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Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

worldpolicy.org

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Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#31

Post by barrkel »

cageface wrote: post #4
zach wrote: post #2

It 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 just a qualitative feeling, but the accomplishment of putting a man on the moon with 1960's technology seems much more significant than similar steps forward since. Although the sequencing of the human genome and the persistence of Moore's law are also impressive.

Was WWII similarly significant in your "feelings"? Because that's what I feel putting a man on the moon with 1960s technology was similar to: a war effort, dangerous, expensive and ultimately, hard to justify. (Though of course peanuts in comparison to WWII.)

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#32

Post by mattront »

1092u34iojagj wrote: post #9

Go back to the 90s with an iPad... see what they think of it. We have artificial leaves that generate fuel by floating in sunlit water. In a few short years most book stores (an industry centuries old) will have been closed and replaced with e-readers. You can get the next Harry Potter (or whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch. We have 3d printers that will create a statue of your World of Warcraft charact…

"You can get the next Harry Potter (or whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch."

"...without a human ever touching a carving tool."

Brrr... I got a vision of pig-fat humanoids permanently embedded in their couches that can't even hold a spoon with their degenerated clumsy hands :-)

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#33

Post by 1092u34iojagj »

mattront wrote: post #32
1092u34iojagj wrote: post #9

Go back to the 90s with an iPad... see what they think of it. We have artificial leaves that generate fuel by floating in sunlit water. In a few short years most book stores (an industry centuries old) will have been closed and replaced with e-readers. You can get the next Harry Potter (or whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch. We have 3d printers that will create a statue of your World of Warcraft charact…

"You can get the next Harry Potter (or whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch." "...without a human ever touching a carving tool." Brrr... I got a vision of pig-fat humanoids permanently embedded in their couches that can't even hold a spoon with their degenerated clumsy hands :-)

Dystopia is always a possibility... but in the near future I think we're reasonably safe.

Try to think back to what passed as extreme sports in the 80s and compare it to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9RJSPnf8A

I'm not sure we're headed into WALL-E chairs just yet.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#34

Post by maxerickson »

msg wrote: post #6
zach wrote: post #2

It 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…

I'm in good company when I say that the pace of innovation has accelerated to ludicrous speed. Last week I read about scientists who knocked out a rat cerebellum and replaced it with an artificial one - and it worked. A few weeks ago I read about gamers, over the course of a few weeks with FoldIt, discovering how to fold a protein crucial to AIDS research that had eluded scientists for years. Like William Gibson said…

There's a story on CNN right now about a woman with (at least somewhat) successful hand transplants. Both of them.

Somewhat successful because while she has feeling and movement, she doesn't have normal dexterity.

That feels pretty sci-fi to me.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#35

Post by gvb »

mainguy wrote: post #26
tokenadult wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ro…

High speed rail is not a big risk technologically. The technology has existed since the 60s. At this point, the technology is advancing incrementally with incrementally improved materials and technology, not "big risk game changing" technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Technology

The risk in high speed rail is primarily due to the scale of the implementation; the cost in terms of time, effort, and money of acquiring the rail right-of-way and physically building the infrastructure.

The big risk in the Wenzhou train collision referred to by the OP was not in the technology that was used or the building of the infrastructure, but was a system and management failure. The technology in the train system, when correctly implemented and used properly, is well known, well proven, and safe.

To be blunt, the failure was not due to "big gains big risk technology," but was due to the fact that the high speed rail system in China was a boondoggle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#36

Post by _delirium »

barrkel wrote: post #28
thaumaturgy wrote: post #8

The 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 disconnected dumb home microcomputer of 1985 to the globally connected iPad of today

But the microcomputer of 1985 was globally connected too! And that did seem like quite a technological advance: here in one's own home, a machine that, via phone lines, can exchange messages worldwide!

I agree that the number of people globally connected has increased, but it seems more incremental; a matter of economics and incremental improvements, bringing down the prices and upping the speeds, so now many more people can experience that magic of global connectivity in your own home.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#37

Post by caf »

1092u34iojagj wrote: post #9

Go back to the 90s with an iPad... see what they think of it. We have artificial leaves that generate fuel by floating in sunlit water. In a few short years most book stores (an industry centuries old) will have been closed and replaced with e-readers. You can get the next Harry Potter (or whatever replaces it) without leaving your couch. We have 3d printers that will create a statue of your World of Warcraft charact…

I just tried that - the 90s said "Great, they finally made the Newton useable. Good to see Moore's Law has kept up the pace."

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#38

Post by justincormack »

DanBC wrote: post #30
ericd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A library of everything about everything available to anyone has been one of the human dreams, from the Library of Alexandria to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#39

Post by caf »

jblow wrote: post #13

I have been having similar lamentations recently. One obvious example: the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The original bridge was built in 1933; it took them less than 3.5 years to build it. Now, they are just trying to replace the eastern span (the bigger one, but hey, less than the full bridge), with technology from nearly a century later. They have been "working on it" for 9 years. It is currently scheduled to run anot…

How many workers died during the original construction?

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#40

Post by barrkel »

_delirium wrote: post #36
barrkel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disconnected dumb home microcomputer of 1985 to the globally connected iPad of today But the microcomputer of 1985 was globally connected too! And that did seem like quite a technological advance: here in one's own home, a machine that, via phone lines, can exchange messages worldwide! I agree that the number of people globally connected has increased, but it seems more incremental; a matter of economics and in…

Extremely few C64s and Amstrad CPC 464s were globally connected; that's the class of machine I had in mind. If you think this is just incremental, then I'd say that putting a man on the moon is just an incremental improvement in bomb-making, the culmination of the controlled release of chemical energy; a matter of slow refinement over centuries.
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