
When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End? - Dn_Ab
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/04/opinion-fox-net-innovation
======
bo1024
This is what he's _really_ complaining about:

> _More prosaically, the 15 years since the internet became a major part of
> our lives has been marked here in the U.S. — birthplace of the internet — by
> mostly disappointing economic growth._

It seems like an old-fashioned viewpoint to conflate innovation and creativity
with economic growth. If we're seeing more innovation, we must be spending
more money, right? Well ... not so fast. Consider a classic Internet
innovation, the search engine. It opens up worlds upon worlds of information
to the common person's fingertips. But it only rarely convinces people to
_buy_ something extra. (It does make buying things easier, which is a big
reason that ad revenues are so big, but it probably doesn't _grow_ consumption
all that much[0].)

For a better example, look at Wikipedia. Direct economic impact, measured in
GDP growth? Hard to say. But it's tough to argue that Wikipedia isn't an
awesome example of human creativity and collaboration, or that it hasn't made
a big positive impact.

My argument: the Internet era has just made us more efficient. We can do more
with less money. Economic growth is not desirable in and of itself -- only
when it is a signal of increasing quality of life. The Internet has enabled
greatly increased quality of life _without_ an increase in spending.

[0] (edit) Wild guess on my part. Could be wrong.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I think this quote captures his implied response to your point:

» _for decades, electricity had little effect on industrial productivity as
manufacturers simply swapped out older energy sources for electric power but
changed nothing about how they made things. It was only as new factories were
built that took advantage of the unique properties of electric motors that a
productivity boom ensued._

Wikipedia, Google, et al are innovations in the way the stock market or ECN
were - undeniable leaps forward in the factors of production, i.e. allowing
tangible innovation to happen.

These innovations, the latter in capital and former in information, hold their
social value in the tangible progress they enable. What is enabled has not
materialised with the force that was expected.

This will be an unpopular point on HackerNews, but most people live in the
tangible world. That is why the iPhone and iPad have propelled Apple so far,
so fast - it is a clear manifestation of tangible technological progress. The
author laments that these factors of innovation are getting so much attention
intrinsically at the expense of follow-on, arguably harder, tangible
innovation.

~~~
henrikschroder
> These innovations, the latter in capital and former in information, hold
> their social value in the tangible progress they enable. The author's point
> is that we are still waiting for that tangible progress that these
> information multipliers were expected to spore.

Ebay? Etsy? Kickstarter? Hipmunk? Netflix? Amazon?

When it comes to commerce and trade, the internet has definitely had a real,
tangible effect on our societies. The above examples are just some services
that make it easier and cheaper to connect buyers and sellers, and that have
rationalized delivery-chains which in turn led to massively cheaper prices for
end consumers.

Finding things to buy has never been easier. Finding buyers for your stuff has
never been easier. Finding the globally cheapest price for stuff has never
been easier.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Hmm, I suppose I'm wiggling a bit here, but I'm tryin to pin down why, after
quitting a job on Wall Street and checking out Silcon Valley I left with a
feeling that the missions are largely superfluous (I'm less interested in
_delighting_ people than profoundly changing their realities).

Maybe tangible is the wrong word; perhaps innovating on the commanding heights
of the economy is more apt. By this measure Google _does_ qualify as a
fundamental innovation as it retraces the market for information. The others,
energy, materials, transportation, military, etc. are seeing incremental
innovation but not yet breakthroughs. Exceptions may be held as graphene and
carbon fibre, self-driving cars, automated weapons systems, etc.

Disclaimer: I am not Malcolm Gladwell; I love being delighted and don't want
to weigh down one type of innovation under another. But I do think there are
different types of innovation and that we need a balance. The balance today
seems to be skewed, probably due to regulatory factors that will even
themselves out in inter-generational and inter-superpower timescales, but
skewed nonetheless.

------
daleharvey
I find it quite hard to understand the reasoning of people that downplay the
affect the internet has had on our lives.

I dont fall out of contact with the people I grew up with (at home or
university / past jobs), I am flying out tomorrow to meet with good friends
all of whom I would have never known if it wasnt for the internet, my career
would not exist without the internet.

The worlds knowledge is now categorised conveniently into a website which you
can download and carry around wherever you go, that was science fiction 30
years ago. Almost the entire population of the world has access to enough
knowledge and resources that they can become a leading expert in pretty much
any field they want to.

Sure we dont have our promised jetpacks and its easy to be dismissive because
some people post inane stuff on twitter, but I find it really hard to believe
the last 50 years is some form of lull in innovation, I cant imagine any other
period of time being more exciting to live in.

~~~
benihana
We have computers in our pockets that send a signal to space to locate us
anywhere on the planet within a couple of feet, then tell us how to get where
we want to go. We can communicate instantly, _instantly_ with people on the
other side of the planet. We have a network of satellites orbiting our planet
giving us constant information about our world. Not many people predicted
these things in popular culture/popular sci fi.

These kinds of articles always seem like old people complaining that the
future didn't turn out the way they expected. Instead of accepting that the
biggest innovative breakthrough in the past 50 years was a global
communication and information network, they complain that there hasn't been
anything good happening.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
The only problem with that criticism is that Neil Stephenson has known more
about the internet earlier than nearly anyone commenting on this story. One of
the central activities of 'team hero' in Cryptonomicon is laying undersea IP
links. If you've read his books, it's obvious he has thought deeply about how
the expansion of the internet affects everyone's lives.

You are entirely missing what he is saying.

~~~
daleharvey
Instead of arguing by a proxy authority, why dont you explain what he 'really'
meant, since it read fairly clearly to me

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Despite classic logics denial of authority, once you subordinate logic to
observation (Bayes) then authority is actually a good positive indicator. Lack
of authority however is a poor negative indicator. Long story short, authority
only adds support indirectly, but that's useful more often than many would
like to admit.

I think you're simplifying this into a pro/con dilemma. Stephenson is
obviously very pro internet. So what he's pointing out is really a lack of
ambition in using the new computational and communication toolkit we've built.
Digital economies are fundamentally different, despite the bubbles using this
to hype absurdly bad traditional business plans, this basic characteristic
remains. We have not even begun to explore the implications of that.

We're too busy gratifying the desires born of an older world.

------
Groxx
> _Even beyond the technological challenges, there are lots of other obstacles
> to change. Stephenson, who has “devoted a shocking amount of time” lately to
> learning about alternative space-launch technologies, said at MIT that “the
> reason none of them happen turns out to be insurance.”_

I submit that this (and related barriers) may be the primary reason for a lack
of crazy innovation. Even though claiming a lack of innovation ignores the
crazy amount of social changes the internet has brought us at every level.

Innovating in software right now runs the risk of patent lawsuits because you
came up with something that someone else came up with.

Innovating in hardware right now runs the risk of falling afoul of a bajillion
safety regulations you may not even be able to find out about.

Innovating in content right now runs the risk of being squashed by the older
players (RIAA, MPAA, B&N, etc) because they don't like they way you looked in
their direction.

Innovation is still _happening_ , but yes, it could be faster if we'd just
chuck all that and say "do whatever". The wild-west of creativity. We'd get
our personal jetpacks and flying cars in a small handful of years at worst.
But then again, there's another article on the front page that shows the
danger of allowing this, the 'tiny, cheap, and dangerous' iphone charger:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903705> . (tl;dr: the $2.79 charger
might kill you)

Honestly, I doubt we can have both innovation and safety. Ever. There is very
likely a happier middle ground than where we are now, but they're almost
precisely opposed to each other.

------
joelhaus
The author begins by making the case that innovation was at a peak in the
early 20th century, but has been largely stagnant at the start of the 21st
century. It's a provocative question, but I believe it's a symptom of a real
underlying cause. To answer him more directly: _Innovation will ramp up when
the influence of moneyed interests on legislative priorities begins to wane._

An interesting and, I believe, a truly important thing happened for innovation
at the beginning of the 20th century, the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. He
demanded transparency from food suppliers, broke up Standard Oil and worked
hard to restrain the power and influence of large corporations. We need
another T.R. for innovation to thrive.

In just this past year, there have been numerous anti-competitive legislative
initiatives that we can point to. Each one lobbied for and backed by
entrenched oligopolies that are actively trying to put the clamps on
innovation. This is happening at both the federal (PIPA/SOPA, CISPA, patent
wars, AT&T/T-Mobile Merger) and local level (Bans on Municipal Broadband).

In his book, "The Master Switch", Tim Wu tells a great story about a device
invented at Bell Labs capable of recording a callers voice if the attached
phone was not answered. The year was 1934, but the magnetic recording tape,
used in answering machines and computer storage devices, did not become widely
available until decades later. The AT&T monopoly chose to keep this new
technology a secret, fearing that it would cannibalize their profitable
business model. If nothing else, this story demonstrates the type of
bureaucratic mindset that prevents entrenched corporate interests from making
the kind of leaps that come from hungry entrepreneurs and government funded
research. As a reader of HN, I would guess that this is already clearer to you
than most.

------
DanielN
The problem of "low innovation" in relation to the internet seems to be a
problem of infrastructure.

Building Google lead to building Google maps which is now leading to building
a self driving car which is a problem that when/if it is solved will save
millions of lives and billions of dollars.

Not a perfect example, but it is an instance of not being albe to solve
important problems without the necessary infrastructure.

~~~
DanBC
That's an excellent example.

Another example is lack of cash - governments are not doing things like going
to space.

Moving cash into the hands of private people has allowed those people to start
exploring space.

But where are the other examples? What other companies are doing similar
things? This isn't just rhetorical. I'm sure plenty of companies are doing
exciting things that don't get decent reporting. (I guess folding@home is one
example.)

~~~
ippisl
Caedium is building an easy to use, cloud based Computational flow
dynamics(CFD) simulation tool[0]

Computer aided engineering tools in the cloud might be the missing link
between the internet and real life innovation. They could extremely reduce the
price of of a (simulated) first prototype , and enable entry to small or crazy
ideas.

But the major tool vendors don't hurry to offer affordable tools in the cloud,
because their revenue models works differently[1]. There's probably a place
for a few start-ups there.

[0]<http://www.symscape.com/blog/cfd-azure-cloud> [1]<http://caewatch.com/cae-
in-the-cloud-just-hot-air/>

------
blackhole
I think this article is misguided in that there has been lots of innovation in
the tech sector that has been overshadowed by silly things like "Instagram"
that solve "cat picture problems" due to startup culture. The public face of
innovation has not been dealing with hard problems, but people are working on
them. There are several potential wide-ranging cancer treatments and someone
came up with a potential cure for the common cold.

Our educational system and our culture must change if we are to get into a
period where there is widespread innovation in dealing with hard problems
instead of cat pictures. The internet will be a crucial part of that, and in
the future, we will recognize the internet as being a source of cat pictures
before we figured out how to use it to unlock our own potential.

------
zerostar07
\- Maybe the jetpack won't be needed _because_ the internet makes it easier to
do work without the need to commute (a way of work familiar to many HN readers
i guess).

\- The mars colony would prove a point more than being a revolution nowadays
(same reason why we don't return to the moon much often).

\- We 're not really worried about lack of energy sources either, because our
sun will be bright enough for long, and the relevant science is known for
almost a century

\- Our chores been taken care by technology enough it seems, so we 're now
feeding our brains. It's not very visible externally as the industrial
transformation of the earth was, but the human brain has been upgraded
significantly and irreversibly by the instant access to all the world's
information.

I thought the article would be about why internet innovation is not that so
fast paced anymore... i was wrong.

------
colomon
I _hate_ this "low innovation" meme. Seriously?

Imaginary example, but real tech: Suppose I remember the first half of an
Irish reel I heard somewhere, but can't remember the name or where I heard it.
In 1980, trying to track it down would involve months (maybe years) of asking
every musician I met if they knew it, hunting through obscure books of music,
and if I found a good solid lead, perhaps an expensive international phone
call to order a recording of it from Ireland.

Today? I could play the tune into an app on my phone and within seconds know
its name, have multiple different sources for downloading (free) sheet music,
and in another couple of minutes have purchased and downloaded multiple
professional recordings of it.

Two things about this: 1) It's a net negative to GDP. Before I would have
spent lots of money on a phone call, a full album, and overseas shipping, now
it costs me $1 to get the one track I want. My personal consumer surplus from
the new arrangement is really impressive, but the money and time I save
doesn't get calculated into the economic figures these people are looking at.

2) The benefit is mostly to the long tail. You've always been able to easily
buy Top 40 albums pretty much wherever you were. But now buying any genre you
can imagine is easier than buying Top 40 was 32 years ago.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"1) It's a net negative to GDP"_

I agree with everything but the above. As you say in your example, that chore
_rarely gets done_ in 1980. Today, there can be multiple transactions of this
type, done easily, everyday.

~~~
colomon
Hmm. Speaking personally, I don't think my music-buying has more than doubled
the number of tracks I purchase in a year from 1994 (first year with a full
time job, still had to buy from brick-and-mortar stores) until today.
Considering how much CDs cost then versus MP3s today, I wouldn't be surprised
if my absolute dollar spending has stayed about the same. (Before correcting
for inflation!)

Maybe the right way to say this is, I'm getting at least twice as much
personal value for the same amount of GDP?

------
k-mcgrady
It's certainly an interesting perspective on things. I would argue that the
internet has had an impact relative in scale to that of electricity or the car
but it is true that things seem to have stalled.

Instead of working on world changing technologies using the amazing tools we
have at our disposal we are building hundreds of photo sharing apps, check in
apps, and social networks in the hope of a big exit (I guess Twitter &
Facebook have changed communication so there are some exceptions).

I don't think this just applies to science/technology though. If you look at
culture (music and art specifically) we are also in a bit of a slump compared
to the early/mid 20th century.

It could be that this is a cyclical thing and societies naturally go through
periods of rapid innovation and creation, and and other periods where change
is minor.

Nb: It's easy to call out the author for being a hypocrite (why doesn't he do
something world changing?) but that's not very productive. I have just agreed
with him but I don't think I'm going to be the one who creates the next great
invention. I'm sure most people want to change the world but it's easier and
less risky to build a simple, high growth app or product with a high chance of
making them a lot of money.

------
gdubs
The 4th paragraph is strikingly similar to an exchange between the characters
Josh and Leo on _The West Wing_ :

 _Leo McGarry_ : My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-
five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the
Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.

 _Josh Lyman_ : The personal computer...

 _Leo McGarry_ : A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography?
Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

------
nvk
What a stupid article, short, vague and resentful.

Most industries are getting disrupted and mainstream doesn't notice. The
ripple effect takes a long time to reach incumbents – they can still get loans
and legislations catered to keep them afloat for a few more years.

meh.

------
pyrhho
It seems disingenuous that this article completely ignores Google as a source
of innovation in the last 15 years. A company which (pretty successfully)
organizes the entirety of human knowledge, and lets you query it in
milliseconds? Sounds like some pretty serious innovation to me...

~~~
protomyth
Not quite disagreeing, but from his (an end-user's) point of view, how is
Google search different than Alta Vista or Lycos before it?

~~~
k-mcgrady
This is a very good point. Google is more accurate, and faster, but in the end
it does the same thing. It helps the user find information on the web. It's
not a great new idea, it's an improvement on an existing idea.

~~~
pyrhho
Sometimes a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative difference. For
example, motorcycles are just faster horses (in some ways worse, like for off-
roading), but you could hardly argue they are the same thing. I would argue
that google is substantially more useful than altavista, or dogpile, ever
were.

~~~
rory096
And ultimately Altavista and Dogpile are irrelevant, because neither existed
just a few years before Google. Web search is revolutionary; search engines
before Google were just halting steps on the way. That is, the contention
isn't that Google revolutionized _web search_ , but that web search
revolutionized _the world_.

------
IsaacL
I actually disagree with most of the comments here, and agree with the
article. I recently had the same realisation that the article author did: that
much more innovation seemed to have happened in the years 1870-2010 than the
years 1972-2012. [http://blog.i.saac.me/post/based-on-the-exhaustion-of-
opport...](http://blog.i.saac.me/post/based-on-the-exhaustion-of-
opportunities-economic-growth-in-developed-countries-will-end-sometime-
after-2030/)

I also degree with the people saying that the current legal system is the
problem; in fact I don't think there's any way to speed up innovation at all.
I think we're started to reach the limit of wealth-generating opportunities.
The train, the telegraph, electricity, cars, factories -- these revolutionised
people's lives. I think we're now getting close to peak "innovation" -- it's
getting harder and harder to find new ways to seriously improve people's
lives. Smartphones and the internet have changed people's lives, too, but
they're only major changes of the last few decades.

Now, a fair response might be -- we still don't have a cure for cancer! We
still haven't colonised space! We still haven't built an AI! Nanorobots! 3D
printing! And people are working on all those problems. And technologically,
yes, they're much more complex and advanced than anything built in the
industrial revolution.

But look at it from an economic point of view -- and I'm talking about the
foundation of economics. Economics is based on _value_ ; human value. Stuff
people want, as pg said.

I want a box on my desk that can print useful objects, but probably not as
much as my great-great-grandfather wanted to be able to heat his home without
having to burn things. We want a cure for cancer, but not as much as past
generations wanted a cure for cholera, typhoid or the bubonic plague.

That's why processers keep getting faster but economic growth keeps slowing.
Technology advances exponentially, but human wealth grows logistically. The
natural limit is the limit of human happiness. Example: World economic growth
is mostly driven by developing countries playing catch up to the West's living
standards. Heck, even Adam Smith himself said that economic growth would only
last a few centuries.

I guess each new iPhone app or Facebook game does make people marginally
happier, the entertainment value does have economic value. But again, this is
scraping the barrel of value creation. Are there still ways to majorly improve
people's lives out there? Possibly, we're definitely not in utopia yet, but I
think we'll need a new definition of wealth to get there.

I should really write up the above ideas into a proper blog post soon. Would
be interested to hear people's opinions first.

~~~
johncarpinelli
The innovations of the past century were easier for amateur inventors to build
without capital. Think of the Wright Brothers - a couple of bicycle makers
built the first powered aircraft.

Could the equivalent pair of bicycle mechanics build the first reusable
spaceship or electric flying car? Building a new space launch system will cost
$500m+. Neither governments nor large aerospace firms are willing to take
large risks with this amount of money. Incremental improvements to proven
systems are much easier to justify.

I think crowd-funding and the Internet will lead to a new boom in innovation.
The Pebble watch is a good example. The VC's turned them down, and now the
public has pre-purchased $7m of Pebble watches in two weeks.

We need new forms of risk capital for inventors. VCs and governments are not
going to fund enough high risk innovation. They both rejected my pitch for
electric aviation saying it was "too ambitious for a startup"
(<http://electrictakeoff.com>).

~~~
ippisl
What about simulation ? wouldn't some kind of precise simulation of this idea
would decrease risk, improve the design and be much cheaper to make than a
first prototype ?

And then it would be much easier to get investment ?

~~~
stcredzero
What about insurance based on simulation?

------
Silhouette
I don't think the Internet is the problem. Rather, it is an unfortunate
catalyst for certain negative effects and serves to amplify others.

One such effect is that many political and legal systems in the West are
broken. The general population is apathetic because their voices are so
readily ignored by those in power, and special interest groups call the shots.
That results in things like an excessively burdensome intellectual property
regime, which instead of promoting the development of new ideas and the
creation of new products and services by those with meaningful contributions
to make, often serves to defend the dying business models of entrenched old
players against competition from new players, while in practice offering
little benefit to those new players in return because they lack the resources
to exploit any advantages they might theoretically have.

Then you combine the resulting culture of resentment by consumers with
technology to share creative works instantly, and you not only have a recipe
for promoting piracy rather than providing the market with more constructive
alternatives that reward the people whose hard work produces things we value
(but not enough to bother paying for them, apparently), you also create an
over-reaching sense of entitlement in society.

Another negative effect is the kind of education system that we have in many
places today where the idea seems to be that no child can be seen to fail, yet
it is considered somehow elitist to single out children at the top end of the
academic bell curve for any kind of special treatment that would help them to
take advantage of their gifts. Here in the UK, for example, we've seen an
obvious reduction in the breadth and rigour of exams for at least a
generation, and there is a kind of inverse snobbery about selective schools
or, worse, schools that charge fees. Of course, those private schools can also
use their greater financial resources to employ better educated and trained
teachers, provide teaching in smaller groups, and otherwise exploit
opportunities to offer a better education to their pupils, but we're supposed
to ignore that because if we can't educate all of our children to that
standard then damn it we're not going to educate anyone to that standard.
Naturally, instead of recognising the obvious flaws in all of this and doing
something about it, successive governments and educational institutions seem
more concerned with being apologists for the situation, defending this year's
school leavers and graduates, and pretending they only tolerate academic high-
fliers.

So now we have 50% of the population going to university and, ignoring the
significant but still relatively small proportion who now drop out before
graduating, every other person has at least a bachelor's degree, and then when
they leave university they expect that the same kinds of jobs will be waiting
for all of them as were waiting for graduates a generation ago when perhaps
5-10% of the population got the same qualification. The reality is more likely
to be a crash course in customer service management with practical training
provided in a fast-moving environment (or flipping burgers, as we used to call
it). This breeds further resentment, complaints about the high unemployment
rate, and so on. Oh, and it also means that many children whose gifts are not
academic but who might have made excellent tradesmen or carers or artists or
any number of other socially valuable (and often quite financially lucrative,
too) roles are pressured into getting certificates that will never be of any
real use to them and working 9-5 (sorry, 8-5 or 9-6) in a dead-end office
admin job. Did I mention the resentment problem?

There's a whole load more: raising at least one generation with very little
respect for anything, the rapid erosion of privacy, the paranoia of
governments about anything that might even resemble a possible threat to
national security like studying physics, chemistry or engineering, and the
list goes on. But this is already a very long post so I won't go into any more
areas in detail.

We know these are problems. Our political and legal systems are broken. Our
education systems and childcare are broken. _Everyone knows_ these things are
broken, and a lot of people have a very clear idea about why, but the system
works to prevent those people from getting into positions where they can fix
it. And so, instead of encouraging the people with the big ideas to share
them, and the people with the practical talents to design better tools and
build great new things, and the people with social skills to co-ordinate and
encourage all of this, we are breeding new generations who have no concept
that anything worth doing requires hard work and commitment, and whose total
career aspirations are to climb the middle management ladder as fast as
possible (or just to stay alive and out of jail, depending on the luck of the
draw).

The Internet didn't cause these problems. It just makes it easier than ever
for us to see them, and it provides a stronger incentive than ever for vested
interests to clamp down on anyone innovative enough to pose a threat to their
bottom line.

The one comfort I have is that the Internet is almost certainly also the way
those vested interests will also be brought down eventually. The Powers That
Be have all kinds of resources to throw at problems they don't like to make
them go away. In contrast, we're only just learning to use grassroots
activism, collective funding models, the ability to share knowledge and ideas
freely with like-minded people all around the world, and the ability to share
educational resources crafted by the smartest educators on the planet, on the
kind of scale that the Internet allows. It will take time to understand these
things, and to fix the problems that are getting in the way of progress, but
there are always going to be enough smart and interested people in the world
to sow the seeds of change, and while they may not rise to prominence in
politics or business this year or next, in the Internet age there are other
ways to get things done. We just haven't learned to get the right people to
use them yet.

~~~
J3L2404
Bullshit. This utopian claptrap shows how out of touch nerds have become with
reality. Everyone is being tricked into liking things - they like them, you
don't, get over yourself, there is no conspiracy.

~~~
Silhouette
The thing is, not everyone is being tricked into liking things. In fact,
opinion polls consistently show that _most_ people _don't_ like a lot of the
factors I mentioned. The problem is that the people who supposedly represent
the rest of us often don't behave in a way that truly reflects what the
general public wants, because the inherent pressures in today's political and
media complex push them in other directions.

------
atarian
I'm astonished that people think the Internet-era is low innovation. It's only
been twenty years and we've gotten so much out of it (social networking,
location-based services, real-time updates/news, vast pool of information).

I don't know about you guys but I think anyone who lived in the past would
kill to be in this era.

------
rachelbythebay
This reminds me of a story from a few years back. In short, the greatest minds
of a generation are selling advertising (or are scamming investors). Who's
left after that?

------
SkyMarshal
Q: When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End?

A: Imho, when innovation and production of material goods is as democratized
by 3D Printing and similar technologies [1] as knowledge innovation and
production was by the Internet.

I'm looking forward to the day the impedance mismatch between knowledge
creation and tool/product creation is much reduced from the current state.

Good summary [1] by the Economist for anyone who hasn't read it.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3895690>

------
lcargill99
We have not dealt with the social effects of advertising-driven television,
much less the Internet.

Empirically, change _DID_ slow down a great deal with the advent of the
Internet. If you listen to the hope buried in the regret of Pink Floyd's
"Division Bell" ( which specifically refers to the Usenet postings of Publius
) can you feel anything but a great sadness for what might have been? Remember
Usenet? It was amazing, for a while. Then they turned away...

------
danmaz74
"Or, to look at it another way, until the prime example of an innovative major
corporation ceases to be Procter & Gamble, we probably aren’t in a truly
innovative era. (Tide to Go is awesome, but it’s not exactly the transistor.)"

Please, this is such a strawman... the most valuable company in the world is
now Apple. Wether you like it or not, tell me that it isn't an innovative
company.

------
moocow01
I think we really need to talk about what innovation means because its
liberally thrown around everywhere these days. Taking the more conservative
meaning of innovation...

The internet is an innovation in itself - but what is being built on it is the
--application-- of the innovation of the internet, and usually these internet
services are not true innovations in and of themselves.

That doesn't mean internet services aren't useful or progressive - it just
that I'm very bearish on seeing huge truly paradigm changing innovations on
the scale of space flight, nuclear, etc pop out of the "internet sector".

What the internet and the services being built on it are really good at is
taking existing services and processes and streamlining them to be easier and
less costly. We can communicate, distribute, and automate so many things
because of the internet and whats being built.

Thats the internet sector's form of innovation - I think you just need to
qualify what definition of innovation that fits.

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james4k
There is simply a lower signal to noise ratio in regards to innovation. And
yes, while there is a lot of noisy low-innovation internet companies, there
are still more strong innovators now than there were 10 or 20 years ago. There
is a low barrier to entry to the tech industry, and with that a great spectrum
of the level of impact they make, and yet the opportunity and ease of access
to an audience is greater than ever before.

Nothing like this has ever been able to happen. Innovation is continuing at an
exponential rate, and I would hope Justin Fox would realize this as he books a
last minute hotel via mobile app, rekindles a long lost friendship from
school, and slips his tiny 90s-grade supercomputer into his pocket. All while
selling his hobby romance novelas on his web marketed e-commerce site.

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stretchwithme
As if you could compare the creative process for different innovations on a
spreadsheet.

I heard someone talking about how innovative Bell Labs was. Which actually
collected a 1 or 2 percent charge on every phone bill for decades. Well, you
BETTER deliver something if you're sucking up that kind of money.

I'm more inclined to thin that people are mentally compressing the past and
comparing it to how slowly this moment seems to be going by. Of course it
feels like nothing significant is happening.

The reality is that we are all learning about whats going on much faster than
every before.

Maybe we aren't coming up with things that are truly unique because we are not
as isolated anymore, just as we probably won't be encountering any new
languages from here on out.

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kiba
Innovation don't happen in certain industries are probably because of a
dysfunctional social environment within that system.

What prevent us from innovating is not so much intelligence but social
configuration of our society at that particular sector.

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kirk21
Guess one of the problems is that it takes often a decade before a technology
is mature and 'domesticated' by its users. You see sth on engadget and think
you'll have it in your hands the next day but it takes years before you see it
again so you have the feeling it takes ages before sth changes.

On a related note: it always strikes me that people devote a lot of time and
money to sports and celebrities while cool tech is ignored. Imagine that all
that time/money was devoted to science...

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mkr-hn
The technology that will power the next round of innovation is under
development on uninspiring projects. Think about how far browser technology
has advanced in just the last few years. We're only just now starting to apply
the processing and communication capacity created by the .com boom.

We need a break to appreciate how far we've come at least once a century. And
this break is about to end. Appreciate while you can. We're about to see a
repeat of the '80s, '90s, and '00s.

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stcredzero
Neal Stephenson is writing a story based on this proposal to enable SSTO by
building 20km high steel towers.

<http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003AIPC..654..290L>

Basically, this is just looking at what is possible, eschewing the
hypothetical advance, then running with it. This is also where SpaceX is
finding success.

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andrewfelix
I would argue that what we perceive to be a slow down of innovation is
actually the stark contrast to what we witnessed during the post-war and cold
war period. That was an unusually amazing period of technological achievement
largely driven by an arms race and idealogical competition between two super
powers.

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protomyth
If the prevailing revenue source is advertising, it limits the type of
startups that are viable.

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paulsutter
It's really up to each of us to aim higher, solve a large problem. Peter Thiel
does a much better job characterizing the problem than this author. Peter also
offers solitons.

It's worthwhile to encourage everyone to aim higher. But this article comes
off as a rant.

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ericflo
When Will This Low-Quality Article Era End?

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rmATinnovafy
History takes time to be written.

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ilaksh
'Even beyond the technological challenges, there are lots of other obstacles
to change. Stephenson, who has “devoted a shocking amount of time” lately to
learning about alternative space-launch technologies, said at MIT that “the
reason none of them happen turns out to be insurance.”'

I think that the economic model and related institutions (and the social
model) are actually antagonistic towards the application of technology. I
learned that mostly from Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph et al. I disagree with
their solution in that they are talking about a centralized control system,
but most of Fresco's ideas I think are correct. He just formed his theory
before the research came out on how decentralized distributed systems are more
robust.

So I don't think you can do away with money like the ZM people suggest, BUT
you do need to be aware that there are quite a few important problems with the
economic model, for instance the way that automation eliminates employment and
therefore the consumer base. Look up the Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project and
you can see all of the arguments. Where I differ is in my solution. I think
its important to automate and move away from the consumer driven infinite
growth ownership/labor model but I think that once we do that, rather than
centralizing and homogenizing automated systems, we just need better
information distribution, common data formats and exchange. We need to have a
more unified view of the real world and to be able to easily exchange
information about it holistically. But it is crucial at the same time to allow
for diverse solutions to shared problems. That is necessary to make the system
robust, allow it to evolve, keep people sane, etc.

I think that representative government, if it was ever really supposed to be
representative, has proven to be subservient to money. Also governments have a
monopoly on force. I see governments as entrenching moneyed power and enabling
its use of force against those with less money. Essentially money is a point
system that represents power. I don't think we want to do away with the point
system, at least its a way of keeping score. However, we do need to change the
nature of money and correct the fundamental problems with belief systems such
as the Social Darwinistic viewpoint held by most people. There is no group of
truly superior individuals who deserve to have vastly more wealth and control
than most people, or a large group of mostly worthless humans who don't really
deserve to live. However, I really believe that most people deep down believe
both of those things. Those beliefs support the current social framework,
which as I said is antagonistic towards the application of technology, as well
as creating massive inequality.

So "economics" needs to become a real science by first accepting a more up-to-
date non-eugenicist model of humanity and its place in the universe as well as
integrating physical and social science. This will make it much easier to
apply the scientific advances we already have to solving common human
problems. Humans need hierarchy of some sort as well as a way of keeping score
and satisfying primate needs etc., but you have to integrate that with
physical reality and common needs.

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andyl
Over the past 30 years we haven't seen breakthru innovation in transportation,
energy, medicine, and many other fields. This point has been made by Peter
Theil and others.

That may be true, but look at some recent developments. Self-driving cars,
synthetic biology, thorium reactors, commercial space, 3d printing - not to
mention the rapid evolution of internet and mobile technologies. Further
afield, people are working on quantum computing, memristors, AI algorithms,
and more.

All of these developments could make a big impact. Seems to me that we've got
plenty of advances ahead of us.

~~~
Silhouette
_Over the past 30 years we haven't seen breakthru innovation in
transportation, energy, medicine, and many other fields._

We haven't?

What proportion of the electricity supplied in your country came from
renewable sources 30 years ago?

How much did we know about human genetics and, for example, the potential of
stem cells, 30 years ago?

If I wanted to go to Paris 30 years ago, it required a flight or a boat trip,
not to mention the connections to and from the airport or ferry port on either
end. Today I can walk to my local railway station in a few minutes, take a
train down to London, walk to the station next door, take another train that
goes under a tunnel all the way under the English Channel, and get off that
train in Paris.

I think some people claim innovation isn't happening just because it's
happening too slowly for them to notice in their everyday lives.

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marshallp
The biggest new technology breakthrough can be computer vision (so that
unconstrained robots are possible). However, the type of people who can work
on it are mostly working in big data (the stock market and online
advertising).

It is reasonable for them to do so (the money is just sitting there to be
taken), so the solution to the innovation problem is to fund more people to
work on computer vision.

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alex_g
These sorts of articles are pointless. If this guy has such a strong opinion,
why doesn't he go innovate instead of telling other people to do it. Hypocrisy
at its finest.

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wdewind
Disagree with the guy's opinion, but in his mind he is innovating. As a writer
the way he contributes is by innovating culture and thought. He has seen an
information inefficiency in the common belief that we are making huge
technological gains, and his article is an attempt to fix that.

