
Peter Thiel: "I Don’t Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough" - llambda
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/21/peter-thiel-new-yorker-grump/
======
ramanujan
The fundamental reason that most innovation has occurred in the
computer/internet sector over the last 40-something years is that failure is
acceptable in this sector. That is, when a computer or webapp crashes it's not
the end of the world. But a failure in a drug or car or power plant means
serious consequences, and sometimes fatalities, and subsequent
regulations/laws to make sure such things are never tried again.

Now, you can make a pretty convincing argument[0] that we are as a society
committing Bastiat's fallacy ("Seen vs. Unseen"), in that there are more lives
lost due to not developing new drugs than there are due to failures of new
drugs.

The failures are seen, the lack of new drugs is not seen.

However, the deeper point is that we are currently simply too wealthy as a
society to tolerate the human costs (in deaths[1]) associated with rapid
innovation in real world technologies. Wealth means necessities are met, but
necessity is the mother of invention. This is why war and serious hardship
gooses technological innovation. It's because life becomes cheaper, and test
pilots and volunteers for new vaccines become more readily available.

I don't think Thiel would disagree[2] with this analysis, but it does mean
that the problem can't be solved simply through shifts in entrepreneurial
focus. Americans simply aren't ready for the kind of messiness that real world
innovation involves.

[0] <http://bit.ly/mtGRyv>

[1] Perhaps strangely, we are more ready to allow people to take futile risks
like bungee jumping or skydiving than we are to allow people to consciously
opt out of various health/safety/etc. regulations (and suffer the
consequences).

[2] Taking the totality of his statements in context, including the article on
the Founders Fund website ("What Happened to the Future?"), Thiel and
Levchin's point is not that the iPhone isn't innovative but more that there
hasn't been much innovation in big areas like energy, medicine, and
transportation. Indeed, by some measures we're moving backwards in those
areas: the real price of energy has gone up, new drug approvals have
stagnated, and top speeds have gone down since the Concorde was retired.

~~~
potatolicious
I disagree. The reason why the most innovation has occurred in this sector is
because we're some of the best-funded. Look at the arms industry and you will
see a similar pace of advancement - mostly due to the bottomless and nigh-
unchallengeable defense spending of Uncle Sam.

Why this unprecedented level of funding? IMO this really is the heart of
Thiel's argument: internet companies are capable of general obscene, absurd,
ludicrous profit margins.

Think about a company like Facebook - employs a few thousand engineers, but
generates revenue and impact far in excess of what you might expect from a
crowd of that size.

And this is really Thiel's argument, the way I understand it. He's not saying
that the iPhone isn't a "technological" breakthrough, but rather it's not a
"societal" breakthrough. In the old days, when someone introduces a product,
it creates new jobs across the board.

When Ford introduced a new car, it didn't just mean jobs for the people in the
boardroom and drafting tables. It created jobs in their factories, and indeed
_tens of thousands_ of jobs across a wide supply chain necessary to build the
product. It created new jobs in dealerships, and auto shops. The job-creation
effects of a product were incredibly far-reaching.

Now, fast forward to today. What jobs are Facebook creating besides the ones
inside their walls? There is no employment ecosystem, no supply chain. And in
this way, while Facebook is extracting record revenue from their business, the
rest of America is no better off.

It used to be that success in capitalism is the tide that floats all boats,
but this is increasingly not true, especially in our sector.

~~~
ramanujan

      Look at the arms industry and you will see a similar pace 
      of advancement - mostly due to the bottomless and nigh-
      unchallengeable defense spending of Uncle Sam.
    

But I don't think you're really disagreeing here.

The DoD is a lot less squeamish than civilians about experimental projects
that result in death. Leave aside the issue of whether this is good or bad.
For them, they are going to be seeing dead bodies as a natural course of doing
business, and they want fewer ones, and so they're (much) more willing to
pursue riskier projects that may cost lives.

Soldiers can be ordered to run into enemy fire, so they can also be ordered to
test drive automatic cars (funded by DARPA). Autonomous helicopters that could
slice someone in two if the programming goes bad nevertheless get the green
light because there are already people being sliced in two, and DoD wants to
reduce that number.

DoD is really pushing robotics and cybernetics forward in particular because
those two result in less dead soldiers and (in the future) soldiers who can
function even after losing limbs and eyes[0].

Perhaps the most concrete example of this thesis is what happens when the
priorities of DoD and FDA collide. Take a look at the Pathways to Innovation
program that FDA just greenlit[1].

    
    
      On a Tuesday afternoon call with reporters, Shuren said he 
      expects just one or two devices to be approved through the 
      new pathway each year.
    
      The first device up for review under the new pathway comes 
      from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
      (DARPA), the research arm of the Department of Defense.
    
      The brain-controlled prosthetic is designed to restore 
      near-natural arm, hand, and finger function to patients 
      suffering from spinal cord injury, stroke, or amputation. 
      An implanted microchip on the surface of the brain records 
      neuronal activity, decodes the signals, and activates 
      motor neurons that control the prosthesis.
    
      The first chip will be implanted in a patient within six 
      months, Geoffrey Ling, MD, PhD, program manager at DARPA, 
      told reporters.
    

There is a very good reason why no private company has yet gotten this kind of
fast track, but the DoD has. From FDA's perspective, DoD is a (more powerful)
fellow agency which deserves professional courtesy. Moreover, FDA doesn't
suspect DoD of just being in this to make money. Thus a dot mil is allowed to
play by fundamentally different rules than a dot com.

This is my point: when lives are on the line, people will be willing to risk
lives to innovate. If not, then not.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW78wbN-WuU>

[1]
[http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/FDAGeneral/24...](http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/FDAGeneral/24762)

~~~
onemoreact
It might seem contradictory, but the DoD cares more about it's people than
most organisations and at the same time is more than willing to risk lives for
progress. Consider the initial proponent / researcher of car seat belts in the
US was the Air Force which studied the issue in large part because car crashes
where killing more pilots than airplane crashes (at the time). At the same
time, they are vary willing to test new airplanes even though test pilots
often die. And more than that they where willing to risk a pilot to recreate
the conditions of a crash to find out why it happens.

If you run the numbers the DoD has directly saved more US lives since WWII in
that same time period. Which is not to say it's worth the budget just more
useful than you might think.

------
jinushaun
I think Thiel is frustrated that innovation in this country has shifted from
science and technology to mobile phones and banner ads. The best and brightest
are working in the wrong industry. Instead of researching alternative energy,
space travel, health, etc, we're researching thinner smartphones with better
battery life and more effective ways to sell ads.

Makes me wonder how far along we'd be, technologically, if YouTube and
Facebook had never been invented... We're just too distracted now. Maybe
Fermi's Paradox can be explained by alien civilisations becoming too busy
posting cat videos on Twitter to invent inter-stellar travel.

~~~
ahoyhere
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority;
they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise;
they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents,
chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

~~~
chc
This is a pretty well worn quote, but it really is a good thing to keep in
mind anytime you hear people talking about how [whatever] is declining. If
things were getting worse even 1% as often as people say they are, we would be
extinct by now.

~~~
delinka
"Worse" is subjective and contextually dependent. Describing kids' manners as
worse the previous generations' manners is entirely subjective. Bucking
tradition, shaking things up - these are characteristics that create
innovation and efficiency.

I would argue that a healthy contempt for authority keeps the world advancing
positively. Why should I "respect" some supervisor that instructs me in
methods that are inefficient at completing my work? That kind of contempt for
authority is welcome.

------
tptacek
How many iconic, break-out products are ever "technological breakthroughs"?
Behind virtually every iconic product is a string of lesser known antecedents
with the same fundamentals but imperfect packaging, pricing, or timing.

Counterexamples? Would love to hear them.

Otherwise, this is an extremely banal observation on Thiel's part.

~~~
xiaoma
>Counterexamples? Would love to hear them.

Penicillin

~~~
tedunangst
Along those lines, the smallpox vaccine and X-rays.

~~~
parfe
The smallpox vaccine that eliminated the disease certainly had lesser know and
effective predecessor as early as 1770:

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

------
danso
Sometimes, refinement is a breakthrough.

The AK-47 was not the first automatic rifle nor the most powerful or advanced.
But because of its clean design and deployability, it is likely the most
significant firearm in modern human history.

What about those statistics that show that a relative modest reduction in
consumption would do more to save the environment and energy supplies than any
foreseeable technological breakthrough in the next 50 years? Any refinement of
technology today to reduce consumption would likely bore someone like Thiel;
at the same time, they may also do more to save the world. Why is break-out
innovation not to be respected?

------
iqster
I'm part of the academic research community that focuses on mobile. My
personal opinion is that both the iPhone and the iPad pushed the barrier of
what was thought to be possible.

In the case of the iPhone, it redefined browsing on small form factor devices.
Yes ... pinch to zoom was published before. But the specific implementation
into the web browser was pretty unique. The state of the art device prior to
the iPhone was the Nokia 770 tablet. Compare that to an iPhone.

W.r.t the iPad, when Jobs claimed it would last 8 hours (I think he said you
could play movies the entire way on a long distance flight), I didn't believe
it. Nor could other researchers I talked to. Apple's custom silicon for media
playback didn't factor into people's imagination.

~~~
pjscott
All those things are cool, but compare with airplanes, which made the world
drastically smaller. Or with the Haber-Bosch process, which prevents us from
starving. That's the kind of big breakthrough technology that Thiel is talking
about. The iPhone, while really neat, doesn't quite measure up.

~~~
iqster
One of my history professors in college said something I found quite
remarkable. Let me share it ... he said in the history of humanity, there have
been very few revolutions. When humans figured out how to talk was one. You
can suddenly communicate with others! The other big revolution was when people
learned to write. Now, you ideas can span space or time. The advent of
computers, telecommunications and the Internet was another such revolution.
You can now instantly connect with anyone around the planet! While the iPhone
can't take the credit for all this, perhaps you see why I disagree with Thiel
:)

------
mikeryan
_“Apple is an innovative company, but I think it’s mostly a design
innovator.”_

Which is really the crux of what Apple is (I came here to say it and saw Thiel
beat me to it). Apple has always been a product innovator more then a
technology innovator.

The iPhone was still, very much, a breakthrough device. So was the iPod but
neither were "technological breakthroughs"

------
marknutter
Think of all the app developers out there who are making a living off the
iPhone. Think of all the web developers out there whose audience has now
increased _dramatically_ because of Facebook and iPhone getting more people to
use the web. What Thiel is having a hard time with is the move to an
information-centric economy. Outside of better renewable energy, we pretty
much have all the bases covered for basic, comfortable human existence. It's
all about the creation and dissemination of information, now.

~~~
zerostar07
Compare that to the previous century. Where is the equivalent of the airplane,
radio transmission, space travel, television, antibiotics, the Internet? Those
were breakthroughs, not just incremental advances. There s never 'enough
progress'. One should be an optimist though, there s innovation incubated in
the life sciences

~~~
inerte
Although I mostly side with Tiel on his observations, to be fair you're
comparing a century to a decade. And in hindsight it is easy to tell what was
a breakthrough. Remember that when computers were invented few thought that we
would have them in the palms of our hands.

------
dman
Thiel would have run out of karma if he had made the same observation on HN.

~~~
igorgue
Good thing HN has a max of 11 downvotes (I know first hand), but I get your
point, fanboyism here is strong.

~~~
leak
I never knew that! This opens up so many more opportunities to comment!
Thanks!

~~~
igorgue
Hah, here's the prof <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3196443> (I don't
think there's any more unpopular comment you can make here) see it's -4 that
shows but realistically I think I had -11 downvotes (it might be -10).

~~~
chc
-4 is the lowest score a comment can achieve. Downvotes past -4 won't reduce the post's score, but they will keep draining karma from the user. I don't think there's actually a limit on that.

~~~
corin_
Actually they will reduce the comment's score too, it just won't show. The
difference is that if it is showing -4 and someone upvotes it, it won't
neccesarily go to -3, because it's actual score could be much lower.

------
nostromo
People are following the money and innovating in places where it's possible to
build a business with limited capital in a short time. In other words, the
consumer internet -- which is exactly where Thiel has made his money, and made
investments.

Unlike the average entrepreneur however, Thiel has the ability to change that,
by funding more startups like SpaceX and RoboteX, and fewer like Zynga and
Spotify.

------
igorgue
Well Peter, you're part of the problem. The more you invest in e.g.: social
networks the more entrepreneurs are going to follow that instead of, you know,
what you call "innovation".

~~~
notahacker
This. The best recent examples of (i) companies capturing multibillion dollar
markets through timing and effective implementation of existing concepts and
(ii)profit bandwagon-jumping companies with no redeeming features whatsoever I
can think of are both in Thiel's portfolio. you probably know which companies
I'm respectively referring to. The return that he's going to generate from
Facebook and Zynga may be reinvested in exciting technologies, but in the mean
time his successes offer several billion reasons for others to copy his smart
bets on companies whose innovations probably won't be lauded in future
centuries

------
ajkessler
_“Five hundred people will have job security for the next decade, but how much
value does it create for the entire economy ? It may not be enough to
dramatically improve living standards in the U.S. over the next decade or two
decades.”_

It's strange that someone as successful as Peter Thiel has been in the startup
world, a world built on providing value, would make such a statement. What
does the number of permanent or semi-permanent jobs have to do with the amount
of value being created by something like twitter? If it took 100,000 employees
to run twitter as it exists today, would that make it more valuable to the
economy? Of course not.

If it only took one guy to design, build, ship, and sell the iPhone, Apple
would be far more valuable to the economy, not less. You'd free up all those
talented people to go out and create even more value on their own.

Also, he seems to equate increased $$ with increased living standards. By and
large that's been historically true, but it's a bit misleading. Even if
twitter made 0 money and created 0 jobs, it would still improve living
standards. Certainly not in the way indoor plumbing or electricity raised
living standards, but it still makes people's lives easier, which, by
definition, improves living standards.

~~~
AlisdairO
> If it took 100,000 employees to run twitter as it exists today, would that
> make it more valuable to the economy? Of course not. > If it only took one
> guy to design, build, ship, and sell the iPhone, Apple would be far more
> valuable to the economy, not less. You'd free up all those talented people
> to go out and create even more value on their own.

I think it depends, really. Historically, talented people have created new
industries/companies that employed a lot of less talented people and allowed
them to live a comfortable life. I suspect the focus of his worry is that
these less talented people are nowadays less often reaping the benefits of the
innovations talented people create.

~~~
ajkessler
Historically, those industries _required_ less talented people in order to
stay in business. Somebody has to sell the product, answer the phones, sweep
the floors, etc. If you created a company that could operate with out all of
those less talented people, this would be a boon.

Even if you presume all those less talented employees are mindless drones, if
you can provide the same service with fewer employees, you now have all the
value created by that service, plus you have all those extra mindless drones
to go produce value someplace else.

As to your second point, I can't imagine that's what he's really thinking. The
few talented people who create the twitters, iphones, etcs, are far
outnumbered by the millions of less-talented people who actually use those
products.

~~~
AlisdairO
> Historically, those industries required less talented people in order to
> stay in business. Somebody has to sell the product, answer the phones, sweep
> the floors, etc. If you created a company that could operate with out all of
> those less talented people, this would be a boon. > Even if you presume all
> those less talented employees are mindless drones, if you can provide the
> same service with fewer employees, you now have all the value created by
> that service, plus you have all those extra mindless drones to go produce
> value someplace else.

Right, but what about the time when there's nothing sufficiently valuable for
those people to do? Historically, we've been very able to replace old jobs
with new ones - technology simultaneously freed people up and created new job
growth segments. The question is whether technology is still capable of
creating enough new jobs.

~~~
ajkessler
Providing value is nothing more than fulfilling someone else's desire, whether
that desire is for a shiny new car that accelerates very quickly, or a new way
to communicate, or something pretty to look at, or something delicious to eat,
or etc., etc.

Luckily, human beings have essentially unlimited desires. For this reason,
there will always be sufficiently valuable things for people to do.

If there is truly nothing valuable for an entire population to do, ie if
machines can fulfill every desire we can dream up, it means humanity has
finally created utopia.

~~~
AlisdairO
Unlimited desires is probably a stretch. Substantial, certainly.

The problem is not utopia, it's the situation where there's nothing useful
for, say, 20% of the population to do. I think there's plenty for the highly
intelligent and well educated to get on with, but for those without (and
perhaps unable to achieve) that level of education, it's a tougher situation.

------
loup-vaillant
> _Having a fully functioning computer in your pocket opens up entirely new
> experiences—and markets._ […] _Social media, combined with mobile
> technologies, are powering protests and revolutions around the world and
> changing the way people consume information._

While I somewhat agree with this, I can't help but feel that much more is
possible[1]. With current technology. If people actually owned their pocket
computers, both in theory[2] and in practice[3], the changes would be much
more profound.

[1] <http://lesswrong.com/lw/2c/a_sense_that_more_is_possible>

[2] <http://freedomboxfoundation.org/>

[3] <http://vpri.org/> <http://vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm>
<http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf>

------
gamble
"Innovation" is a glittering generality that tech companies and their admirers
feel obliged to assume, but most successful companies are built on execution
rather than innovation.

Apple is actually an exemplar of execution over innovation. Since Jobs
returned, none of their genre-defining products have been fundamentally novel.
Even the iPad represents a category people have been trying to get right for
twenty years without success. Apple likes to identify markets with demand but
immature products, so that they can learn from the mistakes of earlier
entrants and launch with an extremely polished, market defining product.

I don't hold this approach against Apple. On the contrary, I wish there were
more companies that obsessed about creating polished, highly-functional
products that run a little behind the technological curve, rather than the
slapped-together assemblages of new parts from Asian electronics
manufacturers' supply catalog that typify the industry.

------
negrera
Comments like this from Peter provoke people to respond. Plain and simple.
Rather than criticizing why he "thinks" the iPhone hasn't broken any
boundaries, maybe he should "go-out" and stimulate more than "just 500
employees" at once (aka his reference to Twitter).

------
sendos
> "I Don’t Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough"

Isn't this essentially a strawman, since no one is claiming that the iPhone is
a Technological Breakthrough?

At the time the iPhone came out, lots of people noted that it actually lagged
technologically behind its smartphone peers (no 3G, subpar SMS functionality,
etc), which was correct. And yet it won, it showed smartphone companies how to
make a smartphone, and they have been copying that design/approach ever since.

The iPhone didn't win because it was a technological breakthrough, and
everyone in tech knows this, so I'm not sure why Thiel's comment is that
noteworthy.

------
Zarathust
A lot of innovation we're seeing now is the result of miniaturization of older
technologies, such as touchscreen, cell phones and computers. I'd say that the
IPhone is rather an innovation in the lifestyle of their owners, more than a
technological innovation per se.

I've been arguing this point for a few years now, that smartphones are cool
devices, but rather fall in the gadget category than the civilization changing
techs they are sometimes compared to.

------
shn
I am totally disagree. Although the breakthroughs in the tech scene are not as
groundbreaking as it seems, the implications for social interaction, commerce
and education is astounding. I believe we are yet to see the fruits of
internet and related technologies in the years ahead of us. Khan Academy,
Stanford's online classes, and tons of other educational material available
through internet I believe effecting a lot of people's lives.

------
zerostar07
So, if you d take a stab, in what sectors do you expect to see the real
breakthroughs? My bet is on genetic medicine and the brain sciences.

~~~
jleyank
Genetic engineering is going to be a tough sell with the masses. They won't
touch GM corn, tomatoes, ... How the hell are they going to accept GM-mods to
themselves?

~~~
zerostar07
A common characteristic of breakthroughs is that they are at first frightening

~~~
wallflower
I remember reading a Wired article that predicated GM-augmented human
engineering would first gain a foothold in professional sports, namely the
NFL.

~~~
jleyank
More likely something like Tour de France (O2 loading of blood)... And man,
will the professional leagues have issues with this. "East German swimmers"
will seem like nothing.

------
fennecfoxen
Nope. It's more of a "deployment of technology" breakthrough. Most of the
individual technologies there have been around for a while.

~~~
snpnx
That, and a very well designed user-interface are what make the iPhone
exceptional. That's why many 'geeks' don't feel it's worth the praise, there
are better phones out there in terms of technology, but hardly in terms of
usability.

------
SODaniel
Pretty obvious though necessary statement it seems. None of the 'i' products
have ever been about technology and Steve Jobs was never a innovator. It's all
about design and consumer behavior, starting with iTunes and ending with
iTunes.

------
sehugg
The App Store and VoiceOver. The former shifted the power balance between devs
and carriers (creating thousands of jobs) and the latter has changed the lives
of many visually-impaired.

I understand the iPhone ref is a strawman, but not a very good one.

------
poppysan
I agree that it was not a great technological breakthrough on it's own, but it
is greatly responsible for a lot of folk's interest in new technology and
programming among other things, which should not be understated.

------
joshu
Technological, no. UI/UX? Definitely.

------
r00fus
The iPhone may not a technological breakthrough in that it changes the life of
billions of people, no. In that vein, neither is Paypal, to be honest.

The part that annoys me is that Thiel drops this linkbait-worthy note, then
doesn't qualify it by saying what _would_ be a technological breakthrough (I
did read the new yorker summary, too). Lot of hot air here.

------
andyl
Lots of comments here defending Apple. I think the relevant question is: why
don't we see more innovation in energy, transportation or medicine?

------
1010010111
It's a design breakthrough. What's inside, the inexpensive, mass-produced
components, is more or less the same as what's in all the competing devices.
But the design, the packaging, is a breakthrough.

What's problematic about this Apple popularism and Apple's hermetically sealed
approach to selling computing devices is that it does not encourage, let alone
even permit, people to learn about what's on the inside and how it works.
These are computing devices, not refrigerators.

And in the _grand scheme_ of things, that inhibits progress. It limits the
potential pool of competitors and innovators.

Though it preserves the competitive advantage of businesses like Apple, Intel
and others. Increased consumer uptake fueled by elegant design certainly
furthers what they can do. But the incentives for them to innovate are
limited. Do the minimum. Reap the maximum. That's just smart business.

~~~
jarcoal
It's easy to think that it does limit progress, but it likely does not. Any
company that can get people to excited about technology will positively
contribute to the future of the industry.

It is probably an extremely controversial thought, but Apple might be
responsable for pushing more people into development/engineer jobs than Linux.
I know I found my passion for technology through Apple, which eventually led
me to Linux. I bet I'm not alone.

~~~
1010010111
I anticipated this response. That is why I emphasize _grand scheme_. Short
term, I agree with you. Long term, I do not.

------
wavephorm
Smartphones affordable enough for the third world, and pervasive wireless
internet access will almost definitely have a larger impact on the world than
space travel ever will.

~~~
tree_of_item
_Ever_? That's an incredibly strong statement. Ever is a very long time. Do
you think smartphones will be more important than space travel in 300 years?
What will the word "smartphone" mean then?

~~~
wavephorm
I should've added 'for the foreseeable future'. Although it gives us "feel
good" vibes, having a small number of people in space does not significantly
improve the lives of many people.

------
nirvana
The iPhone contains a key invention, and several innovations. This is the
simple fact of reality.

The reason these stories are constantly appearing on HN, nearly 4 years since
the iPhone was introduced, is because those who want to diminish the invention
of multi-touch, like everyone else, sat awed at the iPhone when it was first
introduced. That was a very magical moment, and if the iPhone hadn't been a
radical departure, then it would have been just another cell phone
introduction. It's not often you get to see a new technology that seems
magical for the first time.

Theil is talking in terms of making a dent in society. Obviously his standards
for a "dent in the universe" are different than Steve Jobs. That's fine for
him, but don't confuse it for support for your ideology.

There were no multi-touch devices before the iPhone. (and every time I bring
this up, some one posts a link to thin-plastic keyboards from the 1970s, or
the screens of the automated ticket stand at movie theaters as if they were
the same.) The technology for understanding the shape of the finger when in
contact with a touch sensitive display, and being able to reduce that
amorphous blob down to a single pixel-- and get the pixel the user _intended_
to touch, instead of the one at the center, or whatever, had never been done,
let alone, tracking multiple fingers at the same time, a non-trivial problem.
This invention enabled a raft of innovations that Apple spent 7 years
developing that resulted in only the second new user interface paradigm in my
lifetime- touch UI. (The first being the GUI, which was also developed under
Steve Jobs.)

There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-
mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things
like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates
Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.) Another manifestation of it
is to pretend like the products of the mind have no value at all, and one way
they like to do this is to pretend like its only "good marketing" that made
the iPhone successful because it was just a random collection of parts that
had been invented before.

Sure, LCD screens, Mac OS X, ARM CPUs, RAM, Flash memory and lithium polymer
batteries existed before, and with the exception of OS X, all had appeared in
other phones. To them, that means that there's nothing innovative about the
iPhone. Innovation doesn't exist in their ideology, in fact, it demolishes
their ideology, so they have to pretend like nothing was invented for the
iPhone. Inevitably, when anyone expresses any defense of innovation you get a
lot of nonsense claims about touch panel displays int he 1970s as if that were
"prior art" for multi-touch. I've even seen people on Hacker News insist that
Xerox invented the GUI. (showing either they don't know what a GUI is, or they
don't care.)

To the extent that this ideology has succeeded in america, we have an economic
depression, little growth in industry, a great shrinking in american
manufacturing jobs (because this ideology has regulated them out of being
competitive with the world market) etc.

This ideology might even succeed to the point where a major institution of
this country, enshrined in the constitution itself, is destroyed, simply
because Google wants to make a competitive phone without bothering to spend 7
years coming up with something innovative itself.

That would be a real shame... because the place that road leads is one where
the president has a "kill switch" for the internet, things like SOPA are the
law of the land, and startups have to get permission from government to
operate their businesses, just like manufacturers do now, and said permission
isn't going to come unless you have a lot of pull. We've seen what government
control over the purse strings in an "innovative" area results in: Democratic
contributors getting $500M loans from government for "green energy" only to go
bust a few years later... its just a looting of the public for the direct
benefit of politicians and their friends. This is the aristocracy of "pull".

It's instructive to remember that Theil is a prominent libertarian, and thus
very clearly not a proponent of this ideology.

All this has happened before, and repeatedly. The USA is the last remaining
beacon of innovation in the world. I understand that Hacker News is frequented
by a lot of college age or early 20s hackers. Don't fall for the anti-
innovation, anti-mind, anti-science, anti-intellectual ideology that says
Apple is evil for inventing new things or putting the product and customer
first, and those who just ship ripoff products are to be commended.

Don't fall for the claims that inventing is useless, and that america is
destined to just be like china (Where everything we make is a ripoff of
something invented somewhere else.)

To paraphrase Margarat Thatcher: The problem with not inventing anything
yourself is, eventually you run out of other people's inventions to rip off.

In fact you can see this now: The android market is commoditized. Nobody is
innovating, and nobody is making any money. In fact, Apples commanding %56 of
the entire phone industries profits with only %5 of the _smartphones_ , while
most phones still aren't even smartphones. (this is why android marketshare is
surging, its becoming the new feature phone).

This is a significant lesson for people who want to do startups. I learned it
by trying to sell things on ebay when I was young:

If you don't have anything unique or innovative, you can only compete on
price. And that's a race to the bottom.

To the extent that innovative companies can succeed, it is good for the
startup economy. To the extent that anything innovative is ripped off, with no
recourse, then the larger companies will maintain dominance because newer
companies have nothing to compete with, and can't compete on economies of
scale. The more things go that way, the less viable startups become and the
less innovation society will have from which to benefit.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001:

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

>There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-
mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things
like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates
Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.)

Actually it's well demonstrated that you need to have money to make money. The
few cases you can site as exceptions are exceptions, and for every exception I
can point to a thousand (maybe a million?) people who work hard and are barely
making ends meet. And each and every one of those exception stories contains a
lot of luck. Claiming that hard work == success is insulting to all of the
smart people who have failed, and truly insulting to the millions who work
hard in ways that you're discounting as "work."

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001"_

It's much older. Multi-touch was invented in 1982, at the University of
Toronto [1]. After that, it took quite a bit more research until an actual
product was made that consumers could buy: in 1998, FingerWorks' launched its
line of multi-touch keyboards [2]. FingerWorks was later bought by Apple, in
2005.

As an aside: Microsoft's Surface was announced in 2007 [1] and works with
cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen.

[1] <http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html> (author works at
Microsoft, should be convincing enough to you)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks>

~~~
nirvana
Your argument is akin to claiming that whoever invented magnetic audio
recording on tapes didn't do anything innovative because Edison had already
invented the gramophone.

The paper you cite claims that people were working on multitouch at University
of Toronto. It is also true that touch panels (not multitouch) predate even
that, going as far back as the 1970s.

But none of this is relevant, and the fact that the Surface uses cameras
instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun.

Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in
its patents and used in the iPhone.

Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the
iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology.

I think the problem is that you guys have believed your own propaganda that
patents just cover ideas. They do not. Patents cover specific technological
inventions, methods and processes.

Thus, 1970 era touch panels, the displays at your movie theater, the surface
and everything driven with a stylus is as relevant to the invention of
multitouch as the gramophone is to the invention of magnetic recording. That
is to say, in the same broad field, but not examples of "prior art".

~~~
recoiledsnake
>Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the
iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology.

What about this one? Forward to about 2:30 if you're impatient.
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444>

~~~
Samuel_Michon
You linked to a TED tech demo. The actual product didn't come out [1] until
after the iPhone was in stores, and it cost $100,000.

That's not to say there weren't any multi-touch products before the iPhone,
just that this wasn't one of them.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/07/nieman-marcus-to-sell-
per...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/07/nieman-marcus-to-sell-perceptive-
pixels-interactive-media-wall)

------
ryandvm
Thiel is right. In 100 years, people are still going to be talking about
inventors like Ford and Edison. I doubt you'll find 22nd century
schoolchildren reading about the little company that made shiny, walled-garden
media players.

~~~
tptacek
Ford and Edison. You see the irony there, right?

~~~
mechanical_fish
Wikipedia on "incandescent light
bulb"(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb>):

 _In addressing the question of who invented the incandescent lamp, historians
Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior
to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison._

On "phonograph" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph>):

 _Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to Thomas Edison's
phonograph, Edison being the first to produce a device that could both record
and reproduce sound... [Charles] Cros's paleophone was intended to both record
and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the
time of Edison's successful demonstration of the Phonograph in 1877._

I won't bother to quote the enormous list of Henry Ford's predecessors that
appears in e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile>. I'd never do them
justice.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Okay, I take it back: _One_ link to a predecessor of Henry Ford, because the
story is just _too fun for words_ :

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

 _On the way, [Bertha Benz] solved numerous problems. She had to find ligroin
as a fuel, which was available only at apothecary shops so she stopped in
Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help
mend a chain at one point. Brakes needed to be repaired; in doing so Bertha
Benz invented brake lining. She also had to use a long, straight hairpin to
clean a fuel pipe, which had become blocked, and to insulate a wire with a
garter. She left Mannheim around dawn and reached Pforzheim somewhat after
dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by telegram. She drove
back to Mannheim the next day._

I can't believe that I haven't heard this story before. Note that at this
point in 1888 Henry Ford is still servicing steam engines; he'll start his
personal experiments in gasoline engines in earnest in 1893.

