tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post8979112635655702392..comments2024-03-28T21:56:51.675-04:00Comments on Face to Face: The great stagnation of inventions, in two chartsagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-12439735296842920342011-02-16T02:06:58.339-05:002011-02-16T02:06:58.339-05:00Since our perception of time and its reach are so ...Since our perception of time and its reach are so dwarfed by the accumulated relics of history, can we ever know what is truly historical?<br /><br />The internet (or whatever electronic method you argue shrunk mankind's reach) is unquestionably revolutionary. <br /><br />The question is what dictates what.<br /><br />Do our inventions follow a pre-assembled mental evolution or do our inventions steer evolution?<br /><br />I think this is the question we need to ask.An Unmarried Manhttp://www.phoenixism.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-85902038908391196902011-02-13T04:18:14.074-05:002011-02-13T04:18:14.074-05:00in anon's defense, amazon fails to provide muc...in anon's defense, amazon fails to provide much relevant information about the book. the editorial notes some of the content included and some of the omissions. a quick google search yields that 50 historians, designers, scientists and anthropologists worked on the book, and that they had difficulty narrowing the list to 1001. It still doesn't say anything about their methods for identifying the inventions or for cutting that list to 1001. But that’s ok; the editor doesn’t seem to claim that these are the 1001 MOST IMPORTANT inventions ever. If we’re simply looking at invention quantity, the US patent office provides good data indicating that patent application/issued has increased 5-10x since 1963. (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm) I admit that most of these parents aren’t useful, and aren’t physical objects. but it’s still a testament to real development that our society produced. <br /><br />I can’t find the authors’ Materials and Methods section or list of inventions, so I can only speculate that the authors’ bias: it probably doesn’t include many industrial/biochemical/engineering/statistical/political techniques. Things that you can’t see. Haber Bosch process, polymerase chain reaction, tandem mass spec. Or are they mere improvements? <br /><br />I think that differences in degree, when compounded, become a difference in kind. Compare a modern suspension bridge to a fallen log. I can’t imagine any bridge being fundamentally different from the version that directly precedes it, but what we have now is completely different from version 1. Which invention do we credit? Version 1? The first one that doesn’t suck? The one most useful by 2011 standards? We can’t credit all of them; there must be at least 1001 bridge technologies alone. <br /><br />I don’t agree with your argument that the improvements we’ve made to today’s gadgets are inconsequential. “But then take something fairly common from 2010 like a phone that can take pictures on-the-go and show it to someone from 1980 -- meh, that's kind of neat, but we can already make phone calls just about anywhere and anytime we want.” <br /><br />Agnostic and Camel, the new “improvements” have fundamentally changed the way people live their life. Cell phones allow people moving around to communicate with other people moving around. Whereas pay phones allow people moving around to communicate with people who are stationary. This drastically affects the way people plan (don’t plan) a night out ahead of time. You previously described the effect of mobile broadband on sports trivia impressiveness. Though I suppose this is more a testament to technology deployment than the invention. It also affects the way people do business. I can check prices of things while I’m interacting with the other partner. <br /><br />Dynamite is not just a better gunpowder; Computerized Axial Tomography is not just a better xray; total parenternal nutrition is not just food. Being able to tunnel through mountains or detect more diseases is a new function, a new invention. The functionality differences between my computer today and my computer in 1995 is the difference between that and an etch-a-sketch. The processing speed and networking allows coordination and information distribution previously not possible. I can be connected to my friends whenever I want. I no longer have to listen to what content is being broadcasted to me by a central media; I can listen to whomever I want. I ask you a question: could the revolutionaries have overthrown Mubarak using 2000 level information technology?jollyjlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11314221247706242574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-77657837245567742402011-02-10T03:17:06.820-05:002011-02-10T03:17:06.820-05:00You failed to follow my instructions to see the bo...You failed to follow my instructions to see the book for info on who compiled them and on what basis. They are authors, not "some author" in the singular, dumb shit, and we are to treat your comment as a refutation of anything?agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-37671374045797669902011-02-10T00:43:30.689-05:002011-02-10T00:43:30.689-05:00So you used some author's subjective evaluatio...So you used some author's subjective evaluation of whether or not an invention was sufficiently important to be "big" invention to make a chart, and we are to treat said chart as empirical evidence of anything?anon666http://x@y.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22950573443780279972011-02-09T17:21:26.849-05:002011-02-09T17:21:26.849-05:00I think the invention of the World Wide Web and ea...I think the invention of the World Wide Web and easy to use browsers, such as mosaic and the much more widely popular Netscape have been pretty damn transformative.<br /><br />Yeah they sat on the back of the internet which was invented through DARPA funding in the 1960s, but until the WWW and browsers it wasn't a very widely used thing. It was used by our military and university computing departments and research labs mostly in the 60s and 70s. Oh there were bulletin board services like Compuserve in the 1980s, but that was nothing like the huge importance the web has today for most college educated people at least, and many who aren't.Doug1https://www.blogger.com/profile/13948793969077395057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-66912358322076733612011-02-09T15:07:38.693-05:002011-02-09T15:07:38.693-05:00You are probably right about the decline of big in...You are probably right about the decline of big inventions in the last few decades. <br /><br />Here is a book from 1918 on great inventions:<br /><br />http://books.google.com/books?id=wLsAAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inventions&hl=en&ei=SuZSTaXdHcX7lwfllpGaCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><br /><br />It includes all of the then recent great inventions, movies, radio and airplanes. These were all invented around 1910 and by 1918 were pretty popular. The book does include a lot of inventions of the 1800s that don't really seem that big of a deal now.lemmy cautionnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-6559624112817575082011-02-09T13:02:55.897-05:002011-02-09T13:02:55.897-05:00If you think the cell phone is not revolutionary, ...If you think the cell phone is not revolutionary, travel to a developing country. The land line phone is terribly ill suited for much of the world and for more than a century failed to reach potential consumers. Today there are millions of people in developing countries that have never used a land line but find cell phone economical, useful, practical, and essential. Tyler Cowan's notion that innovation is slowing down is myopic and wildly off the mark.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-6610313662042466992011-02-08T13:14:43.397-05:002011-02-08T13:14:43.397-05:00"Did you essentially count the number of hits..."Did you essentially count the number of hits for each year to get the data or did you have a script or some other clever solution?"<br /><br />I should've written a script but never spent much time on a given chart, so just punched them in by hand in JSTOR.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72546825736327107992011-02-07T22:51:12.110-05:002011-02-07T22:51:12.110-05:00The weakness with your argument is that great inve...The weakness with your argument is that great inventions can sometimes only be judged after the fact. <br /><br />Some of your argument (and the preceding anonymous') is the idea that we can only credit the original invention of a concept and ignore the technology which builds it up. Therefore, anonymous takes the existence of the PLATO network to dismiss the internet. That is a fine argument as far as it goes, but you have to follow it all the way. <br /><br />If the internet (because of its predecessor PLATO) counts as a great invention of the 1960s, then our own time gets several great inventions. We must give ourselves credit for every development which ever comes from stem cell research, gene sequencing, and genetic engineering because they are all being done to a limited extent today and were invented by us.Underachievernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-81804503591093522102011-02-07T17:15:17.203-05:002011-02-07T17:15:17.203-05:00The PLATO Network was started in 1960. The PLATO n...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_network" rel="nofollow">The PLATO Network</a> was started in 1960. The PLATO network was a network of connected computer terminals similar to the network of PCs today with the internet.<br /><br />A lot of the computer stuff and things people do online today that are considered novel and revolutionary like plasma displays, touchscreens, forums, message boards, education, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, multi-player games, virtual economies, "social media," etc. have been around since the 60s and 70s when they were developed under the PLATO system.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-89327865244177891382011-02-07T15:07:59.252-05:002011-02-07T15:07:59.252-05:00Most of the economic energy of the last 30 years o...Most of the economic energy of the last 30 years or so has been directed towards making things cheaper and more accessible to non-experts - not making them function better. Whether that's airplane deregulation (a plane flight is almost exactly the same as in 1980, but it's far cheaper in real dollars) or electronics (I just paid $650 for a mac mini, almost exactly the same as my Dad paid in 1984 dollars for a Commodore 64 with tape drive). Until recently food prices hadn't increased in nominal dollars for 30 years - and I can still get a gallon of milk for $2.49 without looking hard, not much more than the $1.75 that was common 30 years ago. Part of those cost decreases is productivity, but a big part is also lower labor costs, either immigrant or overseas. So the big economic change of the last 30 years has been a flattening of wages and product availability across the world. <br /><br />This efficiency and lower labor costs has been in a sort of feedback loop with technological advance. When it's easier to make a buck by moving a factory overseas than by investing in new product or processes, that's where capital and entrepreneurial energy will go. That reduces technological advance, which reduces the availability of new products and processes and keeps the focus on efficiency. <br /><br />But it feels like we're nearing the end of that cycle. There's only so much efficiency to squeeze out without breakthroughs. The former third world is seeing inflation and demands by labor for wage increases. <br /><br />One possible other reason for stagnation - there hasn't been a good war or even a good proxy war since the Soviets collapsed in '89. War drives a lot of spending and innovation and removes a lot of bureaucracy. Too bad it's gotten so darn destructive.Chief Seattlenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-74423561167530798432011-02-07T13:39:18.584-05:002011-02-07T13:39:18.584-05:00Agnostic, I have an unrelated question/comment.
I...Agnostic, I have an unrelated question/comment.<br /><br />I'd like to collect data similar to what you did to investigate academic fads back in 2008 on gnxp. Did you essentially count the number of hits for each year to get the data or did you have a script or some other clever solution?Michael Bishophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13144870793323861373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-63551611963400523802011-02-07T11:19:21.849-05:002011-02-07T11:19:21.849-05:00I run in some fairly geeky circles, on occasion, a...I run in some fairly geeky circles, on occasion, and I'm well known for my pessimistic view of how un-life-changing their latest gizmos are. When I say that it saddens me that I've never lived through any revolutionary changes, as my parents or grandparents did, the geeks all look aghast and quickly try to run through the tired litany of what I consider improvements, not true inventions.<br /><br />I had access to a Commodore 64 and then we later owned a Tandy 1000. Today I'm typing on a ThinkPad. The disparity in computing power is obvious, but the actual function of the computer is the same.<br /><br />That's the big one. A quick list of things you'll read as the "Top 100" inventions/innovations of the last 30 years, and their equivalent:<br /><br />DVD/CD: VHS/Cassette<br />ipod: Walkman<br />Satellite TV: Satellite TV (remember the giant ones?)<br />4G smart phones: land-lines and 1G bag and brick phones<br />LCD and Plasma TV: CRT<br />Digital Photos: Polaroids and disposable cameras<br />Game consoles: Atari<br />(and the list could go on)<br /><br />My point isn't that these new things aren't awesome, it's just that they haven't fundamentally changed how I live my life now from when I was a kid. They have been more of a shift from black and white television to color, rather than from no television to black and white.Camel Feethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16710755600126093475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-27175206142683359512011-02-07T10:29:49.260-05:002011-02-07T10:29:49.260-05:00You've mentioned the closing of Bell Labs befo...You've mentioned the closing of Bell Labs before. I wonder if that's just a data point (an important one) in a general decline of the science/engineering research culture in the West, especially the U.S.<br /><br />I see two things happening in 1970s and 80s. <br /><br />First, the rise of the "megaversity" - the massive expansion of the universities and change in the ethic by which they were governed. They started being by run by "suits", not scholars, who obsessed over funding and "efficiency" (e.g., the grad-school proletariat), and were happy to act as intellectual whores (Pomo, identity-group studies, corporate-or foundation-funded directed research) for publicity, to court politicians and the bien-pensants, and for a little extra cash.<br /><br />Research projects became extremely large and expensive, and therefore tended to be run by "courtier" types, adept a making connections and securing grants. The granting system itself: committee-based... need I say more?<br /><br />There's demographic side to the megaversity too. It's reasonable to assume that staff hired during the massive expansion of the 1960s and 70s were lower in quality than those hired in a more selective era. (And, culturally, they brought with them all those horrible 68-er ideas.)<br /><br />By the late 80s, early 90s, this clump was well past its peak research years and was blocking the entrance of new talent into the system. A researcher's peak years in a lot of fields are age 25 to 40, yet a lot scholars were unable to a proper, secure position until they were 35 or so.<br /><br />Outside the university, a lot of economic gains we've had have come about through rationalization. I think there's been a shift to managerialism in a lot of formerly engineer-driven companies. If you follow Schumpeter, you'd expect this drive for efficiency to squeeze out the space needed to incubate longer-term, serendipitous innovation. <br /><br />(Google, apparently, lets employees spend 20% on side-of-the-desk projects. Most companies would see that as irrational. Most companies are like Walmart: squeeze out every inefficiency, transfer all creativity and initiative to head office.)<br /><br />CennbeorcAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-65014634609091961922011-02-07T06:23:48.069-05:002011-02-07T06:23:48.069-05:00sometime in the mid-1970s the dizzying growth in o...<i>sometime in the mid-1970s the dizzying growth in our standard of living that began with the industrial revolution had started to plateau.</i><br /><br /><br />Right around <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/11/27/143743/49" rel="nofollow">1973.</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-28487434850839297092011-02-07T03:53:10.218-05:002011-02-07T03:53:10.218-05:00Just shooting from the hip here, but it seems as t...Just shooting from the hip here, but it seems as though the last few years (let's put that around 10-20) have been not so much about making new things, but making old things better. For example, Apple's iAnything. Great devices and all, but not so much new territory is being explored, just variations/expansions on a pre-existing theme.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com