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America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

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Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#31

Post by thorwed123 »

jshen wrote: post #12
nlawalker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's the real lament then - that so many people fresh out of school have such a strong desire to be independent that they don't contribute to efforts to solve the problems you listed in your quote. I'm not saying people aren't justified in wanting to not "work for the man". I'm just saying that maybe the fact that working for the man is perceived as such a bad thing (or is such a bad thing) is a bit closer to…

true, but why is working for the man perceived as a bad thing? Could it be "the man's" fault? I happen to work for the man and here are some issues. I can't release code as open source, I get paid the same regardless of whether I work my ass off or just do enough to be ahead of the curve, I have virtually no say in our products because I'm just an engineer (we have product people for product design), I have to get an…

You're ideal man is a university professor, he gets funding from NSF and NIH, and if you do work your ass off, Yes you do get significant share of the credit.

Go to a CS PhD program if you really want to innovate, forget all the crap that is spread on HN if you do get into top 5 or top 10 school, you will have equal amount of resources and at University even though they do have their own interests, they still want to see you succeed.

This is main difference between working and PhD, at a job you are a replaceable number at university depending on your advisor they are more concerned about your success and theirs as well.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#32

Post by thorwed123 »

nod wrote: post #23
thorwed123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

1. changed 2. read his argument again, he implies that someone from 100 years ago, would hardly find anything different

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#34

Post by dxbydt »

nod wrote: post #23
thorwed123 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Thanks. The "only 3 innovations have lasted over 100 years" premise isn't original. I first heard it at a graduation ceremony and it made a lasting impact on me. Ofcourse the speaker was very charismatic & way more dramatic than I am :)

But the phrase keeps popping up in several places. For instance, in Hedgehogging, Barton Biggs goes to a pre-2000 tech conference where they famously declare that technology innovations will propel the Dow to 20,000 in 1 year! Biggs calls bullshit & points out that genuine innovation like Air Conditioning & steam engines are once-in-a-lifetime event. He is asked if the internet is a "fundamental" innovation & he disagrees. He becomes a laughing stock. The next year the Dow drops 2000 points.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#35

Post by thorwed123 »

mrshoe wrote: post #29

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…

iphone == meaningful??? Lol iphone is just maarketing

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#36

Post by tlow »

Are the claims about 'top graduates' in 'top programs' flowing into startups at a rate that is any different than in the past substantiated by fact?

This whole article reads to me like a statistician selecting and manipulating certain data to prove the desired result, except, there seems to be little more than limited conjecture in this piece.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#37

Post by thorwed123 »

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…

Hadoop rather mapreduce came from Google which is a great innovation.

Cassandra came from Dynamo; And Dynamo is from Amazons R and D efforts. Btw Amazon is an innovation as it leads to large amount of savings in energy.

Thrift,Tornado,HipHop -> not innovations useful programming tools but not gonna change anything.

Rarely any innovations have come out of Web Applications. In fact the best innovation in data mining [The correct term for Big Data], have come from Universities or R&D efforts of IBM/MSFT/Google/IBM/Amazon.

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#38

Post by chailatte »

mrshoe wrote: post #29

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…

So you're saying that if people just keep making photo sharing apps (flickr, facebook, color, instagram)....eventually those people will invent space travel or nuclear fission?

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#39

Post by epochwolf »

SiVal wrote: post #28
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.

As someone already pointed out, this is a movie reference. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes?qt0479105

Re: America Lacks Meaningful Innovation

#40

Post by KleinmanB »

thorwed123 wrote: post #35
mrshoe wrote: post #29

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…

iphone == meaningful??? Lol iphone is just maarketing

These articles constantly surface and they are beyond stupid. Facebook is VERY meaningful, 99 Designs (Helping small companies exist) is very meaningful. Marginalizing innovation because they arent curing cancer is stupid and misses the value.
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