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What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

nytimes.com

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Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#21

Post by xxs »

legulere wrote: post #12
Animats wrote: post #2

1870-1920. Electric light, automobiles, aircraft, radio, paved roads. Railroads everywhere in the developed world. Electric mass transit (trolleys, subways) in major cities. Tractors and combine harvesters on farms. Refrigeration. X-rays. In computing, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording company (later IBM) produced the first printing tabulator, the beginning of commercial data processing. Those 50 years held the grea…

Interestingly it took decades after that to roll out most of the things you listed. Meanwhile newer inventions like the mobile phone were rolled out faster and more globally, even to places where the inventions you listed still haven't reached.

1st mobile phones were demonstrated in the early 70s (more than 40years back)... Mobile phone, itself, is no real invocation - the radio did exist, the telephones did exist. Current mobile phones are just computers with radio; greatly benefiting from the lithography process that's the basis for the Moore's law. Of course, lithography process have seen a lot improvements to its current 10nm state but all those are mostly incremental small steps.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#22

Post by grey413 »

In terms of pure impactful science I'd say 1920-1960 or so. Quantum mechanics and everything it led to (modern chemistry, in particular) is the big one, but there was also relativity, the modern evolutionary synthesis, huge advances in statistics, the math of computing, and so much more.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#23

Post by moonfern »

digi_owl wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #2

1870-1920. Electric light, automobiles, aircraft, radio, paved roads. Railroads everywhere in the developed world. Electric mass transit (trolleys, subways) in major cities. Tractors and combine harvesters on farms. Refrigeration. X-rays. In computing, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording company (later IBM) produced the first printing tabulator, the beginning of commercial data processing. Those 50 years held the grea…

seems to me most of that can be traced back to the electric generator/motor. Without it, the rest of them becomes impractical or impossible.

Agree but don't forget about the work of James Watt, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt And mechanical clocks and please there were roads 2400 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way Look to the second picture on the left, it's still in use.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#24

Post by paulpauper »

The future of innovation is micro, not macro - genomics and biotechnology, apps and on-demand entertianment, miniaturization and nano technology, etc.

The past always seems better than the present, probably we're not good at assessing our progress, but only retrospection can we.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#25

Post by dilemma »

lordnacho wrote: post #4

The printing press, and its proliferation a few hundred years ago. Without it, the cost of copying information is enormous. When you can't copy stuff cheaply, you end up copying only a few things. Like what whoever is in power likes. Or whatever the accepted wisdom of the day is. With it, you can have ideas, spread them, and get feedback from a lot of people. That goes for social ideas like liberalism, religious idea…

I agree that information (communication) is fundamental to human society. But I don't agree that information technology is a force for equality and decentralization of power. Over the course of history it's been the opposite - papyrus enabled the the expansion of the Roman empire, the nation state could not exist without paper and printing, and digitalization is creating larger multinational corporations than was possible before, and we will soon see states evolve to a version where it has even more control over citizens.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#26

Post by kabes »

The push for innovation is probably the greatest right now. However, I like to think the greatest innovations are those that make my own life simpler. There's: airplanes, cars, electricity, GPS and others. Innovation today, while technically impressive, is mostly making my life more complex, not more simple.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#27

Post by Frqy3 »

xxs wrote: post #21
legulere wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly it took decades after that to roll out most of the things you listed. Meanwhile newer inventions like the mobile phone were rolled out faster and more globally, even to places where the inventions you listed still haven't reached.

1st mobile phones were demonstrated in the early 70s (more than 40years back)... Mobile phone, itself, is no real invocation - the radio did exist, the telephones did exist. Current mobile phones are just computers with radio; greatly benefiting from the lithography process that's the basis for the Moore's law. Of course, lithography process have seen a lot improvements to its current 10nm state but all those are mos…

The tough part is the cellular structure to the frequency usage and handing live calls smoothly from one cell to the next.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#28

Post by bloat »

grey413 wrote: post #22

In terms of pure impactful science I'd say 1920-1960 or so. Quantum mechanics and everything it led to (modern chemistry, in particular) is the big one, but there was also relativity, the modern evolutionary synthesis, huge advances in statistics, the math of computing, and so much more.

1650 - 1750 : The Royal Society - including Newton, Hooke, Halley, Boyle, Franklin, etc.

Re: What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?

#29

Post by digi_owl »

ahoka wrote: post #18
digi_owl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems to me most of that can be traced back to the electric generator/motor. Without it, the rest of them becomes impractical or impossible.

I think we could always find a thing that made the next big innovations possible. Newton said that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. I also wondered the other day if humanity could rebuild the current level of technology given a select team of our brightest and all available knowledge, but no tools or machines. We would have to recreate so much in lock step to event get to the most basic things. Just think…

Check out Connections, Burke's shows are all about this.

There was also the backstory for Alpha Centauri. Firaxis' sci-fi Civilization where the landing of the space ship goes anything but smooth.

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