The death of innovation?

[Corey]

This is an interesting article from a science news site:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/ns-awo062905.php

Taken in persepctive, that's kind of a nifty analysis. :yes

[Intrigued]

"Perhaps there is a limit to what technology can achieve."

Another negative person. Well, I hope he learns to be more positive and open minded.

I'm surprised I wasted even 28 seconds skimming that link's article.

:D

[JimS]

I think that this article demonstrates how easy it is, to make statistics seem to verify any notion, regardless of how wacky it is.

Maybe I’m just dumb, but I don’t understand how population fits into the equation. Are da Vinci’s, Edison’s, and Einstein’s, merely products of their own DNA? Should we expect that every 9 millionth baby will be a prodigal inventor? Would Edison have accumulated 1000 patents if he would have grown up in a small village located in Ethiopia? (No offence to any of the fine people from Ethiopia).

Heck, considering the speed that the Patent Office moves at today, Edison couldn’t get 1000 patents even if he were living in NY city, he couldn’t live long enough. :)

To be true, Edison had several teams of inventors working for him. When any of his workers invented something worth patenting, the patent was put in his name, not unlike how most corporations work today, Edison was the corporation. I am by no means, making light of Edison’s amazing personal contributions. He did enough, that it isn’t necessary to give people ‘cooked’ facts, in order to impress them.

The researcher, Mr. Huebner, says he “has long been struck by the fact that promised advances were not appearing as quickly as predicted.”

I can’t be sure of exactly what he meant, but I can think of a few advances that have taken longer than expected. First on my list is voice recognition. All through the 90’s, in was only supposed to be a couple of years away. Guess what, it’s harder than was imagined, context seems to be much more important than was originally expected.

Natural language translation among different languages is again, probably harder than first imagined.

A cure for cancer, room temperature fission, room temperature superconductors, peace. What other great promise’s seem to be taking longer than expected?

I don’t think that innovation always advances with a steady and uniform cadence. I think that it is more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, a piece here, a piece there. Just because the above mentioned promises have as yet gone unfulfilled, it doesn’t mean that innovation stops, until those particular promises are delivered upon.

I’m not all that surprised to find out that on a per capita scale, Americans are receiving less patents than we were during the height of the industrial revolution. Now that we are living in what has been called the information age, as opposed to the industrial age, I’m not sure that patents are the only, or even the best, gauge of innovation. Intellectual property is protected by copy write.

I’m left to wonder how the number of copy write’s have changed, even on a per capita bases, since the peak of the industrial revolution. My hunch is that they are probably hotter now, than they have been since the day after Guttenberg built his little invention. :)

I for one, am not convinced by this article that innovation is slowing, I’ve witnessed too many innovations so far, in my own lifetime. I’m of the mind that humans are naturally curious critters, and if curiosity doesn’t provide enough of a carrot, then capitalism, and the mythical free market system, surely do.

For me, the most startling fact, is that this article was originally printed at New Scientist. I frequent that site, so I think I’ll have to keep a better eye, towards the other articles I read there.

Thanks for the link.


.