I wouldn't worry too much: our generation is going to experience singularity, and unlike cars and cell phones it's not going to be nice.
Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#22Very nostalgic article...Especially, since having grown up in india in the 80's my inspirations were similar. But given my history of being swayed by these type of articles, i am willing to suspend judgement/opinion about innovation for a couple of days and re-read the article..Maybe after re-reading http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e5/the_cognitive_science_of_rationa... :-)
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#23Nice essay. Funny thing about the SF writers being inspiration.
I'm actually reading his latest book right now, "REAMDE", and although it is well written and entertaining, it certainly doesn't provide anywhere near the fun 'mind stretching' that some of his previous books have. (Snow Crash being the obvious one there)
Really, REAMDE is a bit boring from a SciFi point of view, more akin to any number of suspense / thrillers that get stamped out every year.
On his larger point, I do wonder whether the reason the rate of real 'physical' breakthroughs recently, like the kind he had in his childhood is more just us starting to bump into the limits of physics and resources.
IE, cracking the atom was a pretty insane step forward in power generation, it is really hard to do a lot better. Oil is miraculously awesome as a transportable source of energy, it isn't for a lack of trying that we haven't found a replacement. Computing and processors are starting to hit the limits of physics.
Anyways, a good thought piece no matter what.
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#24Neal makes some good points about western nations, but some of the more authoritarian governments aren't restricted by citizen initiatives or environmental laws. China is a poster-boy for this sort of growth. If they continue to increase prosperity faster than democratic western nations, their style of government might become the template for the future. From http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/china-ascendant.html…
China's haste to build deadly boondoggle projects is not something that any democratic nation, eastern or western, desires to emulate:
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140703132/from-progress-to-pro...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subway-train-crash-in...
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#25I didn't read the whole article but all I saw was anecdotal evidence that there isn't as much innovation. Maybe it's hard to measure innovation, but at least try instead of saying "from my viewpoint as a 50 year old white man we aren't innovating." And then try to come up with theories why there isn't innovation when you haven't even come close to proving that there isn't.
Given that you could buy a ticket to fly from London to New York faster in the 70s than you can today, you'd have to admit he has a point in certain areas. On the other hand, I just sent this reply from my phone on a hydrogen powered bus in Australia...
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#26Neal makes some good points about western nations, but some of the more authoritarian governments aren't restricted by citizen initiatives or environmental laws. China is a poster-boy for this sort of growth. If they continue to increase prosperity faster than democratic western nations, their style of government might become the template for the future. From http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/china-ascendant.html…
China's haste to build deadly boondoggle projects is not something that any democratic nation, eastern or western, desires to emulate: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140703132/from-progress-to-pro... http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/subway-train-crash-in...
Actually, those aren't boondoggles, those are exactly the sorts of risks the author is talking about. To make big gains, you have to take big risks.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#27I'm from a different generation than Neal Stephenson. I grew up inspired by my parents' old IBM XT. The Apple II at school. My TI-83 programmable graphing calculator. Not space flight. I continue to be inspired every year by the innovations in tech startups, and that's just the field I happen to live and work in - the biomedical field in the last 10 years has made orders of magnitude of progress understanding the hum…
Of all the things you mention, I think only Google, the Human Genome Project, and maybe Wikipedia belong on a list next to the great achievements Neal is talking about (human spaceflight, the invention of the computer, nuclear power). Most of those other things we spend so much time talking about make things more convenient, or less boring, or more efficient and are the results of innovation in business process or good product design rather than technology.
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#28The fuckery is in the details. I, too, wonder why so much of technological progress seems to have stalled. In a single century we went from the mass production of the automobile all the way to space; from telegraph to television; from typewriters to microcomputers. What an amazing period of technological development! There had been nothing like it in our history. Like the perhaps somewhat apocryphal Renaissance, we m…
I think it's wrong to say that there has been little improvement in software, in both our techniques of building it and the body that is in existence. I think the advance from the disconnected dumb home microcomputer of 1985 to the globally connected iPad of today is comparable to the advance from the telegraph to television. I think it's easy to underestimate how far we've come when you've lived through the change. The salience of the contrast over time is lost, because you're too close to it, and the change seems almost imperceptible; recognizing how far we've come needs some perspective.
It's true that humanity is less in the game of building pyramids, dramatic edifices of might to be looked upon in wonder, but I suspect much of that was grandstanding in a global cold war, rather than driven by need or even a genuine striving for achievement. Our focus has moved in a more democratic, consumer-oriented place, where it is simultaneously less visible as a monument, but where its leverage, the number of lives it affects, is higher than ever.
Space exploration doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense, until there are resources beyond our planet for which the demand exceeds supply such that the price level justifies the effort. I don't have any romantic fantasies of travelling across the galaxy, much less universe; without FTL technology (which will probably never exist) or greatly lengthened human lifetimes, it isn't realistic to focus on it. If it was really necessary to go to the moon again, I'm confident it could be done much more cheaply and safely than it was last time, but I wouldn't vote for public funds to be spent on it.
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#29It seems tautologous to say that innovation happens in innovative areas, but that seems to be the substance of the problem expressed in the premise. Not only does disruptive innovation not happen where we expect it to, it usually refuses to happen where we will it to. Not only solar (and fusion) power, but things like making the kind of artificial intelligence we wanted. It seems like they were just not solvable with…
It's debatable whether Jurassic Park is "great scifi" but Ian Malcolm says:
"You know what’s wrong with scientific power? It’s a form of inherited wealth. There is no humility before nature. And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly." - that's in the book, not the movie!
I think what Neal Stephenson laments is not that we can't innovate, but that we haven't achieved our potential. Achievement is a world apart from raw data.
(Ironically, I only had to copy-and-paste the quote... http://manas.tungare.name/blog/jurassic-park-what-the-movie-... )
Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
#30I'm from a different generation than Neal Stephenson. I grew up inspired by my parents' old IBM XT. The Apple II at school. My TI-83 programmable graphing calculator. Not space flight. I continue to be inspired every year by the innovations in tech startups, and that's just the field I happen to live and work in - the biomedical field in the last 10 years has made orders of magnitude of progress understanding the hum…
Of all the things you mention, I think only Google, the Human Genome Project, and maybe Wikipedia belong on a list next to the great achievements Neal is talking about (human spaceflight, the invention of the computer, nuclear power). Most of those other things we spend so much time talking about make things more convenient, or less boring, or more efficient and are the results of innovation in business process or go…
The gigabytes of wiki meta stuff will be fascinating for the future people. "Ghod almighty," they will say, "look at the hours and hours they spent talking about absolute nonsense!". Personally I'd put particle physics (esp LHC) in the list in place of wikipedia. Lists of fictional ducks and every Essex bus timetable for the last three years isn't that inspiring to me.