 4 years ago. (when I graduated)
Oh, I forgot to mention the Nobel prizes. (many are very impressive!)
Innovation is happening faster than it ever has before! In another 10 years, we may say- poverty & consumer debt is decreasing systemically worldwide, robots are plowing our fields & HIV has a vaccine! I enjoy the wonderful present and look forward to our bright future!
The greatest innovation shall be human compassion and decency.
The kind of discovery that doesn't let half of the world starve in a vain pursuit of tech gadgets.
The kind of invention that will make it obvious that 47% of a population is not aspiring to live any less freely than the other 53%.
The kind of transformation that will end all prejudices.
Alas, while we are great at opening Pandora's box, we totally fail at evolving as spiritual beings.
I believe it has been governments (societies) putting all its resources into something that has been the driver of pushing things forward. Corporations are experts at optimizing the status quo. Real progress takes real capital and great amounts of risk and investment that won't see returns for decades if ever.
Technology cannot solve the problems of the world, because the real problem is human nature. Machiavelli got it right when he said that history repeats because man's passion never changes. The world is nonlinear, everything is cyclical. When history stops repeating, progress will have been made.
The world's 4th largest economy was over 40% powered by solar for two days in May this year. I think we can consider the innovation in PV technology a game changer that will impact the way we live greatly.
Imagine a world with 0 fuel costs, just capital costs.
This era is a fuel towards next golden era. low tech with a very high profit, we need as much resources to go to the next level. As an example -> google mobile (android) + facebook + wikipedia, etc = Project Glass.
[+] [-] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zizee|13 years ago|reply
Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation.”
The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the printing press.
Typed from my glowing sheet of glass, from my couch, to be shared with the world.
[+] [-] derleth|13 years ago|reply
In the words of Jason Scott:
> It is not unreasonable to say that a person putting up a web page might have a farther reach and greater potential audience than anyone in the history of their genetic line.
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2402
[+] [-] shortsightedsid|13 years ago|reply
Speaking from experience, 20 years ago most people in India did not have a phone and it was impossible to get a home phone without string-pulling and bribery. Now 50% of the population has a mobile phone; no bribes. 30 years ago, Sugar was rationed and you could buy a 1 kg of Sugar for a household per month. Now, there is plentiful Sugar.
Things that Developed countries take for granted - Fridges, Washing Machines, Microwaves, Dining tables, TVs, personal transport (cars, motorcycles), better access to health care, better access to education, simply did not exist or was out of reach for most. I'm not saying that they are now available to everyone, but the reach has expanded.
20 years the politicians made promises that Rice would be available at low rates, now they make promises that TVs would be available at low rates.
If that's not a revolution, I wonder what is. Heck even electricity is still a luxury in India.
[+] [-] thesash|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameishere|13 years ago|reply
Carriages -> Cars
Land Travel -> Aerospace
Iceboxes at best -> Modern refrigeration
Pen and Paper -> Computers
Newspapers -> Ubiquitous electronic media.
Living at the mercy of infectious diseases -> Antibiotics/vaccines.
Coal (at best) -> Nuclear
Outhouses -> Modern Plumbing and sanitation
Etc. You could make similarly great comparisons between 1840-1900.
What do we have now? Looking at atoms? WTF does that matter in any practical sense? And even if you want to get sciency, it's clear that 1900-1960 was when the big changes in physics occurred, at least since Newton.
All of the big practical changes since 1960 have mainly served to isolate us, as amusing as they might be.
[+] [-] ThomasQue|13 years ago|reply
* I got my first computer 16 years ago
* I bought my first mobile phone 9 years ago
* I drive a car that is 18 years old
* I still shop in physical stores
Today :
* I can surf on 20 different websites at the same time as downloading a movie in 1080p
* I can search wikipedia from my phone
* I can have a car that parks itself
* I can shop for some things on the internet
But these aren't revolutions. I like what I got now and wouldn't trade it for what I had 10 years ago, but it hadn't changed my life much. They are improvements that I've come to like. I feel that with so much knowledge and some much technology a real revolution should come faster. I'm not nostalgic, I'm impatient.
[+] [-] hooande|13 years ago|reply
What have we produced in the last 20-30 years that's even close to providing that kind of new capability? The only recent innovation on that level is TCP/IP, and we've been iterating on that ever since.
"Things are good now" is never a reason to not get better. We've gotten very good at making incremental improvements, but fallen way behind on the pace of breakthrough innovation.
[+] [-] jerf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fooandbarify|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] batgaijin|13 years ago|reply
Nobody cares at all about mobile phones today; we take for granted that the smart phones are simply the yuppie upgrade for the RAZR or whatever.
But they are still causing the most dramatic and unprecedented shift society has ever seen, no questions about it.
Watch an old Star Trek episode. The main piece of technology isn't the ship, it's the transponders.
tl;dr: look in your pocket before you spray the internet with small minded thinking.
[+] [-] zeteo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgreensp|13 years ago|reply
Let's not discount universal access to information, first of all. I'm 28 and when I was in high school 10 years ago, it was right about the time you could now find the quadratic formula by searching the Web, but before you could Google how to write a resume, find a good doctor in your area, or read blogs about developing better study habits. I think the world must have been a little darker before the Google age.
Then there's universal distribution of software (the web, mobile devices) and the relative ease of developing niche apps today. The transformation of the world by (good) software is just beginning.
[+] [-] ojosilva|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acoyfellow|13 years ago|reply
I'd say this: stop focusing on the negative and start being creative-- this article is just a bunch of bullshit excuses that will in itself slow innovation. Feed the hungry, don't kick them when they are down. "We" young entrepreneurs need inspiration now more than anything, not criticism. Big ideas are going to happen, regardless of you believing in them (yet).
The tools we all have access to is unbelievable. If you don't feel like the future is already here, and it's just prime time to start making the new generation of innovations using these tools, you're going to be left in the dust.
Innovation never goes anywhere it just needs time to adapt, I think.
Come and see me 5-10 years from now, and maybe I can say I told you so.
[+] [-] narrator|13 years ago|reply
I would hazard a guess that the "substantial-progress" crowd is assuming that physics and chemistry have been largely figured out and there's nothing else to do there except tidying up some loose ends and working with what we've got and the only place progress could possibly come from is through information technology manipulating what we have.
The no-progress crowd are waiting for the next big fundamental breakthrough like the discovery of the microbe, quantum physics, and electricity.
I still don't understand why the vitriol is thrown around on this one so hard by the "substantial progress" crowd. Maybe they think that the "no-progress" crowd are a bunch of lunatics for believing there are fundamental things that we could discover that could significantly increase our understanding of the fundamentals of physics, chemistry or biology.
[+] [-] hakaaak|13 years ago|reply
However, innovation has not stopped if you consider that in the last century we have Ford Motor company, fast food, marketing as industry, rock-and-roll, Sony Walkman, Levis, iPod, etc. There is a ton of innovation.
But unfortunately, it needs to be disruptive innovation that changes how efficient we are and improves quality of life. Writing new webapps does not do that. Designing new iPhones does not do that.
Something else to consider is that the time is ripe for something other than technological innovation. What if we could better understand the world we live in and come closer to God? What if we could overcome the 50/50 political divide causing so much hate in our country from both sides? What if peace could be reached with all countries? That would also be innovation, because we can't seem to figure out a way to do it currently.
[+] [-] olefoo|13 years ago|reply
Right at the moment, the dominant political regime on this planet is still concerned with areas of land under military hegemony, and is apparently completely incapable of dealing with things like keeping this planet habitable over the short term, much less the long term.
We have paleolithic brains dealing with state-of-the-art environmental problems in the context of 17th century political institutions and 20th century financial institutions in a society run by people who would like to retreat to 12th century religious values because THE FUTURE IS SCARY AND UNCERTAIN.
Like someone said, we are in one whole joojooflop situation here.
[1]. Joojooflop http://www.zootle.net/afda/faq/e.shtml
[+] [-] josephlord|13 years ago|reply
Just look at the latest smartphones, they are amazing. That much computer, network, sensor and display power in that size of a package is incredible and real innovation even if it has been evolutionary over the last couple of decades rather than a single point revolution.
It has made room for a massive amount of minor steps in app development filling in the space created by the modern phone. There is still room for improvement, more accurate location will open further possibilities
[+] [-] areyouserious|13 years ago|reply
Hand, face, arm, leg and ovarian transplants. (& others) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation#Timeline...
Better response to heart disease, (near) instant medical record sharing, targeted cancer treatments, human genome, anti-smoking research & bans in 27 states, functional MRI, robots performing surgery http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/1...
snopes.com gave people accurate so that we don't have to rely on crap information- no matter how good it sounds.
Doctors can better diagnose patients thanks to information available on PDA.
GPS- now that's amazing. Google "GPS saves lives" seriously!
Cell Phones- also saves lives, makes contacting someone infinitely easier. How did truckers know to call home if there was an emergency at home? Much more difficult!
Ham Radios, Satellite Phones, hearing aids, pacemakers etc. Amazing devices that have done so much for us!
All of the tiny details made it possible to disseminate information, keep better contact perform incredible medical breakthroughs & decrease poverty worldwide. (Cell phones, internet, square, etc. facilitate economic development)
I'm an IT graduate. I look at the amazing inventions in my field. It feels like they all came less than 4 years ago. (when I graduated)
Oh, I forgot to mention the Nobel prizes. (many are very impressive!) Innovation is happening faster than it ever has before! In another 10 years, we may say- poverty & consumer debt is decreasing systemically worldwide, robots are plowing our fields & HIV has a vaccine! I enjoy the wonderful present and look forward to our bright future!
[+] [-] EternalFury|13 years ago|reply
Alas, while we are great at opening Pandora's box, we totally fail at evolving as spiritual beings.
[+] [-] pixie_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arthurrr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yessql|13 years ago|reply
Imagine a world with 0 fuel costs, just capital costs.
[+] [-] effinjames|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EternalFury|13 years ago|reply