Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation • Hacker News Board

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#41

Post by radarsat1 » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 1:23 PM UTC

I agree in principle, but it seems funny to me to read an article like this after watching a video of a surgical robot peeling a grape! Maybe the space program was the "big idea" of the 60s, but there are still some pretty fantastic innovations being developed, even if they are closer to home. But i agree that energy innovation is going to be the most important subject of the next decade.

I guess the reality is that things like globalization is making it impossible to ignore down-to-earth political-economic problems that we simply need solutions for, right now, more than we need other things. I have confidence that we are in a highly transitionary period of history, and eventually the pendulum will swing back te other way.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#42

Post by melling » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 1:34 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #24

AngryParsley wrote: post #16

Neal 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...

What makes them boondoggle projects? You don't think a city the size of Shanghai needs a large subway? Isn't a subway more cost effective and a more efficient way to move people in a large city?

The same argument can be made for HSR. Moving 1.3 billion people are now free to move about the country.

In the US, we're still arguing over building our first HSR.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#43

Post by _delirium » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 1:37 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #40

_delirium wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The moon example is advances caused by technological improvement, though, where something previously technically impossible (going to the moon) eventually became possible.

By contrast, I think much of the global connectivity improvement, at least at the basic level of connectivity, is social/economic. The technology existed in 1985 to hook people up with at least basic global connectivity; unlike going to the moon in 1920, it was not technologically out of reach to get on Usenet in 1985. And many people did get hooked up to various kinds of global messaging. That many others didn't was mainly a matter of price, education, and interest, imo, not a technological issue. It's certainly technologically conceivable to have an alternate-reality 1980s where the average home had a C64 or AppleII, and dial-up access to a global messaging/email service, using no technology that didn't exist in 1985.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#44

Post by varjag » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 1:50 PM UTC

doomlaser wrote: post #11

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…

The proliferation of cell phones is huge, and the smart phone revolution is another gigantic social change. Conquering space in a meaningful way is a much larger problem than any of the leaps we've made technologically in the past 100 years.

Female emancipation was even bigger social change, but it wasn't the article's point. If we restrict ourselves to realm of technology, smartphones are not that much of a breakthrough. I had my Nokia and my Palm back in 1990s, it wasn't really that much different.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#45

Post by blackiron » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

samgro wrote: post #17

I'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…

I doubt that any sci-fi writer wrote about you buying shoes and finding old friends.. which is the point of the article.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#46

Post by PakG1 » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 2:18 PM UTC

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.…

I agree for the most part. I video skyped with my mom today. It boggled her mind that we're able to do this. This is something that was only possible in cartoons in the 70s. She only just discovered Skype, whereas I've been using it for years and have seen it evolve.

I imagine it's like watching your nephew grow up. Don't see him for a few years, and suddenly, it's like, whoah! You're huge! But if you see him every day, maybe the difference isn't as dramatic.

I would also note that those more dramatic motives you discuss regarding things like the pyramids, space exploration, etc, may not exist today, which further decreases the dramatic level of today's technology.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#47

Post by barrkel » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #43

barrkel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The moon example is advances caused by technological improvement, though, where something previously technically impossible (going to the moon) eventually became possible. By contrast, I think much of the global connectivity improvement, at least at the basic level of connectivity, is social/economic. The technology existed in 1985 to hook people up with at least basic global connectivity; unlike going to the moon in…

There are innumerable things that are technically possible today that were not technically possible in 1985. What I'm really objecting to is this veneration of explosively moving a certain weight of flesh over a certain distance as a thing, an achievement, which we are lacking now.

Clearly, sending a man to the moon captured the imagination of a certain generation, a generation that is growing older. But it didn't capture my imagination particularly strongly; it was before my time, and now it seems to me like an massive achievement in the same way as the pyramids were massive achievements. Literally massive, in that the scale is impressive, but monuments essentially without purpose other than aggrandizing those who achieved them.

So I don't see them as a big thing that was done in the past that is lacking in the present. I don't see a need for them. You might as well ask why we haven't built a bigger pyramid than at Giza.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#48

Post by molbioguy » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

In my opinion, Stephenson is focusing on "getting big stuff done" and, more pointedly, achieving large and perhaps lofty goals. He's not disparaging all the incremental advancements that add up to something really big. I think he's saying we've lost the will to aim really high, take real risks (loss of life included), to achieve something that seemed insurmountable. I think he's saying we've grown too fearful of risk and failure. We've prioritized safety over achievement. While his examples were space-based, I don't think that's what he's ultimately aiming at.

The current internet is revolutionary, but wasn't achieved on some master plan. It grew incrementally and somewhat organically. Creating a planet-wide super high speed communications network to every house within 10 years as a concerted project might be closer to what he's thinking. Something like what Google plays around with, but on a huge scale. Software and computer devices are also amazing, but they too were not part of a well-defined goal or vision. They grew from smaller innovations.

There will always be good rational arguments about things being too costly or too impractical or just not as important as feeding and clothing everyone, but that's the "valley" that he spoke of getting past or over. It's hard to fly if you remain too firmly grounded.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#49

Post by igorlev » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

I don't think it's starvation, it's just a big slow patch. Innovation, just like evolution doesn't work on a smooth continuum but in jumps and bursts of flowering. Neal Stephenson is being observant but unfortunately shortsighted himself by complaining about the natural cycles of innovation.

I agree with his observation that we've become more short-term oriented, I don't agree with his extrapolation of that tendency to the future or the causality. We're not building big stuff because we've become shortsighted, we've become shortsighted because we've built most of the big stuff that was cheap to build with current knowledge. As soon as new avenues open up we'll have another burst of invention.

Fusion reactors have been "a few decades away" for the last 75 years so it's understandable that we don't have as many people interested in that. But I'll bet you that when they're finally made workable enough you will have enough applications of that tech to figure out for the next 50 years.

Same thing with manufacturing. You already have people printing gun parts on 3D printers and trading designs on-line. Research being done at this very moment on metallising printable materials or making stronger composites printable is going to turn manufacturing completely upside down.

19th century was figuring out the applications of mechanical automation, early 20th - the applications of electricity, late 20th - of electronic automation. Who knows what the 21st will be, but I'm sure we'll get out of this slow patch eventually.

Re: Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation

#50

Post by gaustin » Sat, Oct 01, 2011, 2:47 PM UTC

tjmc wrote: post #25

wolfparade wrote: post #12

I 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...

And I just read it on a smartphone in my back yard in extremely rural Montana.

The room for "physical" innovation is shrinking. But the importance of physicality is diminishing, especially location. Modern innovation seems more subtle and widespread today, than it was when we threw most of our energy at a few big goals.

Perhaps you can't transport your body around the world quite as quickly and easily as you could in the past. You can be there virtually in seconds and at almost no cost.

I'm not sure it's good for us as a species to have the ability to disconnect from the physical world so much. But that's where we are and it seems the disconnect is only going to get more pronounced.