
Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation - jamesbritt
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation
======
sgentle
Grr! I like Stephenson a lot but I find this argument highly disingenuous. In
fact, I find most of the reactions I've seen to "the end of US spaceflight
capability" sickeningly short-sighted and hyperbolic.

Read the goddamn budget announcement: "Orszag said that in addition to
research and development, NASA’s proposal invests in 'advance robotics and
other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return a man or a
woman to the Moon but undertake the longer range research that could succeed
in human spaceflight to Mars.'" [1]

Yes, the US has gotten unambitious in spaceflight. Yes, there's been nothing
more inspirational than repeating what happened in the 60s. Yes, yes yes.
_That's the whole point!_

The shuttle was canceled because it's stupid to turn NASA into the federal
"send shit into Low Earth Orbit" department. We've done that, we've been doing
that for half a century now, it's no longer innovative. What NASA should be
doing is what no private enterprise can do: highly unprofitable risky space
pioneering that inspires the human race. Let's take away money from boring and
put it into interesting! How can anybody be against this?

Honestly, this is the reason we have politicians. Can you imagine how long
we'd be running expensive useless shuttle missions if it was decided by
popular opinion?

[1] [http://www.spacenews.com/civil/100201-white-house-
confirms-c...](http://www.spacenews.com/civil/100201-white-house-confirms-
course-change-for-nasa.html)

~~~
jerf
"What NASA should be doing is what no private enterprise can do: highly
unprofitable risky space pioneering that inspires the human race."

[http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112392431/spacex-sets-
it...](http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112392431/spacex-sets-its-sights-
on-mars/)

I do not know if SpaceX will make it; I'd personally bet against that
timeframe, though I wouldn't bet against the goal in general. But I will
guarantee this: Barring a major political turnaround in the US, SpaceX will
make a manned mission to Mars happen before NASA possibly could at this point.
They don't have to make sure at least one part is sourced from each
Congressional district, they aren't beholden to a Congress that on space
exploration time scales blunders about like a drunken sailor, and they aren't
a 53-year-old sclerotic bureaucracy.

Unprofitable they can do (and I mean that in both the good (research) and bad
(blatant waste of funds) ways); they can not do risky. Unless you mean "risky
because politics compromised the engineering process", which they can also
still do. (Reading an honest history of the Space Shuttle is an eyeopener.
Feynman and the glass of ice water was only the flashy tip of the iceberg.
Google "Senate Launch System" for the latest.) It isn't in their genes
anymore. You could put it back, but in the time that process would take,
SpaceX will be there already.

There _is_ no NASA apart from politicians. They are a wholly-owned subsidiary
of Congress. That's not even a political statement, it's simply _descriptive_.
If you can't trust politicians to drive our space policy, then you can't trust
NASA to do it.

~~~
mkramlich
Agreed. If there's a place where I can place a cash bet that SpaceX will be
the first entity to put a man on Mars, I'd do it tonight. They have the
people, the vision, leadership, philosophy, and just enough of a successful
track record so far to put meat into it, and de-risk it. They have momentum.

~~~
spiritomb
ok. you get your man on Mars .. then what? do you see anyone clamoring to live
on Antarctica? Mars is even more un-hospitable. Just to look around? that's an
expensive sight-seeing tour.

nobody will want to actually live there. if there is money to be made by
mining Mars' resources, fine - but don't steal my money (via tax dollars).

~~~
mkramlich
First off, I didn't say anything about someone living on Mars, as in, moving
there permanently. That may or may not happen -- in the long run, probable. I
just bet that SpaceX is probably the lead contender for who's going to put the
first human footprint on Mars. It will likely be their tech, anyway.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure there are people who would love to live on Mars. At
least give it a shot. Yes, in purely practical terms, it has a lot of
downsides. But so does Antarctica, and many people have travelled there and
some people actually live there at least some duration.

Third, there's good reason to believe, based on past experience with similar
efforts, that the net economic effect for folks back on Earth is going to be
positive, due to the side effects and fallout from R&D breakthroughs and
engineering optimizations. That's what happened with the US-Soviet space race
and the Apollo program. Also, since we're talking about SpaceX, which is a
private company, it's possible that some, though almost certainly not all, of
their funding comes from non-government sources, including non-US sources. It
will probably be a mix. Mr. Musk personally put in a lot of his own money,
which he made privately, to bootstrap it.

Fifth, one argument for establishing a permanent human presence on Mars is so
that humanity has at least one outpost off Earth. So that if some disaster
happens with Earth, not all of our eggs were in one basket. Paying even $100m
to buy that seems like a pretty cheap form of insurance. Much much greater
sums get spent on say NFL football merchandise, or pop music albums, each
year. And certainly a couple orders of magnitude more have been spent on US
military operations in the last decade, most of which could be argued were
unnecessary.

Ninthly, because I cannot count: there are likely many economic benefits to
you, the US and the planet to both setting foot on Mars and creating a
sustained outpost there, in terms of the follow-on effects of inspiration and
imagination and ambition, especially in children and upcoming generations.
Surely if we could tip even 1m more children world-wide over into eventually
becoming engineers, scientists and inventors, rather than lawyers,
accountants, brokers or rap stars, the whole of humanity would be better off,
on the net.

Eleventhly, I have no eleventhly. :)

~~~
spiritomb
it's certainly possible that private money funds this, but highly doubtful.
why? because it's mostly a money-pit operation. investors have an almost zero
chance of getting a return on their money in their own lifetime. spaceX is
mainly competing for gov't money either in the form of seed money for R&D or
as their main customer for LEO trips.

don't get me wrong, I love SpaceX (and Elon), but most of this is folly.

Even terraforming Mars isn't realistic, it's a mostly dead planet whose core
has cooled and now doesn't have any protective electromagnetic belts.

------
samgro
I'm from a different generation than Neal Stephenson. I grew up inspired by my
parents' old IBM XT. The Apple II at school. My TI-83 programmable graphing
calculator. Not space flight. I continue to be inspired every year by the
innovations in tech startups, and that's just the field I happen to live and
work in - the biomedical field in the last 10 years has made orders of
magnitude of progress understanding the human genome in ways that I can barely
understand (despite having a college degree in Quantitative and Computational
Biology).

Without Facebook I wouldn't have seen or spoken to lots of old friends until
our 25th high school or college reunion.

Without Twitter I wouldn't have learned from and made connections with
influential people in the tech world.

Without Google or Wikipedia or StackOverflow I would have to go to a library
to learn anything new.

Without GitHub I would have to write my own software from scratch and spend a
lot of time managing collaboration workflows.

Without AWS, Heroku, Ruby, Rails et al. I wouldn't have been able to launch my
own startup without outside funding.

Without Zappos I wouldn't be able to buy size 15 shoes in whatever style or
fit I want. I ordered shoes last week at 7pm and they arrived at 9:30am the
next day. Seriously.

Without Kindle and my iPad I wouldn't be able to get any book in the world in
5 seconds for $10.

AirBNB, ZipCar, Apple, Dropbox, the list goes on, and this is in my (our)
industry alone.

Neal Stephenson might not be able to fly to Mars in his lifetime, but I'm
pretty excited about the innovations that will happen in the next 10 years; if
they're half as good as the last 10, us geeks will be pretty satisfied.

~~~
ericd
Of all the things you mention, I think only Google, the Human Genome Project,
and maybe Wikipedia belong on a list next to the great achievements Neal is
talking about (human spaceflight, the invention of the computer, nuclear
power). Most of those other things we spend so much time talking about make
things more convenient, or less boring, or more efficient and are the results
of innovation in business process or good product design rather than
technology.

~~~
DanBC
The gigabytes of wiki meta stuff will be fascinating for the future people.
"Ghod almighty," they will say, "look at the hours and hours they spent
talking about absolute nonsense!". Personally I'd put particle physics (esp
LHC) in the list in place of wikipedia. Lists of fictional ducks and every
Essex bus timetable for the last three years isn't that inspiring to me.

~~~
justincormack
A library of everything about everything available to anyone has been one of
the human dreams, from the Library of Alexandria to the Hitch Hikers Guide to
the Galaxy.

~~~
jamesbritt
_A library of everything about everything available to anyone_

But that's not Wikipedia, nor, given its deletion policy, ever likely to be.

~~~
cgoddard
There are more lenient wiki providers out there, like Wikia. Whether these
services will be around for the duration remains to be seen.

------
1092u34iojagj
Go back to the 90s with an iPad... see what they think of it.

We have artificial leaves that generate fuel by floating in sunlit water.

In a few short years most book stores (an industry centuries old) will have
been closed and replaced with e-readers. You can get the next Harry Potter (or
whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch.

We have 3d printers that will create a statue of your World of Warcraft
character without a human ever touching a carving tool.

Aids is about to be a minor infection.

We live in a world of science fiction, but we refuse to acknowledge it because
we make the miraculous into something mundane. Mostly we use our world to get
porn and read Twilight, but that doesn't mean we're not making huge changes to
the world.

~~~
caf
I just tried that - the 90s said "Great, they finally made the Newton useable.
Good to see Moore's Law has kept up the pace."

~~~
hvs
I like how you just ignored every other argument the OP mentioned just to make
your snarky comment.

~~~
varjag
Well, saying that anyone in the 90s would be surprized by an oversized PDA is
also kinda snarky, no?

------
wladimir
His "Galapagan isolation" / "large continent" hypothesis is interesting. I've
noticed similar things.

Obviously, the continuous stream of data from the internet makes it harder to
concentrate on one thing, I think we can all agree on that (which is why HN
implements 'noprocast' and such)

But IMO something is also happening on a deeper level. The focus on 'social'
these days also means being flooded with opinions by others (whether something
is feasible or useful or not, for example) which might discourage you from
continuing on big, bold projects.

Somehow one gets addicted to "validation" by others, which is easier to get if
you keep close to the status quo. This is similar to what he describes with
the shareholders of a public corporation. The immediate feedback cycle causes
a lot of people to "judge" what you're doing and of course, there will always
be some that don't believe in it (as there is no immediate payoff yet) and
block it.

On the other hand, the internet is great because it allows communication and
working together of people with similar mindsets, which otherwise would never
have found each other. So it also might unite people to work on (open source
etc) and/or finance (things like Kickstarter are a beginning...) big projects.
A mixed blessing :)

------
Lagged2Death
I enjoy Stephenson's writing, and I think he must be a really smart guy. Which
is why I'm puzzled by this reasoning:

1) Science and engineering aren't chasing anything audacious and world-
changing anymore.

2) The blame lies partly with the fact that we're living in a world changed by
pervasive, cheap communications and networking technology that would have
seemed unthinkably audacious just a generation ago.

There is an irony here that I would have expected him to see through
instantly, but he seems entirely oblivious to it.

Science fiction famously anticipated some real-world 20th century innovations
like atomic power, communication satellites, waldos, etc. But it's had a much
worse track record with communications. There are no cell phones (or cell-
phone-like devices) in _Neuromancer_. Stephenson's own _Snow Crash_ features
an international computer network with a virtual-reality interface that seems
incredibly cumbersome and inconvenient compared compared to the actual web.

I think it must be harder to imagine how any given piece of technology will
interact with the larger society than it is to make predictions about what the
development of a technology will make possible. A VR type interface to the web
wouldn't be much of a challenge (technically) by now, but nobody wants one.
_Second Life_ is withering on the vine. The video telephone that has been so
long predicted by SF is possible now, but it turns out to be more trouble than
it's worth except in exceptional circumstances. And when you make it available
to just anyone, it turns into a TV show about penises.

~~~
feral
"But it's had a much worse track record with communications. There are no cell
phones (or cell-phone-like devices) in Neuromancer."

There is the matrix though, which isn't a bad vision of the Internet; its
global, all the big databanks are connected to it, commerce (banks etc) is
transacted on it. I think that was doing a pretty good job at predicting
future communications in 1984.

You are right about the lack of cell phones - there's a scene with payphones
in Istanbul that seems really out of place in 'the future' now.

"Stephenson's own Snow Crash features an international computer network with a
virtual-reality interface that seems incredibly cumbersome and inconvenient
compared compared to the actual web."

I think this is a little unfair.

I always thought the point of the Metaverse in Snow Crash was for real time
human interaction; Hiro has his virtual office, librarian, and 'Earth' as
interfaces for high speed information retrieval.

The metaverse, as described, is limited, in some ways, but that's by design.

I'm reminded of the bit in Snow Crash where Stephenson talks about Juanita
building the software that maps real life facial expressions onto avatar
facial expressions, and how important that is for business. This is something
that's still unsolved. Humans have a lot of hardware that allows high
bandwidth face to face communication; we pick up on very subtle facial cues,
for example.

But no one has really cracked the problem of such 'high emotional bandwidth'
Internet hangouts. We see things like the Google+ hangout feature - but they
don't really work, as hangouts. Where do you go online if you want to hang
out, and communicate with other humans? Yahoo chat? Facebook? Are these really
optimal forms of human communication? I don't personally believe so.

I think Stephenson sketched his metaverse as a virtual reality interface
that's solving human communication problems that the web still hasn't come
close to solving.

------
zach
It seems tautologous to say that innovation happens in innovative areas, but
that seems to be the substance of the problem expressed in the premise.

Not only does disruptive innovation not happen where we expect it to, it
usually refuses to happen where we will it to. Not only solar (and fusion)
power, but things like making the kind of artificial intelligence we wanted.
It seems like they were just not solvable with any amount of cleverness. Maybe
we picked the wrong build tree, but maybe we were just hand-waving when we
extrapolated to flying cars.

I think part of the problem is not seeing sustaining innovation, like nearly
all of the space program, as the mostly-linear kind of innovation it is. I
mean, it sure seemed like we were creating new dimensions of technology when
we increased the "number of men on the frickin' moon" statistic above zero.
But how much of the innovation required to get there was really Freeman Dyson
level stuff? To me, the 25-year line from V-2 to Apollo (with stops at
satellites and ICBMs) seems pretty straightforward given the resources
involved. Am I just too jaded by retrospective?

It seems the fault lies more in our expectations than in our imaginativeness.

~~~
msg
I'm in good company when I say that the pace of innovation has accelerated to
ludicrous speed. Last week I read about scientists who knocked out a rat
cerebellum and replaced it with an artificial one - and it worked. A few weeks
ago I read about gamers, over the course of a few weeks with FoldIt,
discovering how to fold a protein crucial to AIDS research that had eluded
scientists for years.

Like William Gibson said, he now writes novels about the present because the
present has caught up in many ways with science fiction. Not that we have
flying cars or heroic robots, not that we have the future they predicted, but
every week in the New Scientist you can read about stuff that would have been
pure sci fi fifty years ago. We are inundated with magic.

I think the space program stood out more because it was channeled through the
media that way. Everyone was watching the same thing and the same scientists.
Today we have as much science to admire as we have viewing options on the
internet.

~~~
maxerickson
There's a story on CNN right now about a woman with (at least somewhat)
successful hand transplants. Both of them.

Somewhat successful because while she has feeling and movement, she doesn't
have normal dexterity.

That feels pretty sci-fi to me.

------
thaumaturgy
The fuckery is in the details.

I, too, wonder why so much of technological progress seems to have stalled. In
a single century we went from the mass production of the automobile all the
way to space; from telegraph to television; from typewriters to
microcomputers. What an amazing period of technological development! There had
been nothing like it in our history. Like the perhaps somewhat apocryphal
Renaissance, we may not even realize the significance of this age for a very
long time.

So, what happened? Software has not, really, improved very much in many years.
Our computers and phones and other devices have mated and borne tiny little
offspring. But, these still feel like iterative changes on revolutionary
designs.

And, of course, there is the faltering space program.

...Except, Armadillo Aerospace and SpaceX and others are right around the
corner, I hope.

I think I've noticed a pretty ubiquitous pattern in certain kinds of projects:
the sorts of projects that are huge in scope, with immediate deadlines, and a
clear focus, and full of talented people whose responsibility it is to figure
out how to reach the project goals as quickly as possible.

They grab every available technology, and they make amazing advancements in
combining it and putting it together, and in the end, if they reach their
goal, they end up with something that works, but is inelegant. They build an
enormous, amazing, beautiful ... hack.

After that, if the progress is to continue, it's up to an entirely different
kind of approach: the fucking about with the details.

It's not enough just to put a human and some supplies in space; now the goal
is to do it _sustainably_. Now we have to build reusable ships and things
capable of lifting tremendous payloads into orbit while sipping their energy
through a tiny straw and not costing anybody very much.

And that's where the development is going right now. It requires tons and
myriad tiny little developments in a huge array of sciences: in energy
production and management, and in materials science especially. Like Intel,
our space program has had its "tock"; now it's time for a "tick".

At least, I hope that's what's happening. I'd hate to live in a world in which
humans had given up on exploring and pushing against their boundaries.

~~~
barrkel
I think it's wrong to say that there has been little improvement in software,
in both our techniques of building it and the body that is in existence. I
think the advance from the disconnected dumb home microcomputer of 1985 to the
globally connected iPad of today is comparable to the advance from the
telegraph to television. I think it's easy to underestimate how far we've come
when you've lived through the change. The salience of the contrast over time
is lost, because you're too close to it, and the change seems almost
imperceptible; recognizing how far we've come needs some perspective.

It's true that humanity is less in the game of building pyramids, dramatic
edifices of might to be looked upon in wonder, but I suspect much of that was
grandstanding in a global cold war, rather than driven by need or even a
genuine striving for achievement. Our focus has moved in a more democratic,
consumer-oriented place, where it is simultaneously less visible as a
monument, but where its leverage, the number of lives it affects, is higher
than ever.

Space exploration doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense, until there are
resources beyond our planet for which the demand exceeds supply such that the
price level justifies the effort. I don't have any romantic fantasies of
travelling across the galaxy, much less universe; without FTL technology
(which will probably never exist) or greatly lengthened human lifetimes, it
isn't realistic to focus on it. If it was really necessary to go to the moon
again, I'm confident it could be done much more cheaply and safely than it was
last time, but I wouldn't vote for public funds to be spent on it.

~~~
PakG1
I agree for the most part. I video skyped with my mom today. It boggled her
mind that we're able to do this. This is something that was only possible in
cartoons in the 70s. She only just discovered Skype, whereas I've been using
it for years and have seen it evolve.

I imagine it's like watching your nephew grow up. Don't see him for a few
years, and suddenly, it's like, whoah! You're huge! But if you see him every
day, maybe the difference isn't as dramatic.

I would also note that those more dramatic motives you discuss regarding
things like the pyramids, space exploration, etc, may not exist today, which
further decreases the dramatic level of today's technology.

~~~
barrkel
Exactly. If you could travel back in time and bring an iPad back to 1985 (and
somehow keep internet connectivity with the present) and showed it to someone,
they'd probably consider it magical to the point that it must have been made
by aliens. It's far too facile for someone in the present to dismiss it as an
incrementally improved piece of technology that is no better, fundamentally,
than what already existed in 1985.

~~~
tsotha
lol, no, we would not have considered it magical. Based on television shows
like _Space:1999_ we fully expected to have a large moon base and ray guns by
1999. My 1985 self would have looked at the iPad and said "That's all? The
battery only lasts for a few hours, it's only two-dimensional, and I can't
roll it. What happened, was there a nuclear war initiated dark age?"

~~~
jwallaceparker
I doubt that.

The iPad is an amazing technical leap over consumer electronics circa 1985
(Pong, Pacman, grainy color TV).

~~~
tsotha
Nonsense. In the previous decade we had gone from the introduction of LED
watches to personal computers - by 1985 we had the Apple IIE, which is a
bigger leap from what was available in 1975 than the IIE to the iPad. Kubrick
included iPad-like devices in _2001_ because he thought we would have them. I
would have been surprised to see them earlier than 1995, but 2010? Late.

Stephenson is right, but he doesn't go far enough. It's not just the big
things - since 1970 the pace of progress has been slowing down across the
board.

~~~
tsotha
When my grandfather was born cars were so brand new they weren't mass produced
- they were only toys for rich people. By the time he was my age he saw the
introduction of flight, jet flight, and space flight. He saw the introduction
of radio and television. He saw the first effective treatments for bacterial
infections.

There hasn't been any period of time like that recently. Progress hasn't been
accelerating. The reason we thought we'd have fusion power and moon bases and
a cure for cancer is that's the trajectory we were on. So no, progress isn't
accelerating at all. It's slowing down, and more perceptibly every day.

------
jblow
I have been having similar lamentations recently.

One obvious example: the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The original bridge was
built in 1933; it took them less than 3.5 years to build it.

Now, they are just trying to replace the eastern span (the bigger one, but
hey, less than the full bridge), with technology from nearly a century later.
They have been "working on it" for 9 years. It is currently scheduled to run
another 2 years from now (if it somehow gets done on time) and is 6 times more
expensive than originally projected.

For a bridge. That doesn't have any more traffic capacity than the bridge it
is replacing.

~~~
caf
How many workers died during the original construction?

~~~
caf
Obviously I was too subtle, so I'll answer my own rhetorical question: there
were between 23 and 28 fatal accidents during the original construction of the
Bay Bridge, depending on how you count them.

This rate of industrial accidents simply isn't acceptable these days, and
improved worker safety slows construction.

------
pnathan
It's becoming frighteningly obvious in recent years that hardcore innovation
is being stifled in the names of 'too risky', 'not enough ROI', 'politically
incorrect', and $current_political_battleground. It's also frighteningly
obvious that the status quo of new-flavor-of-entertainment-as-innovation has
ardent defenders.

As a society, almost nothing in the scope of the Big Ideas of the 1900s-1950
era has come to pass in the last 30 years. Our science fiction writers write
of hideous futures we don't want to live in. Our movies present soap operas in
space, in the name of science fiction. The education system of the pre-50s,
maligned as it is, produced better innovators and more good ideas than what is
alllowed today.

Wake up and smell the tomatoes. Things are _bad_ , and _not_ getting better.
Drop the entertainment ideas, and work on something good for the world.

A few weeks ago, Khan Academy was hiring.

~~~
zeemonkee
There is very little cultural innovation either - popular entertainment
nowadays consists of reboots, prequels, sequels, and karaoke hits (American
Idol and the like). It's part of the same symptom I think of stagnant,
litigious, bottom-line driven, risk-averse management Stephenson talks about -
and it's strangling not only our technological innovation but all forms of
creativity.

------
glimcat
I can sympathize with this. But I also think it's wrong on many points.
Feynman's point that "there's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely
relevant to the modern age; most of our marvels are now Small Stuff rather
than the Big Stuff that Neal calls for.

I'm crazy for space exploration, but unmanned exploration really is the
stronger option at this point. I get excited over large trussed structures,
but cheap handheld medical scanners which don't require an expert operator are
going to do more to relieve human suffering. I'd love to see more innovation -
but in spite of everything, there's more today than ever before.

It's hard to see sometimes because a lot of the big stuff is twenty years out
or more. All it is today is a project in some academic lab, just a seed. But
how else are you going to get your miracles?

~~~
tsotha
>Feynman's point that "there's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely
relevant to the modern age; most of our marvels are now Small Stuff rather
than the Big Stuff that Neal calls for.

We understand quite a bit more than we used to at that level, but there hasn't
yet been a lot of tangible benefit. We haven't sped up the pace of drug
development, and haven't developed nanomechanical computers (no _Young Lady's
Illustrated Primer_ ). We haven't developed Drexler's universal constructors.

Of course, we do have see-through zinc oxide. So there's that.

~~~
glimcat
> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development

<http://fold.it/portal/info/science>

> haven't developed nanomechanical computers

micro:

[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b708764k)

nano:

<http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229>

Not that either is going to replace transistors-in-silicon when it comes to
density of processing power.

> no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Incidentally, the story describes a "Wizard of Oz" implementation. The more
complex interactions of the primer are handled by a human actor behind the
scenes.

> We haven't developed Drexler's universal constructors

Take your pick of DNA synthesis, chemical synthesis, nucleosynthesis,
antihydrogen, 3d printing, two-photon fabrication - oh, and the 16 nm
semiconductor process. Not quite magic goo, but pretty effective nonetheless.

> we do have see-through zinc oxide

Transparent aluminum:

<http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html>

~~~
tsotha
>> We haven't sped up the pace of drug development >
><http://fold.it/portal/info/science>

Yes, and where is the drug? The world seems to be overflowing with "promising
drug targets", but what actually gets approved is longer lasting pecker
perkers and yet another blood pressure medication.

>> haven't developed nanomechanical computers > >micro: >
>[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876...](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2007/LC/b70876..).
> >nano: > ><http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/5229>

Well, okay, there has been some progress in the lab that seems to have led to
not much practical. The microfluidics holds big promise. Just like it has for
decades. Use this technology to make a closed-loop artificial pancreas...
_that_ will be progress.

>> no Young Lady's Illustrated Primer > > Incidentally, the story describes a
"Wizard of Oz" implementation. The more complex interactions of the primer are
handled by a human actor behind the scenes.

Heh. I'd forgotten about the actor. Must read that book again. Why oh why are
they charging $12 for the ebook version of a novel published in 1995? More
than the paperback?

>> We haven't developed Drexler's universal constructors > >Take your pick of
DNA synthesis, chemical synthesis, nucleosynthesis, antihydrogen, 3d printing,
two-photon fabrication - oh, and the 16 nm semiconductor process. Not quite
magic goo, but pretty effective nonetheless.

That's a long, long way from magic goo.

I wasn't trying to say there's been _no_ progress, just that the rate of
technological progress is slower than it was. Most of what you've pointed out
here hasn't made it out of the lab yet.

~~~
glimcat
> what actually gets approved is longer lasting pecker perkers and yet another
> blood pressure medication

That's a problem with the industry and the government, not so much with the
research. But I'd love to see improvements there.

Also, there are some fun tricks with augmented reality and chemistry.

teaching:

<http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/scripps/>

drug prototyping:

[http://boingboing.net/2011/09/26/chemistry-of-the-
future-3d-...](http://boingboing.net/2011/09/26/chemistry-of-the-
future-3d-models-and-augmented-
reality.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader)

> there has been some progress in the lab that seems to have led to not much
> practical.

MEMS has only been a thing for about a decade. Fancy sensors for your cell
phone are more profitable, so they get industrial support and make it out of
the lab faster.

It's not easy to get adequate funding for academic research, and it's a
million times easier (more, really) to MVP a SaaS startup than it is to get
innovative tech out of the lab. Industry is often 10-20 years behind academic
research, sometimes more. Just look at the state of nuclear power plants.

------
gavanwoolery
The problem is competition (or lack thereof).

The space race was not fueled by just wanting to set foot on the moon. Keep in
mind the Soviets were trying to advance their space program as well, and prior
to all of the space treaties this was a war for claiming new ground. Old
Soviet schematics actually show some crazy designs, like satellites with
(freakin') laser beams mounted on them.

Now, it does not really matter who gets to Mars first - its certainly not a
competition any one person or company wants to risk billions of dollars on.

Even if you grouped together some of the most prolific VCs, their cumulative
budget would be fairly small for taking on large scale problems.

The problem is that money has to come from somewhere to take on big problems,
and no one wants to shell out.

------
digikata
I think that Stephenson is on a false trail blaming the dissemination of
information for lack of big innovation. Most corporations run in fear of the
unknown just a much as previous failures are shutout - if the accountants
can't imagine the market, or if the market isn't a sure thing then it's also
avoided.

This is also why actual direct competition is avoided in preference to non-
innovative market/customer manipulation taking the form of techniques like
customer lock-in plans, patent trolling, and planned obsolescence. Mostly
narrow payoff innovation is pursued as the business community has focused
around making short-term profit optimization the most accepted strategy.

------
molbioguy
In my opinion, Stephenson is focusing on "getting big stuff done" and, more
pointedly, achieving large and perhaps lofty goals. He's not disparaging all
the incremental advancements that add up to something really big. I think he's
saying we've lost the will to aim really high, take real risks (loss of life
included), to achieve something that seemed insurmountable. I think he's
saying we've grown too fearful of risk and failure. We've prioritized safety
over achievement. While his examples were space-based, I don't think that's
what he's ultimately aiming at.

The current internet is revolutionary, but wasn't achieved on some master
plan. It grew incrementally and somewhat organically. Creating a planet-wide
super high speed communications network to every house within 10 years as a
concerted project might be closer to what he's thinking. Something like what
Google plays around with, but on a huge scale. Software and computer devices
are also amazing, but they too were not part of a well-defined goal or vision.
They grew from smaller innovations.

There will always be good rational arguments about things being too costly or
too impractical or just not as important as feeding and clothing everyone, but
that's the "valley" that he spoke of getting past or over. It's hard to fly if
you remain too firmly grounded.

------
jeffdavis
I am only about halfway through the article, but the "failure of society to
get big things done" thesis is falling flat.

What about cell phones, and the communication revolution in general? While I'm
at the park in the US, I can call someone in Europe riding on a train. Or, I
can take the same phone to Europe and call someone back home. That's pretty
amazing, if you ask me.

What about free/open source software? Someone can start a business with almost
no capital at all, and get an operating system, an office suite, a web
browser, and sophisticated database management software. And they don't even
need to _tell anyone_ that they are doing it. And when they need something
better, they can fix it themselves or hire someone to fix it; they don't need
to deal with the original vendor. That's just the business side of things --
the educational aspects of free/open source software are just as compelling.

I guess the problem is that none of these things are as impressive to look at
as a 500-ton rocket.

~~~
OstiaAntica
You missed the point about cell phones. The technology is over 60 years old,
but it took FOREVER to commercialize it. The reason: telecom was controlled by
monopolies, and the government owns the spectrum. In fact, the government is
still wasting massive amounts of wireless spectrum-- given away free by
Congress to their broadcaster crony contributors.

A lot of the problem, across the board today, is the U.S. litigation and
regulatory state. So, the reality is that the cell phone revolution happened
in spite of our national political leadership.

------
igorlev
I don't think it's starvation, it's just a big slow patch. Innovation, just
like evolution doesn't work on a smooth continuum but in jumps and bursts of
flowering. Neal Stephenson is being observant but unfortunately shortsighted
himself by complaining about the natural cycles of innovation.

I agree with his observation that we've become more short-term oriented, I
don't agree with his extrapolation of that tendency to the future or the
causality. We're not building big stuff because we've become shortsighted,
we've become shortsighted because we've built most of the big stuff that was
cheap to build with current knowledge. As soon as new avenues open up we'll
have another burst of invention.

Fusion reactors have been "a few decades away" for the last 75 years so it's
understandable that we don't have as many people interested in that. But I'll
bet you that when they're finally made workable enough you will have enough
applications of that tech to figure out for the next 50 years.

Same thing with manufacturing. You already have people printing gun parts on
3D printers and trading designs on-line. Research being done at this very
moment on metallising printable materials or making stronger composites
printable is going to turn manufacturing completely upside down.

19th century was figuring out the applications of mechanical automation, early
20th - the applications of electricity, late 20th - of electronic automation.
Who knows what the 21st will be, but I'm sure we'll get out of this slow patch
eventually.

------
AngryParsley
Neal makes some good points about western nations, but some of the more
authoritarian governments aren't restricted by citizen initiatives or
environmental laws. China is a poster-boy for this sort of growth. If they
continue to increase prosperity faster than democratic western nations, their
style of government might become the template for the future.

From <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/china-ascendant.html> :

 _The world has emulated Western policies mainly because those nations were
high status, not because their style of law or government was obviously more
efficient. Chinese styles are likely similarly efficient, and if China becomes
higher status, the world will emulate it instead._

A generation ago, people in China were starving. Now they're the second-
largest economy in the world. Last week they launched a space station. Of
course China has problems, but their government seems to know how to grow
quickly, and that increases their citizens' quality of life.

~~~
tokenadult
China's haste to build deadly boondoggle projects is not something that any
democratic nation, eastern or western, desires to emulate:

[http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140703132/from-progress-to-
pro...](http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140703132/from-progress-to-problem-
chinas-high-speed-trains)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subway-train-crash-
in...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subway-train-crash-in-shanghai-
injures-more-than-280-reviving-doubts-over-railways-
rush/2011/09/29/gIQAPtGE6K_story.html)

~~~
mainguy
Actually, those aren't boondoggles, those are exactly the sorts of risks the
author is talking about. To make big gains, you have to take big risks.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though
checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows
neither victory nor defeat. \-- Theodore Roosevelt

~~~
gvb
High speed rail is not a big risk _technologically._ The _technology_ has
existed since the 60s. At this point, the technology is advancing
incrementally with incrementally improved materials and technology, not "big
risk game changing" technology. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail#Technology>

The risk in high speed rail is primarily due to the scale of the
implementation; the cost in terms of time, effort, and money of acquiring the
rail right-of-way and physically building the infrastructure.

The big risk in the Wenzhou train collision referred to by the OP was not in
the technology that was used or the building of the infrastructure, but was a
system and management failure. The _technology_ in the train system, when
correctly implemented and used properly, is well known, well proven, and safe.

To be blunt, the failure was not due to "big gains big risk technology," but
was due to the fact that the high speed rail system in China was a boondoggle.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision>

------
vl
I wouldn't worry too much: our generation is going to experience singularity,
and unlike cars and cell phones it's not going to be nice.

------
nicpottier
Nice essay. Funny thing about the SF writers being inspiration.

I'm actually reading his latest book right now, "REAMDE", and although it is
well written and entertaining, it certainly doesn't provide anywhere near the
fun 'mind stretching' that some of his previous books have. (Snow Crash being
the obvious one there)

Really, REAMDE is a bit boring from a SciFi point of view, more akin to any
number of suspense / thrillers that get stamped out every year.

On his larger point, I do wonder whether the reason the rate of real
'physical' breakthroughs recently, like the kind he had in his childhood is
more just us starting to bump into the limits of physics and resources.

IE, cracking the atom was a pretty insane step forward in power generation, it
is really hard to do a lot better. Oil is miraculously awesome as a
transportable source of energy, it isn't for a lack of trying that we haven't
found a replacement. Computing and processors are starting to hit the limits
of physics.

Anyways, a good thought piece no matter what.

~~~
jlees
I totally agree with your comment on REAMDE and am glad I'm not the only one
with this line of thought. It's the first novel of his that was stifled by its
own realism. OK, maybe some of the handwavy spy technology was a little
fanciful, but the entire concept of T'Rain was lifted from Azeroth and its
many siblings, and none of the amazing imagination of his previous books.

Today we innovate in software, not hardware, and soon the balances will tip
again - to bio-interfaces, entirely passive computing, and the crazy stuff
various think tanks around the world are cooking up (mostly so they can be
featured in WIRED, but surely one of them will have a hit someday).

------
Goladus
I would say the most rapid and important technological advancements happening
right now are in genetic sequencing and analysis. In his TEDxBoston talk,
Richard Resnick even draws a parallel to the space race, pointing out that
China is ahead the US in this area[1].

Energy is important too, and I think people are trying hard, but "energy" is
an enormously difficult problem, and unfortunately the bar set by oil is very
high. That is, if you want a viable alternative energy source it has to be as
cheap, safe, portable, and effective as oil. Or else, government must ask
everyone to begin making personal sacrifices in order to transition
infrastructure away from gasoline and other oil consumption (the space race
required comparatively little personal sacrifice).

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8bsCiq6hvM>

------
rndmize
I find this piece to be a tad ridiculous. The "where's my space station?"
feels like the magazine article I see every few years complaining "where's my
flying car?". A space station is simply not very cost effective at the current
time.

Further, I find that innovation is happening so rapidly now that people simply
take it for granted. But this doesn't mean it isn't happening, or that the
changes aren't as big as they were in the 1900s. Science fiction writers in
the 1920s or 30s could take a reasonable stab at what the world might be like
in the 70s or 80s; those a few decades later at the 90s. But given how fast
things are changing now, I find it difficult to have a solid idea of what the
world will be like in just 10 years. Biotech, nanotech and genetics seem to be
advancing at great speed, pushed by the inexorable advance of computing. The
way in which people interact and work has transformed, and continues to do so;
software allows a single person or a small group to do things that would take
entire departments 30 years ago.

Which brings me back to the point of efficiency; why bother going through the
tremendous effort required to construct a human-habitable space station now,
when in 20 or 30 years, we will likely have the ability to remodel ourselves
to a high degree, giving us the capability to adapt ourselves to space, rather
than having to engineer complex and expensive systems and equipment to cover
our shortcomings? Or perhaps a decade or two after that, the ability to "back
up" ourselves might become a reality, allowing us to take greater risks or
have multiple bodies (Ghost in the Shell, Culture books); or have nanotech
suits that serve as a second, adaptable skin for any environment (Hyperion
Cantos, Culture books).

As for the idea that science fiction inspires scientists and engineers to
create the future, and its currently mostly dystopian stuff we'd rather avoid,
I'd agree. Because currently, the direction we're heading for that's not
dystopian is boring. The Culture books emphasize this; there's nothing
interesting when you write about a future where things are going pretty well,
where disease is not a problem, or nanotech manufacturing/3D printing type
tech has lead to a post-scarcity or nearly post-scarcity society, or human
backups and body replacement tech make dying outdated, and so on.

------
mark_l_watson
While I agree with the basic premise of the article on complacency and lack of
risk taking in innovation, there is another side to this argument that is well
covered in Eric Ries's new book "The Lean Startup" on making both innovation
and learning what works more efficient.

We seem to live in an increasingly stratified society: much of the work force
has obsolete skills and too often a lack of incentive to retrain while a
smaller number of people are pushing the envelope on learning new ways of
running businesses and new ways to develop tech.

------
robryan
The problem is that the will isn't there currently, I'm sure NASA could
replicate the past moon landings at a vastly cheaper rate than the originals
now. With the right level of funding how hard would it be to conduct a heap of
controlled landings taking things similar to ISS modules to the moon, and then
use similar tech to apollo to ferry astronauts to put together a base.

Given the budget is there really any tech that needs to be invented to do
something like that? Astronauts could stay no longer than ISS stays so you
wouldn't even need to push into new longevity of space travel.

Granted the a Mars mission would be a big step up, which makes incremental
improvement that seems to work best in tech progression harder. Still I think
it's mostly about the budget and the will of people to want to achieve this
stuff.

------
radarsat1
I agree in principle, but it seems funny to me to read an article like this
after watching a video of a surgical robot peeling a grape! Maybe the space
program was the "big idea" of the 60s, but there are still some pretty
fantastic innovations being developed, even if they are closer to home. But i
agree that energy innovation is going to be the most important subject of the
next decade.

I guess the reality is that things like globalization is making it impossible
to ignore down-to-earth political-economic problems that we simply need
solutions for, right now, more than we need other things. I have confidence
that we are in a highly transitionary period of history, and eventually the
pendulum will swing back te other way.

~~~
pnathan
Yes, we really need grape peelers.

How about we figure out how to have a space program that can fuel on the go?

~~~
radarsat1
> Yes, we really need grape peelers.

Are you arguing that surgical robots are not a worthwhile innovation?

------
aangjie
Very nostalgic article...Especially, since having grown up in india in the
80's my inspirations were similar. But given my history of being swayed by
these type of articles, i am willing to suspend judgement/opinion about
innovation for a couple of days and re-read the article..Maybe after re-
reading
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e5/the_cognitive_science_of_rationa...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e5/the_cognitive_science_of_rationality/)
:-)

------
polynomial
I'm surprised that on such a great and lively thread as this no one makes
mention of the possibility that technological expansion follows a cycle of
innovation and incorporation, and the possibility that Stephenson is lamenting
that the latter doesn't measure up to the former.

This post leads me to wonder if Neal himself won't be surprised by what the
next innovation phase has in store. Also, does the concern he expresses here
have any parallels in Reamde?

------
wolfparade
I didn't read the whole article but all I saw was anecdotal evidence that
there isn't as much innovation. Maybe it's hard to measure innovation, but at
least try instead of saying "from my viewpoint as a 50 year old white man we
aren't innovating." And then try to come up with theories why there isn't
innovation when you haven't even come close to proving that there isn't.

~~~
tjmc
Given that you could buy a ticket to fly from London to New York faster in the
70s than you can today, you'd have to admit he has a point in certain areas.
On the other hand, I just sent this reply from my phone on a hydrogen powered
bus in Australia...

~~~
gaustin
And I just read it on a smartphone in my back yard in extremely rural Montana.

The room for "physical" innovation is shrinking. But the importance of
physicality is diminishing, especially location. Modern innovation seems more
subtle and widespread today, than it was when we threw most of our energy at a
few big goals.

Perhaps you can't transport your body around the world quite as quickly and
easily as you could in the past. You can be there virtually in seconds and at
almost no cost.

I'm not sure it's good for us as a species to have the ability to disconnect
from the physical world so much. But that's where we are and it seems the
disconnect is only going to get more pronounced.

------
spiritomb
sorry, i don't share his vision of technology grandeur.

\- the moon and mars (let alone the other planets) are _not_ hospitable to
humans. pure fantasy to consider fruitful colonization.

\- the next stop outside of our solar system is lifetimes away, who would
actually want to live in a moving space station? yuck

\- more efficient energy and transportation systems - why? so we can cram even
more people onto this planet? how many is enough (or too much)?

\- more/better gadgets? games? sad - aim higher.

the big questions we need to solve are those pertaining to sustainable living
(as a population). the only people giving this thought these days are
crackpots.

we have significant peak-this-or-that issues staring us right in the face. if
we don't stop farting around w/ 'golden age' SF fantasies, and start working
on the real problems we face .. we'll be looking at another dark age rather
than crying about not playing frisbee on Neptune.

~~~
shabble
efficient energy and transportation systems aren't part of sustainable living?
How quite sure how that fits.

The crackpots tend to be the "Everyone, back to nature! Let's all dress in
mouldy sheep, mine mud, and eat fallen apples" variety.

True sustainability is about managing both individual impact, and global
impact. Efficient energy systems, transportation, and food production might
allow a global population of 10Bn to operate on a smaller _whatever-_
footprint than where we are now.

Dealing with a population increase is going to be easier than convincing
everyone what is, and how to maintain, a stable population. 1-child-per-family
rules are unlikely to hold much sway in what we currently consider 'civilised
countries'.

~~~
spiritomb
your 10Bn will either grow (yet again) after another round of efficiency
measures or collapse from disease/war. again, take the long view - where does
this lead?

btw, i don't have the answer .. i don't want to go back to the mud, and i
don't want to live in some kind of 'Logan's Run' scenario either. but i
recognize that something has to give. the trajectory is alarming and my point
is that technology won't be the answer because we ultimately live on a planet
of finite resources.

------
_corbett
So I’m more optimistic; the basic conflict human vs. vacuum may yet be won as
private companies rightly take interest in the final frontier-c.f. SpaceX and
their amazing ambitions. Also, if the powers that be are listening: sign me up
for the first trip to Mars.

------
beambot
The comment about engineers and patent searches is pretty spot-on. I've seen
many compelling efforts prematurely abandoned due to previous patents. Hearing
this from Neal Stephenson strikes me as ironic given his employment at
Intellectual Ventures.

------
stib
The end of cheap oil says it all, but Stephenson seems to miss what happened.
A stressed economy resulted, one which rewarded its best minds for heading to
Wall St. and inventing new forms of toxic investments, instead of to industry
or academia.

------
tocomment
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