When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
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When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#2This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age:
...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror.
This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the
Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-
seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the
present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards
into the future.”
He went on to say this, in 1969, the year of the crewed
Moon landing: “Because of the invisibility of any
environment during the period of its innovation, man is
only consciously aware of the environment that has
preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully
visible only when it has been superseded by a new
environment; thus we are always one step behind in our
view of the world. The present is always invisible because
it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of
attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an
earlier day.”
There are six people living in space right now. There are
people printing prototypes of human organs, and people
printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh
and the human electrical system.
We’ve photographed the shadow of a single atom. We’ve got
robot legs controlled by brainwaves. Explorers have just
stood in the deepest unsubmerged place in the world, a
cave more than two kilometres under Abkhazia. NASA are
getting ready to launch three satellites the size of
coffee mugs, that will be controllable by mobile phone
apps.
Here’s another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more
than 11 billion miles away, and it’s run off 64K of
computing power and an eight-track tape deck.
In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously
unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the
surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on
Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this
is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on
your phone, because this is the present time and these
things are happening. The most basic mobile phone is in
fact a communications devices that shames all of science
fiction, all the wrist radios and handheld communicators.
Captain Kirk had to tune his fucking communicator and it
couldn’t text or take a photo that he could stick a nice
Polaroid filter on. Science fiction didn’t see the mobile
phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass
windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things
happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn
wizards.
That, by the way, is what Steve Jobs meant when he said
that iPads were magical. The central metaphor is magic.
And perhaps magic seems an odd thing to bring up here, but
magic and fiction are deeply entangled, and you are all
now present at a séance for the future. We are summoning
it into the present. It’s here right now. It’s in the room
with us. We live in the future. We live in the Science
Fiction Condition, where we can see under atoms and across
the world and across the methane lakes of Titan.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#3This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age: ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic- seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present th…
Was going to add a rebuttal to the linked article but no need :-) I really liked Warren Ellis' take on it.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#4Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#5This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age: ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic- seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present th…
That's exactly how I feel whenever I look at my tablet. It's a piece of glass that does things! If that isn't magic, I don't know what is.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#6This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age: ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic- seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present th…
Or, in short, when familiarity stops breeding contempt. Don't hold your breath.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#7Just because there is a lot of attention paid to the instagrams of the world does not mean there is nobody tackling big problems.
Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation.”
The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the printing press.
Typed from my glowing sheet of glass, from my couch, to be shared with the world.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#8This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age: ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic- seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present th…
The point is that the difference between 1900 and 1960 is fundamental on every level.
Carriages -> Cars
Land Travel -> Aerospace
Iceboxes at best -> Modern refrigeration
Pen and Paper -> Computers
Newspapers -> Ubiquitous electronic media.
Living at the mercy of infectious diseases -> Antibiotics/vaccines.
Coal (at best) -> Nuclear
Outhouses -> Modern Plumbing and sanitation
Etc. You could make similarly great comparisons between 1840-1900.
What do we have now? Looking at atoms? WTF does that matter in any practical sense? And even if you want to get sciency, it's clear that 1900-1960 was when the big changes in physics occurred, at least since Newton.
All of the big practical changes since 1960 have mainly served to isolate us, as amusing as they might be.
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#9The issue is not innovation, per se. the Issue is more like "progress" or improved lifestyles, culture, families, etc. The critique of the past 10 years is that there has been plenty of innovation. Lifestyles are "worse", despite more stuff. People are living in the same houses, but they are 3x as expensive. The mobile phone was very useful, but the crackberry/iphone has become more of a ball and chain, than a tool of freedom. The internet has turned into a giant blinking neon light, meant to be stared at, so our attention can be "leveraged" by advertsisers. Every thing that is meant to be an improvement ("contextual, personalized content") has an orwellian alternative case (GPS Tracking, DeepPacketInspection, rogue cookies). So the issue is not "innovation" per se. It's innovation on the upside. Innovation that is absent the downsides. Much (if not most) of the innovation in the past 10 years has been on these downsides. Thus, the things that are better (ipods, retina displays, amazing batteries,macbook air, dslr, etc) are sort of bitter sweet. [Flamesuit Donned!]
Re: When Will This Low-Innovation Era End?
#10This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age: ...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic- seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the present th…
To me, it feels that it's the everyday life that isn't changing much.
* I got my first computer 16 years ago
* I bought my first mobile phone 9 years ago
* I drive a car that is 18 years old
* I still shop in physical stores
Today :
* I can surf on 20 different websites at the same time as downloading a movie in 1080p
* I can search wikipedia from my phone
* I can have a car that parks itself
* I can shop for some things on the internet
But these aren't revolutions. I like what I got now and wouldn't trade it for what I had 10 years ago, but it hadn't changed my life much. They are improvements that I've come to like. I feel that with so much knowledge and some much technology a real revolution should come faster. I'm not nostalgic, I'm impatient.