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2005-07-03 Home Front: Tech

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Posted by phil_b 2005-07-03 03:43|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [11133 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I'm an amateur, but observation is available to all, lol! Innovation is most certainly not dead, though I agree PCism and associated disorders have elevated the posers and weak-minded - at the expense of the truly gifted in many cases - distracting attention from serious work and wasting resources. Has it not always been so? Methinks it has. Additionally, in recent times, totally separate legal burdens, consumerism for its own sake, and just plain lousy management have probably politicized many R&D labs. The evolutionary demise of the Bell Labs / BellCore / Lucent super-think-tank is a hallmark of the effects of such influences. The failure of the MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation) think-tank to ensure America's preeminence (a response to Japan's Fifth Generation initiative) rather proves that you can't simply declare and schedule serendipity, too. Bell had it and lost it through a long series of missteps. MCC, purpose-created to do the same sort of ground-breaking work hasn't done much of anything of note - even with Bobby Inman heading it up for its first 4 years and an amazing level of funding - and you don't get much smarter than Bobby.

And I think it is, in the end, just another evolutionary process. It seems to run in cycles... small successful entities begin to aggregate for cross-polination and efficiency but, eventually grow into something big enough to hide losers and sycophants and politicians - which eventually drag it down until it is disbanded, and the cycle repeats. Social, legal, tax, corporate fashion and other forces all contribute to the process. Heaven help the society that restricts or prevents the individual from experimentation or entrepreneurial enterprise. That way lies the death of innovation... think EU Super-Regulation for a classic contemporary model of this suicidal idiocy.

I expect no end to innovation, just the usual fits and starts that history (since the acceptance of science, generally speaking) documents. A tiny breach in the wall of the unknowns usually leads to wholesale breakouts in narrow areas - then spreading wider as alternative applications are found - slowing the penetration but broadening the actual impact. Certainly material science and nanotech are poised for some surges...

$0.02 from the cheap seats.

Posted by .com 2005-07-03 04:46|| 2005-07-03 04:46|| Front Page Top

#2 Oh yes some poser out at China Lake/Ridgecrest has this insight. Have you ever been to Ridgecrest/ China lake? Get real.

The nature of "inovation" and invention is cyclic. Wow, how insightful. How about how historical.

Posted by Sock Puppet 0â Doom 2005-07-03 04:58|| 2005-07-03 04:58|| Front Page Top

#3 I sorta agree with that.Look for the Arts . The problem is that Humans have only 5 senses. So Pinture is down from the XIX century , Music is down too in criativity, in Cinema many things have been done and there will not be much more inventiveness, i dont see many series because i already saw them in another disguise . Maybe is that the normal state of the humanity and last 200 years were an exception.

The inventiveness is stiffling because humans have created many many things. I think optical illusions, and cheating the senses still have a field to explore, new materials and technologies will help Designers, Architects and Sculptors to drive some of the criativity. But there is only 7 musical notes unless maybe someone will field a hear frequency augmenter and then Musicians will explore that...

I dont mean that a new melody will be impossible to find but that will be far and between them.

Posted by Hupomoque Spoluter7949 2005-07-03 06:47|| 2005-07-03 06:47|| Front Page Top

#4 Ah, go watch Connections or The Day the Universe Changed to get a good perspective of the history of technology. Stuff being thought up today won't be acted upon for years, vice the generations in prior times. Heck, I'm typing on the ancestory of Babbage's machine which required over a hundred years till the means caught up with the idea. Then when the concept was implemented it moved from simple calculations to a spectrum of uses unthought of originally. Today the flow of ideas is nearly the speed of light versus the speed of the post and sailing ships. This is just another 'if it didn't happen in the last nano-second we must be declining' rant.

Posted by Glavimble Snereper7229 2005-07-03 08:31|| 2005-07-03 08:31|| Front Page Top

#5 People have been moaning about the end of the Golden Age since the time of Socrates (although then they were correct, at least in Athens). "These useless kids today! Now when I was young..." And yet the world goes on. For that matter, there were some major innovations that took place during the Dark Ages, too. It's just that the politics of the time -- in Western Europe -- are more interesting than changes in the lives of the common people.

I'll bet you a quarter and my reputation that the author is a Baby Boomer in his dotage.

Posted by trailing wife 2005-07-03 09:02|| 2005-07-03 09:02|| Front Page Top

#6 This guy reminds me of a patent clerk who was working an office in the late 1800s. He became convinced that no new inventions would be coming, and closed his office. He was forced to open it back up several months later.
Innovation comes in spurts. Find new thing, perfect function of new thing, look for new thing, repeat.

Posted by mmurray821 2005-07-03 10:00|| 2005-07-03 10:00|| Front Page Top

#7 all good things come in fits and spurts

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-07-03 11:32|| 2005-07-03 11:32|| Front Page Top

#8 ROFL!!!

Gooooood point, lol!

Posted by .com 2005-07-03 11:47|| 2005-07-03 11:47|| Front Page Top

#9 Mr G always get's the softballs.

Posted by Whey Movement for Solidarity 2005-07-03 12:02|| 2005-07-03 12:02|| Front Page Top

#10 drove it deep over left field, though.... :-)

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-07-03 12:08|| 2005-07-03 12:08|| Front Page Top

#11 I will admit you did get around on that one Frank.

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-03 12:13|| 2005-07-03 12:13|| Front Page Top

#12 "I find the argument that innovation peaked in the 19th century compellling, but I would argue its a social phenomena rather than the result of mining a finite resource of potential inovations."

I study the cultural history of science and technology. I agree that the apparent slowdown is the result of sociological factors, but I would place the peak in the 1930s, when public admiration and approval of science and technology were probably at an all-time high.

Outside the computer world, much of today's society looks to the past rather than the future for technical paradigms, to a degree that was unthinkable a couple of generations ago. Look at the new houses being built in your local subdivision. In their superficial and unconvincing way, they are designed to resemble Victorian mansions or 18th Century French chateaux, masking the various innovations that go into them. The same is true of cars. The most successful and popular recent models, like my Chrysler PT Cruiser, are deliberately designed to recall the past. I like this style personally, but I cannot fail to cite it as evidence of a turn toward an idealized past.
This turn to the past is perhaps rooted in simple ennui after decades of breakneck change.
It may also have its roots in the ability of Hollywood and the other modern media, themselves at the leading edge of innovation, to reconstruct an idealized and graphically convincing version of the past.
In recent years, this turn to the past has been masked by what amounts to a miracle of innovation, the phenomenol growth in the power and utility of computing machines. It is interesting to think about where we would be if this had not happened, if computers had taken all the time from 1980 to the present to advance to the point where they actually were in 1985. This would have been a reasonable expectation in 1980.
I believe that this growth has compensated for trends that would otherwise have destroyed us, or come close to it, by now.
Before the internet, the mass media were all powerful, plunging the world toward a New Dark Age that is only now being arrested essentially by the intervention of an unanticipated development, the internet as an instrument of mass communication.
Similarly, much economic growth has been fuelled by greater computer power. Many businesses and industries that were on their way to extinction have undergone a renaisance, thanks to the wealth of software that streamlines operations, simplifies inventories, tracks markets, increases efficiency in every area. This is beside the new opportunities that have been created, quit aside from the computer industry itself. To cite just one underreported example, small scale manufacturing is enormously more practical and profitable than it was just 20 years ago, thanks almost entirely to the introduction of advanced computing in several areas.
This is how I get parts for my 1937 FarmAll tractor. Somebody can make them in small batches with ultra-flexible CAM methods, or find them through a global search that takes in every dusty corner of every old warehouse on the globe. With the internet, it is child's play for them to then find the handful of customers around the world. This isn't major industry, but it is a profitable business that would not exist otherwise.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2005-07-03 12:20|| 2005-07-03 12:20|| Front Page Top

#13 The huge majority of IT applications would be seen as tremendous innovations IF we had to implement them with mechanical devices (assuming they were doable at all).

An appropriate subtitle to the article ought to be:
blind man complains that he can't tell how bright new LED lights are.

The rate of innovation is linked to the degree of freedom we enjoy. If we let the Islamofascists win, there won't be any innovation anywhere on Earth.

Posted by Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-07-03 12:30|| 2005-07-03 12:30|| Front Page Top

#14 I mean each IT application IF separately implemented as a mechanical device.

But then, try to make a mechanical cellphone, WiFi network, inkjet colour printer, and iPod. Not to mention blogs, podcasts, and Yahoo/Google maps.

Jonathan Huebner is a moron. The Pentagon should fire him and use the money saved in order to finance the War.

Posted by Kalle (kafir forever) 2005-07-03 12:39|| 2005-07-03 12:39|| Front Page Top

#15 better yet, create a "Huebner" award for best new breakthrough

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2005-07-03 12:41|| 2005-07-03 12:41|| Front Page Top

#16 Bah! This is just numerical masturbation combined with the media's never-ending joy over stories of gloom and doom. The statistic, innovations per billions of people is a bogus measure. All it takes is a growing population to drive the number down. An example would be the developed countries producing inventions at a constant rate while the population of the undeveloped countries continues to rise.

Furthermore, an innovation, such as a smallpox vaccine, provides benefit to everyone. It is not like dividing a pizza where your share is inversely proportional to the number of people.

I am not arguing the numbers are wrong; simply that they are meaningless. Bah and Double Bah.

Posted by SteveS 2005-07-03 13:08|| 2005-07-03 13:08|| Front Page Top

#17 I guess the point is all this stuff is great, but where is my FLYING CAR?

Posted by bruce 2005-07-03 17:25|| 2005-07-03 17:25|| Front Page Top

#18 TW, the golden age of Greek ideas men (no women in those days, sorry) was the Iona Greeks who lived on the coast of what is now Turkey and the ajacent islands. By the time of Athens, greek ideas were already past their peak. I still find it astonishing that 2,000 years would pass before we came close to their originality and diversity of thinking.

Otherwise, I wish people wouldn't use the computer industry as an example of innovation. I worked in it for 30 years and genuine innovation was rare and real innovators were often a voice in the wilderness. Moore's Law results from incremental engineering improvements and not from significant new ideas. The ever wider application of computers results from them getting ever cheaper.

Which brings me to a pet idea of mine - innovation results from different people attacking the same problem in moreorless isolation. There are many examples, such as Einstein's theory of relativity and my Iona Greeks who lived in many small towns and islands. If I am right then the result of improving communications is to homogenize ideas and create orthodoxy. I long ago figured out that the biggest barrier to people considering new ideas is getting them past 'I already know the answer to that'.

Posted by phil_b 2005-07-03 17:34|| 2005-07-03 17:34|| Front Page Top

#19 You worry me Phil. What about the lord gawd SYNERGY? Huh? Working alone you get no Synergy and planned outcomes....... nevermind.

Posted by Shipman 2005-07-03 19:17|| 2005-07-03 19:17|| Front Page Top

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