America Lacks Meaningful Innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#21

Post by thorwed123 » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:12 PM UTC

dxbydt wrote: post #13

If you want "fundamental" innovation, you simply aren't going to get it in a jiffy. Imagine if a person dead over a 100 years ago woke up today. What present day technologies would he have no trouble recognizing ? 1.Movie Projector. 2.Bulb. 3.Car. That's about it. We use pretty much the same 35mm format and film projector that was originally invented some 110 years ago( George Lucas's constant lament ). We drive arou…

Drugs, Transpants, Chemotherapy, Vaccines, chemical fertilizers, nuclear energy, internet, Wireless, Jet Engines, Petroleum Cracking, Plastics, polymeric fibers, lasers .......

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#22

Post by shadowsun7 » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:16 PM UTC

I don't get this meme. Innovation can happen anywhere - and in fact it often does regardless of how seemingly 'useless' the application is. Livejournal is 'boring', but out of it we got Memcached; Facebook is a 'PHP doodad' (actual news article called it that, I kid you not!); out of it we got HipHop and Cassandra and Thrift. Friendfeed is a 'frivolous social app', and out of it we got Tornado.

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” Sound true at face-value. But guess what? In order to process the huge amounts of data necessary to 'make people click ads', we use map/reduce, and we get and/or improve Hadoop. Both of which may then be used for other Big Data applications.

Sure, web applications seem trivial. But the innovations created as an aside to them very often are not.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#23

Post by nod » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:17 PM UTC

thorwed123 wrote: post #21

dxbydt wrote: post #13

If you want "fundamental" innovation, you simply aren't going to get it in a jiffy. Imagine if a person dead over a 100 years ago woke up today. What present day technologies would he have no trouble recognizing ? 1.Movie Projector. 2.Bulb. 3.Car. That's about it. We use pretty much the same 35mm format and film projector that was originally invented some 110 years ago( George Lucas's constant lament ). We drive arou…

Drugs, Transpants, Chemotherapy, Vaccines, chemical fertilizers, nuclear energy, internet, Wireless, Jet Engines, Petroleum Cracking, Plastics, polymeric fibers, lasers .......

1. You are being rude. Don't write anything that you wouldn't say to someone's face.

2. I believe you completely misread the parent's point: that there are only a few technologies that are 100 years old. (Not sure what that means with regards to the 'transformative' argument, but still...)

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#24

Post by thorwed123 » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:17 PM UTC

The important point is that the startups doing meaningful innovation are not founded by college and high school dropouts, but rather PhD students, or Scientist or Consultants.

That is why the idiots such as Peter Thiel and others in Techcrunch/HN/YC who stupidly argue that college education is worthless, should silenced.

Also an important point to note is that nearly all YC startups are also of the same Crap Crop as mentioned in the article.

See I can blog by sending an email [and trash talk by competitors] how innnnooovative!

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#25

Post by keiferski » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:19 PM UTC

thorwed123 wrote: post #21

dxbydt wrote: post #13

If you want "fundamental" innovation, you simply aren't going to get it in a jiffy. Imagine if a person dead over a 100 years ago woke up today. What present day technologies would he have no trouble recognizing ? 1.Movie Projector. 2.Bulb. 3.Car. That's about it. We use pretty much the same 35mm format and film projector that was originally invented some 110 years ago( George Lucas's constant lament ). We drive arou…

Drugs, Transpants, Chemotherapy, Vaccines, chemical fertilizers, nuclear energy, internet, Wireless, Jet Engines, Petroleum Cracking, Plastics, polymeric fibers, lasers .......

While I agree with you, there was no need for the personal attack. If you disagree with someone, say it politely and directly. Don't call them stupid in a roundabout, passive aggressive way.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#26

Post by thorwed123 » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:20 PM UTC

ippisl wrote: post #20

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"working for the man"(in his 60s) is the fastest way to stop innovating fast. They are earth grounded not "pie in the sky" reasonable people. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw Get a traditional job on your youth and wait to have a family to sustain and no…

|Kids are creative, middle age people are not. In most fields(except the web) , most serious entrepreneurs are around 40.

How dare you go against the Cannon of YC/TechCrunch Everyone who is 30+ is an idiot. People are smartest when they are in High school and progressively detoriate as they learn more

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#27

Post by david927 » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:21 PM UTC

shadowsun7 wrote: post #22

I don't get this meme. Innovation can happen anywhere - and in fact it often does regardless of how seemingly 'useless' the application is. Livejournal is 'boring', but out of it we got Memcached; Facebook is a 'PHP doodad' (actual news article called it that, I kid you not!); out of it we got HipHop and Cassandra and Thrift. Friendfeed is a 'frivolous social app', and out of it we got Tornado. “The best minds of my…

All of these are hacks. Interesting and useful, but hacks. None of these will be around in ten years. It's not the kind of future-inspiring innovation the author was referring to.

Web applications don't seem trivial -- they are trivial. Scaling them means being creative, but don't confuse that with true innovation.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#28

Post by SiVal » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

jff wrote: post #4

I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation selling ads, making social media startups – slaves with white collars. Internet hype has us chasing VCs and tweets, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no AI Winter. No Project MAC. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our…

Oh, boo-hoo. You've also apparently been raised to believe that someone (probably the government in some form) owed you the life of your dreams, and as it dawns that you might have to work for a living, you assume your "rights" are being violated, have a tantrum, and compose yet another leftist manifesto.

I suspect there is something wrong with how you were educated by "the system," but it's not what you think.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#29

Post by mrshoe » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

It's pretty easy to disprove statements like "America Lacks Meaningful Innovation" by counterexample. The iPhone. kiva.org. Tesla. SpaceX.

Something along the lines of "Much of America's so-called innovation is meaningless" might be more accurate. But any environment that is sufficiently conducive to innovation will produce a lot of meaningless innovation along with the meaningful stuff. Innovation consists of a huge number of failed experiments and a few successful ones.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#30

Post by chailatte » Fri, May 13, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

TravisLS wrote: post #16

narrator wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the projects Elon Musk is working on, especially SpaceX, are probably the most meaningful grand vision kind of innovation we have.

Precisely. Just because all the 25-year-olds are proving themselves by working on ad clicks today doesn't mean tomorrow's Elon Musk isn't among them. A generation of kids cutting their teeth on smaller, more approachable products is going to grow up into a generation of seasoned entrepreneurs who can meaningfully allocate capital to solve bigger problems.

So....after wasting a few years on failed useless ventures, then 10+ years on a successful useless ventures, then hopefully being one of the dozen companies in a decade to make billions either thru an exit or revenues, enough to finally launch your world changing venture and accomplish success in another 10 years or so?

Yeah, that explains why America is morally and monetarily bankrupt.