
When Will This Low-Innovation Era End? - jnbiche
http://blog-admin.wired.com/opinion/2012/04/opinion-fox-net-innovation/
======
001sky
The issue is not innovation, per se. the Issue is more like "progress" or
improved lifestyles, culture, families, etc. The critique of the past 10 years
is that there has been plenty of <empty> innovation. Lifestyles are "worse",
despite more stuff. People are living in the same houses, but they are 3x as
expensive. The mobile phone was very useful, but the crackberry/iphone has
become more of a ball and chain, than a tool of freedom. The internet has
turned into a giant blinking neon light, meant to be stared at, so our
attention can be "leveraged" by advertsisers. Every thing that is meant to be
an improvement ("contextual, personalized content") has an orwellian
alternative case (GPS Tracking, DeepPacketInspection, rogue cookies). So the
issue is not "innovation" per se. It's innovation on the upside. Innovation
that is absent the downsides. Much (if not most) of the innovation in the past
10 years has been on these _downsides_. Thus, the things that are better
(ipods, retina displays, amazing batteries,macbook air, dslr, etc) are sort of
bitter sweet. [Flamesuit Donned!]

------
zizee
Just because there is a lot of attention paid to the instagrams of the world
does not mean there is nobody tackling big problems.

 _Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a
generation.”_

The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the
printing press.

Typed from my glowing sheet of glass, from my couch, to be shared with the
world.

~~~
derleth
> The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the
> printing press.

In the words of Jason Scott:

> It is not unreasonable to say that a person putting up a web page might have
> a farther reach and greater potential audience than anyone in the history of
> their genetic line.

<http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2402>

------
shortsightedsid
The article just doesn't apply for the developing world. The China, and India
of 1990 was completely different from what it is today.

Speaking from experience, 20 years ago most people in India did not have a
phone and it was impossible to get a home phone without string-pulling and
bribery. Now 50% of the population has a mobile phone; no bribes. 30 years
ago, Sugar was rationed and you could buy a 1 kg of Sugar for a household per
month. Now, there is plentiful Sugar.

Things that Developed countries take for granted - Fridges, Washing Machines,
Microwaves, Dining tables, TVs, personal transport (cars, motorcycles), better
access to health care, better access to education, simply did not exist or was
out of reach for most. I'm not saying that they are now available to everyone,
but the reach has expanded.

20 years the politicians made promises that Rice would be available at low
rates, now they make promises that TVs would be available at low rates.

If that's not a revolution, I wonder what is. Heck even electricity is still a
luxury in India.

------
thesash
This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's _excelent_ "How to see the future"[1],
addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always
nostalgic about some bygone golden age:

    
    
        ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. 
        This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the 
        Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-
        seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the 
        present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards 
        into the future.”
    
        He went on to say this, in 1969, the year of the crewed 
        Moon landing: “Because of the invisibility of any 
        environment during the period of its innovation, man is 
        only consciously aware of the environment that has 
        preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully
        visible only when it has been superseded by a new 
        environment; thus we are always one step behind in our 
        view of the world. The present is always invisible because 
        it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of 
        attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an 
        earlier day.”
    

He goes on to cite some examples of stuff that seems banal and boring because
we're just so used to it:

    
    
        There are six people living in space right now. There are
        people printing prototypes of human organs, and people 
        printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh
        and the human electrical system.
    
        We’ve photographed the shadow of a single atom. We’ve got
        robot legs controlled by brainwaves. Explorers have just
        stood in the deepest unsubmerged place in the world, a
        cave more than two kilometres under Abkhazia. NASA are
        getting ready to launch three satellites the size of
        coffee mugs, that will be controllable by mobile phone
        apps.
    
        Here’s another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more
        than 11 billion miles away, and it’s run off 64K of
        computing power and an eight-track tape deck.
    
        In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously
        unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the
        surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on
        Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this
        is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on
        your phone, because this is the present time and these
        things are happening. The most basic mobile phone is in
        fact a communications devices that shames all of science
        fiction, all the wrist radios and handheld communicators.
        Captain Kirk had to tune his fucking communicator and it
        couldn’t text or take a photo that he could stick a nice
        Polaroid filter on. Science fiction didn’t see the mobile
        phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass
        windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things
        happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn
        wizards.
    
        That, by the way, is what Steve Jobs meant when he said     
        that iPads were magical. The central metaphor is magic. 
        And perhaps magic seems an odd thing to bring up here, but 
        magic and fiction are deeply entangled, and you are all 
        now present at a séance for the future. We are summoning 
        it into the present. It’s here right now. It’s in the room 
        with us. We live in the future. We live in the Science 
        Fiction Condition, where we can see under atoms and across 
        the world and across the methane lakes of Titan.
    

[1]
[http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314&utm_source=buffer...](http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=79ce3)

~~~
mynameishere
The point is that the difference between 1900 and 1960 is fundamental on every
level.

Carriages -> Cars

Land Travel -> Aerospace

Iceboxes at best -> Modern refrigeration

Pen and Paper -> Computers

Newspapers -> Ubiquitous electronic media.

Living at the mercy of infectious diseases -> Antibiotics/vaccines.

Coal (at best) -> Nuclear

Outhouses -> Modern Plumbing and sanitation

Etc. You could make similarly great comparisons between 1840-1900.

What do we have now? Looking at atoms? WTF does that matter in any practical
sense? And even if you want to get sciency, it's clear that 1900-1960 was when
the big changes in physics occurred, at least since Newton.

All of the big _practical_ changes since 1960 have mainly served to isolate
us, as amusing as they might be.

~~~
InclinedPlane
In the future people will look back at comments like this and wonder how we
could be so blind. But that's because what will be obvious to them is not so
obvious to us. We are immersed in our history, we are distracted by flashy
short-term trends and comparatively blind to subtle, long-term trends. Partly
because we lack the foresight to see which trends will win out in the long
run.

However, let's look at how the very nature of the world has changed in the
last half century and how that might play out over the next few decades.

Let's look at the developed world. 50 years ago that was pretty much just the
US/Canada and Western Europe, with smatterings of incomplete industrialization
elsewhere. Today Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are unarguably
developed, first world nations. And the coastal parts of China as well as
Chile, Brazil, and several other countries are well on their way to that
status and will join it within the next decade or two.

Meanwhile, war is becoming less common, and average quality of life as well as
longevity is, overall, increasing everywhere in the entire world. This is an
unprecedented event in human history, we are becoming more peaceful,
wealthier, and healthier. And not just a small elite portion of the world, all
of it (see Hans Rosling's TED talk for more on that).

Let's look at trade. In 1960 trade was remarkably limited. The world
population was about 3 billion, gross world product was about 7 trillion USD
(compared to 70 trillion today). In between the world grew by about 2x and got
about 10x richer. Part of this is due to the invention of containerized
shipping, which brought about a revolution in international shipping,
increasing shipping tonnage by an order of magnitude or more. Today the total
value of goods being transported internationally on the oceans is twice the
value of the entire world economy in 1960.

Let's look at communications. Even in, say, 1980 the world was still a
relatively disconnected place. Most people on Earth had never made a single
phone call, and news of the world was still hard to come by. Today the world
is knit together by a world-spanning instantaneous communications network, and
the power of communication has been put into the hands of the world's
population. It is not unusual nor terribly expensive to carry on a
conversation in real-time with a person across the world, not just in the "1st
world" but in the "3rd world" as well. News from all parts of the world now
comes in the form of first hand reports and cell phone videos as much as it
does from reporters repeating accounts from interviewed locals.

And that revolution in communications that has largely taken root only in the
last decade has had a transformative effect on the world, and on geopolitics.
Look at the revolutions of late, how quickly they spread, how they are still
spreading, and how much they have overturned about the way we thought the
world worked. The geopolitical landscape of 2015 will be unrecognizable from
the perspective of 2005, and much of that is due to communication technology.

Let's look at business. In the US there has been an explosion of
entrepreneurship on a massive scale. Many of the largest and most influential
companies of today (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) were created not
just within the last half century but even within the last 30 or 20 years. And
new companies are sprouting up all the time (such as facebook). Meanwhile, a
great many people are acquiring the capability to work for themselves on their
own projects. The internet has made it that much easier for people to run
their own businesses. Musical artists have found out how to be successful
without signing on to a major label. Webcomic artists have discovered how to
make a living without working through the syndication companies or being
employees of large comic book corporations. Craftspeople have discovered how
to sell their wares directly to the public through etsy or ebay or their own
websites. And so many folks of many varying talents have taken their careers
on a sharp detour via crowd-funding systems such as kickstarter. Already
hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are flowing through this new
economy of self-made businesses, and it's growing at a fantastic pace. How
fundamentally will this change the economy? In the next 20 years will it be
more common for people to be their own boss and work as independent
contractors than to be employees of a large corporation?

Let's look at medicine. AIDS was discovered in the 1980s. Throughout all of
human history the only effective "treatment" for a lethal virus has been a
vaccine, and yet scientists managed to develop effective treatments for AIDS
within a matter of years. And today AIDS can be treated as a chronic illness.
And too our understanding of biology and biochemistry has exploded. We've
decoded the genome of not just homo sapiens but many other species and we've
only just begun to understand biology on that level. But we've been able to
experiment with amazing things, lab-grown organ replacements, genetic therapy,
etc. Today someone with insulin dependent diabetes can buy actual, human
insulin for a very affordable price. And this is because the gene to produce
that insulin has been taken from humans and placed into bacteria which are
then grown in vats and the insulin is extracted and purified. This is an
amazing, futuristic achievement, and yet it is bog standard ordinary for
today's world.

Let's look at technology and manufacturing. Computing power, of course, has
exploded, and it will continue to do so as we develop new technologies like
memristors and other breakthrough ideas. Manufacturing is in the midst of a
sea change, as computer powered CNC machine tools, 3D printing, and much more
are paving the way toward vastly accelerated cycles of development (whereby
the time-frame between coming up with an idea and seeing that idea borne out
in mass-production manufacturing has been shortened to a matter of weeks if
not days, in the near future that will be measured in a matter of hours or
minutes). And that will pave the way for fully automated manufacturing and
fully configurable manufacturing. Imagine if anyone could visit a website,
fill in a form, upload a few 3D models, pay a modest sum of money and have a
bulk shipment of manufactured goods that were defined by that data (say,
laptops, or smartphones, or bicycles, or automobiles) loaded onto a boat in a
matter of days. What happens when a company with, say, 5 employees can build
iPhones of the same quality and in sufficient volume to challenge Apple? What
happens to the undeveloped world when we can make factories that run on solar
power and bulk materials and output industrial goods (like tractors, cars,
refrigerators, power stations, and water purification equipment), or when
factories can produce factories themselves?

The world is a much different place than it was a half century ago, and it is
on track to become an astoundingly different place than we can scarcely
imagine. And the roots have been planted right here, right now.

P.S. Also, a tremendous amount of social change has happened in the last 50
years, both in the US and in the world. Much of that was enabled or assisted
by technological change. It's easy to miss this because when comparing across
time we tend to compare like with like, however we should remember that the
lives we are comparing to in the 1960s aren't necessarily average lives, they
are probably elite lives (e.g. straight christian white males with high-paying
jobs).

~~~
_lj
"In the future people will look back at comments like this and wonder how we
could be so blind."

Are you trying to suggest people are going to look back on your comment and
wonder how you were so blind? I'm kind of wondering that right now.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I think it's obvious what "this" I was referring too. However, I do include
myself and my post in that comment (which is why I said "we"). I have pointed
out some ways in which our world is changing and has changed, but I certainly
can't predict the future. Looking back from the perspective of the year 2040
there will no doubt be many trends that in retrospect are blindingly obvious
but are not apparent to me.

------
batgaijin
I love how people talk about stagnation and then check the stock prices on
their phones.

Nobody cares at all about mobile phones today; we take for granted that the
smart phones are simply the yuppie upgrade for the RAZR or whatever.

But they are still causing the most dramatic and unprecedented shift society
has ever seen, no questions about it.

Watch an old Star Trek episode. The main piece of technology isn't the ship,
it's the transponders.

tl;dr: look in your pocket before you spray the internet with small minded
thinking.

------
zeteo
Let's not confuse lack of visibility with absence. Most engineering these days
happens at invisible scales. An old railroad bridge might look impressive, but
the cell phone tower next door is actually a much more complex structure.
(You'd have to look at it with a microscope and a debugger, though.)

------
dgreensp
We are absolutely about to see it all pay off.

Let's not discount universal access to information, first of all. I'm 28 and
when I was in high school 10 years ago, it was right about the time you could
now find the quadratic formula by searching the Web, but before you could
Google how to write a resume, find a good doctor in your area, or read blogs
about developing better study habits. I think the world must have been a
little darker before the Google age.

Then there's universal distribution of software (the web, mobile devices) and
the relative ease of developing niche apps today. The transformation of the
world by (good) software is just beginning.

------
ojosilva
I think this is sort of a 80/20 situation, where the last 20% of the project
is taking 80% of the time to complete -- the project here being the
"migration" from the physical to the digital world. That's why change is not
so palpable. This project is a great one nonetheless: we're redefining how
humans relate to each other, how we handle and share knowledge, how we
collaborate. I think these changes affect society in a more profound way than
some great new device or technology.

------
acoyfellow
I honestly think that this line of thinking is now outdated. There will be a
mental revolution for those who believe in this, because the rest of the world
believes we are already in a revolution.. Stop being negative, make room for
the people who are ready to innovate. Quit hating, in less words. There are
generations who are adapting to this new environment, even if they don't
realize it.

I'd say this: stop focusing on the negative and start being creative-- this
article is just a bunch of bullshit excuses that will in itself slow
innovation. Feed the hungry, don't kick them when they are down. "We" young
entrepreneurs need inspiration now more than anything, not criticism. Big
ideas are going to happen, regardless of you believing in them (yet).

The tools we all have access to is unbelievable. If you don't feel like the
future is already here, and it's just prime time to start making the new
generation of innovations using these tools, you're going to be left in the
dust.

Innovation never goes anywhere it just needs time to adapt, I think.

Come and see me 5-10 years from now, and maybe I can say I told you so.

------
narrator
Looking at the comments, I find it kind of odd that this issue is polarizing.
What exactly is the nature of the divide between the extremes of the people
who think we've had no progress vs those who think we've had considerable
progress?

I would hazard a guess that the "substantial-progress" crowd is assuming that
physics and chemistry have been largely figured out and there's nothing else
to do there except tidying up some loose ends and working with what we've got
and the only place progress could possibly come from is through information
technology manipulating what we have.

The no-progress crowd are waiting for the next big fundamental breakthrough
like the discovery of the microbe, quantum physics, and electricity.

I still don't understand why the vitriol is thrown around on this one so hard
by the "substantial progress" crowd. Maybe they think that the "no-progress"
crowd are a bunch of lunatics for believing there are fundamental things that
we could discover that could significantly increase our understanding of the
fundamentals of physics, chemistry or biology.

------
hakaaak
The reason that I agree that there is low innovation is that innovation
eventually results in economic acceleration. Think industrial revolution.

However, innovation has not stopped if you consider that in the last century
we have Ford Motor company, fast food, marketing as industry, rock-and-roll,
Sony Walkman, Levis, iPod, etc. There is a ton of innovation.

But unfortunately, it needs to be _disruptive_ innovation that changes how
efficient we are and improves quality of life. Writing new webapps does not do
that. Designing new iPhones does not do that.

Something else to consider is that the time is ripe for something other than
technological innovation. What if we could better understand the world we live
in and come closer to God? What if we could overcome the 50/50 political
divide causing so much hate in our country from both sides? What if peace
could be reached with all countries? That would also be innovation, because we
can't seem to figure out a way to do it currently.

------
olefoo
The real lack of innovation is in the social and political structures we have
to live with. And those are a product of primate brains that evolve at a much
slower rate than our technological sophistication.

Right at the moment, the dominant political regime on this planet is still
concerned with areas of land under military hegemony, and is apparently
completely incapable of dealing with things like keeping this planet habitable
over the short term, much less the long term.

We have paleolithic brains dealing with state-of-the-art environmental
problems in the context of 17th century political institutions and 20th
century financial institutions in a society run by people who would like to
retreat to 12th century religious values because THE FUTURE IS SCARY AND
UNCERTAIN.

Like someone said, we are in one whole joojooflop situation here.

[1]. Joojooflop <http://www.zootle.net/afda/faq/e.shtml>

------
josephlord
Having globally usable handheld networked computers with location capability
and voice and video communication capabilities that is simple enough for the
average person to use is a pretty big innovation of the past decade.

Just look at the latest smartphones, they are amazing. That much computer,
network, sensor and display power in that size of a package is incredible and
real innovation even if it has been evolutionary over the last couple of
decades rather than a single point revolution.

It has made room for a massive amount of minor steps in app development
filling in the space created by the modern phone. There is still room for
improvement, more accurate location will open further possibilities

------
areyouserious
What is innovation? The author seems to focus to much on the dramatic or thing
that directly impact our lives. While there are a lot of things that don't
directly make our lives more meaningful (Halo,etc.), there are amazing
advances that have made living today so very exciting!!

Hand, face, arm, leg and ovarian transplants. (& others)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation#Timeline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation#Timeline_of_successful_transplants)

Better response to heart disease, (near) instant medical record sharing,
targeted cancer treatments, human genome, anti-smoking research & bans in 27
states, functional MRI, robots performing surgery
[http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/1...](http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/17594)

snopes.com gave people accurate so that we don't have to rely on crap
information- no matter how good it sounds.

Doctors can better diagnose patients thanks to information available on PDA.

GPS- now that's amazing. Google "GPS saves lives" seriously!

Cell Phones- also saves lives, makes contacting someone infinitely easier. How
did truckers know to call home if there was an emergency at home? Much more
difficult!

Ham Radios, Satellite Phones, hearing aids, pacemakers etc. Amazing devices
that have done so much for us!

All of the tiny details made it possible to disseminate information, keep
better contact perform incredible medical breakthroughs & decrease poverty
worldwide. (Cell phones, internet, square, etc. facilitate economic
development)

I'm an IT graduate. I look at the amazing inventions in my field. It feels
like they all came less than 4 years ago. (when I graduated)

Oh, I forgot to mention the Nobel prizes. (many are very impressive!)
Innovation is happening faster than it ever has before! In another 10 years,
we may say- poverty & consumer debt is decreasing systemically worldwide,
robots are plowing our fields & HIV has a vaccine! I enjoy the wonderful
present and look forward to our bright future!

------
EternalFury
The greatest innovation shall be human compassion and decency. The kind of
discovery that doesn't let half of the world starve in a vain pursuit of tech
gadgets. The kind of invention that will make it obvious that 47% of a
population is not aspiring to live any less freely than the other 53%. The
kind of transformation that will end all prejudices.

Alas, while we are great at opening Pandora's box, we totally fail at evolving
as spiritual beings.

------
pixie_
I believe it has been governments (societies) putting all its resources into
something that has been the driver of pushing things forward. Corporations are
experts at optimizing the status quo. Real progress takes real capital and
great amounts of risk and investment that won't see returns for decades if
ever.

------
arthurrr
Technology cannot solve the problems of the world, because the real problem is
human nature. Machiavelli got it right when he said that history repeats
because man's passion never changes. The world is nonlinear, everything is
cyclical. When history stops repeating, progress will have been made.

------
yessql
The world's 4th largest economy was over 40% powered by solar for two days in
May this year. I think we can consider the innovation in PV technology a game
changer that will impact the way we live greatly.

Imagine a world with 0 fuel costs, just capital costs.

------
effinjames
This era is a fuel towards next golden era. low tech with a very high profit,
we need as much resources to go to the next level. As an example -> google
mobile (android) + facebook + wikipedia, etc = Project Glass.

------
EternalFury
All efforts should be spent on finding ways to generate and store clean
energy. Instead, VCs keep funding Facebook and Google wannabes.

------
tlogan
We just need more of Einsteins, Nikola Teslas and Thomas Edisons less of
Zuckerbergs, Steve Jobs and Larry Elisons.

------
e0m
“Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum
of all knowledge.”

✓

~~~
effinjames
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/20/wikimedia_uk_scandal...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/20/wikimedia_uk_scandal/)

------
michaelochurch
I don't think the pain point for a lot of us is that there isn't much
innovation. It's that most of us don't get to take part, nor to guarantee
ourselves a fair share of what innovation produces. Most people are barely at
the table, without any role or say in the innovation that is going on (which
is probably more than at any other time in history).

We have one tiny minority (well-connected political and economic elites) that
captures most of the value generated by any change, even though they produce
absolutely nothing, and often they get to call the shots, even though they
fuck up every decision they make. We have another small minority that is
socially inferior and gets less direct benefit out of the changes, but drives
them and thereby gets to _participate_ in the current round of innovation.

Then there are the 99-plus percent who are effectively non-players, some well-
compensated and most not, but all at the mercy of forces that are not just out
of our control (no one actually _controls_ them, no single person has anywhere
close to that level of power in this world) but over which we have no
influence and no role in the driving.

The angriest among us are the "Cognitive 1 Percent", the ones who know we
could be making these important decisions better than the people (politicians,
corporate CEOs, VC kingmakers) currently able to make them, the entrenched
players being above-average but not at our level.

It feels like there's no innovation. There's plenty, in comparison to any
other time in history. There just isn't much of a role in it for any but the
most well-situated people.

~~~
ippisl
Isn't this normal ? It was the same with the industrial revolution.Those new
innovation enabled shitty factories on a mass scale.

One could even say it was the same in the beginning of the automotive
revolution: In the 30's cars we're nice and all , but the new powerful motors
and radios enabled nazism and tanks and blietzkrieg more than prosperity.

Maybe it's common : Some get fast insight on the use of new technologies and
create huge inequality, but with time and struggle societies adapt and better
use those technologies.

------
marshallp
It's ending right about now

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-
del...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-delicate-
touch.html)

[http://arxivindex.blogspot.ca/2012/09/new-form-of-
universal-...](http://arxivindex.blogspot.ca/2012/09/new-form-of-universal-
computation.html)

[http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/nanoelectronics-and-
tissu...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/nanoelectronics-and-
tissues-0827.html)

~~~
indiecore
That's not an ending, that's a continuation of the progress we've been making
for decades. Someone just wanted to write a bitchy article in Wired because
they aren't in Minority Report yet.

~~~
marshallp
I have to disagree a little there. There's been huge progress in communication
but actual physical things (household robots or medical advances) not much.
The linked-to articles (as well drones/robocars) show a beginning of a
breakthrough in that sphere.

edit: I agree it's basically a continuation (cheaper) but you can say the same
about internet (made in 60s but breakthrough in late 90s)

