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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of what our parents generation did: building interstate highways, Manhattan Project, etc, could not be done today.

Being the only remaining superpower (and having little global military competition) really takes the wind out of government's sails of achievement.

Interstate highways, the Manhattan project, the space program, national infrastructure, aerospace, much medical technology, and even computers were all borne out of military necessity. With so many bad guys around the globe, only a traitor could vote against these things.

Our parents built the stuff needed to save the world. We're building better ways to instantly share our bowel habits. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

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Blah Blah Blah. Social networking was crucial for a country of highly oppressed people to overthrow their tyrannical government. Doctors can identify diseases from their phone in a way that would have taken days, we can de-salt water in way that is practical. New times, new problems.

Our generation is pushing innovation at a speed that is unparalleled, don't confuse the 47 fart apps in the app store as a complete misappropriation of focus.

Yeah really. Incredible innovations affecting people's daily lives all over the world. Peter comes across as somebody who prefers his parents generation's view of how great it used to be to all the exciting and empowering stuff happening today.

Blah Blah Blah.

Normally, I ignore such responses, but how could I resist bait like that?

Social networking was crucial for a country of high oppressed people to overthrow their tyrannical government.

Ahh, the jury's still out on that one. Let's see how much less tyrannical the next government is. I bet not much.

Doctors can identify diseases from their phone in a way that would have taken days

To what purpose? This is the first generation with worse health and life expectency than its parents. What good is providing so much technology at so much cost to those who push so little value out of the other end of the pipeline?

New times, new problems

No question. All I'm wondering is, "Where is the new value?"

Our generation is pushing innovation at a speed that is unparalleled

Versus what? Citing, please.

Hmmm, lets see...

From 1910 to 1960: The masses received first value from the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, radio, television, electricity, indoor plumbing, sewage treatment, and antibiotics.

From 1960 to 2010: We can carry our phones with us. Cool.

don't confuse the 47 fart apps in the app store as a complete misappropriation of focus

Opps, I completely forgot about smart phones. I was referring to all the instant communications we now have that produce so much activity and so little value. Is that all we've got?

> I was referring to all the instant communications we now have that produce so much activity and so little value. Is that all we've got?

We are more connected with people than ever. And future generations will be even more so. I get that there's a general sentiment that spending more time on Facebook or Twitter isn't valuable "real people time." But I'll be contrarian and say it is.

I've kept in touch with more of the people I care about AND have deeper relationships with them because of social software and mobile communications tech. Yes, because of Facebook, Skype, and the panoply of other innovations that may seem like just pointless activity.

This is the first generation with worse health and life expectency than its parents.

Could you explain why you believe this? The simple timeseries tells a different story.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...

> From 1910 to 1960: The masses received first value from the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, radio, television, electricity, indoor plumbing, sewage treatment, and antibiotics. > From 1960 to 2010: We can carry our phones with us. Cool.

Not to be overly pedantic, but just to compare correct time periods: electrical distribution really got running in the 1890s, the telephone also is from the late 1800s, etc.

1960 to 2010 brought space exploration, the internet, economical airplane travel, computers, all sorts of cures/treatments for diseases, pretty much 100% of what is now called microbiology, and yes.. even mobile phones.

Just 15 years ago it was such a pain to get things done, due to the lack of widespread web and email. Some may say otherwise, but I feel life is much easier now - at least for those who can use the technologies well.

The pace of innovation in America has slowed, though, as the government has consumed a greater share of GDP. For example, cellphone technology was invented in 1947 but was stifled by the FCC for a generation.

Social networking was crucial for a country of highly oppressed people to overthrow their tyrannical government.

No, not really. It might surprise you, but repressive regimes have been overthrown for centuries before Facebook. What really helped was high food prices, historically a harbinger of political change. Social media was marginal.

Try convincing 500 of your rebel friends to meet in a poorly lit restaurant before you march the capital by yelling out the window.

Now try telling them on your facebook wall.

Lets see who pushes change.

The government can see your Facebook wall. If you don't yell it out the window but pass the message along by more subtle means, the government will have to go to more effort to find out what was said at the poorly lit restaurant.

The problem isn't telling people about it---again, rebels have communicated with each other since there have been governments to rebel against. The exact means of communication is irrelevant (obviously, since revolutions have happened in the age of print, telegraph, telephony, television, and now the Internet). The problem is motivating ordinary people to actually take action, and that depends on socio-economic factors that have nothing to do with technology. What you're seeing in the Middle East is how business has been done there for thousands of years. It's how these countries change their government in the absence of any stable democratic traditions. Or rather, it is their democratic tradition to change regimes this way.

China has no problem taking on projects like these.

It's very naive to tout the benefits of central authority without considering the costs. A government that has the power to push through massive public projects isn't going stop there.

One of the main reasons projects on this scale are so difficult to organize is that there are so many independent stakeholders with diverging interests. Glorifying the state's ability to steamroll these interests for the sake of 'progress' is dangerous stuff.

Do you have any examples of egregious civil rights violations as a consequence of the moon mission? I mean, having some sense of investing in your country and future doesn't mean you have to massacre people in Tiananmen square.

The same politicians and ideas that motivated funding for those missions were directly responsible for horrific wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and many other countries during that period. I'd gladly trade our man on the moon to erase those wars and the philosophy that led to them from our history.

In sum: fuck nationalism.

Generally speaking, the politicians most in favor of nationalistic wars are those who are most opposed to domestic infrastructure speaking. Just saying.

Maybe so, though the space program is a clear exception and I think there are plenty of others--the modern 'neoconservative' platform, for example, pushes for high levels of both military and domestic spending, and is firmly rooted in nationalism. The point is that unchecked domestic power generally implies unchecked military power. And then there's the secret police...

Which politicians are favor nationalistic wars but oppose to domestic infrastructure?

Off the top of my head, the Chinese seem to favor both. The old regime in Iraq also had a penchant for both as well. Going back further, Japanese and German nationalists also were huge proponents of both big domestic infrastructure projects and nationalistic wars.

If you are looking at US politics, the wars mentioned by danenania were all started by US politicians who were also proponents of big infrastructure (Truman, Kennedy, Nixon). I don't think they were nationalistic wars, however.

Am I missing something here?

(Note: I'm ignoring former Communists, since Communism officially disavowed nationalism. In cases of other nationalistic wars, e.g. Rwanda or Kosovo, I don't know the opinions of politicians on infrastructure.)

How about the entire modern conservative movement? I'll reiterate my "generally speaking" qualifier because I'm not trying to pigeonhole any individuals, but I'd say that "in favor of nationalistic wars and cutting domestic spending" is pretty much the 1 sentence description of anyone who gets a good reception on Fox News.

The modern chinese pretty much stay out of the war thing. They got Tibet and that's all they care about.

Communism, well, yeah they said that, but it was really only true for a brief period in between China going communist (solidarity!) and Nixon going to China (they're enemies now!).

EDIT: Also, re: nationalistic wars, I agree on all except for Nixon not wanting to leave Vietnam. There's no other explanation for "peace with honor" besides nationalism and pride. That only half counts since he didn't start it, of course.

You are pigeonholing and you are uninformed. Ron Paul just won the straw poll at the biggest conservative conference in part because of his opposition to the endless wars. Nixon pulled out of Vietnam, a war that Democratic presidents started and expanded. There is a long tradition in the American conservative movement that opposes foreign wars and entanglements. This wing is ascendent at the moment.

In the last 60 years China fought wars of aggression in Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea, and the Indian border. China constantly threatens Taiwan and to some degree Japan as well. I don't understand your Nixon/China comment-- you need to learn some facts, Nixon began America's slow detente with China. (They're friends now!)

Apparently you are only paying any attention to what "conservatives" say on Fox News, not the policies they implement.

The policies they implement??????

Bro. The Iraq war happened. John Boehner is speaker of the house right now, they're in a huge budget standoff over slashing domestic spending (while ignoring military spending and entitlements).

Hence, "the modern conservative movement is about nationalistic military stances and cutting domestic spending". This isn't really a hard statement to substantiate.

Ehh, let's be real. Republicans spend just as much domestically as Democrats, they just favor different industries and utilize different accounting scams.

We effectively have a one-party system in the US.

All those things you said are government projects. We just tried a grand experiment to see if we could usher in a new era of healthcare and were met with strong resistance, oddly enough, from the _very same generation_ widely credited with producing all of those things (Interstate, Manhattan project, space program) that you mentioned. Those radical free-thinking minds are now more conservative as they grow older, those notions of revolution are replaced by memories and a strong desire to put things back to "how they used to be".

Now, people in their 20s and 30s, the ones that are supposed to be revolutionary, are worried about finding jobs, putting food on the table, and keeping work so that they can keep their healthcare plan. So, the big companies that used to work on big things and revolutionary technology, can now focus on extracting as much profit per product as they can (not that they didn't before, but there was, as you and this article admits freely, more focus on radical innovation and Doing Big Things). Instead of "revolutionary new products and projects" we get "refreshes" and marketing of said refreshes as "revolutionary". The bottom line is more secure, the worker subjugated, and thus the Empire retreats, stage right.

You are confusing your generations. The people currently in power are 50-70 years old, ie born in 1940-1960. They were children during the WWII era and Eisenhower administration, and had nothing to do with the Bomb, the Apollo program or interstates.

For example, Feynman, one of the "young kids" of the Manhattan project, was born in 1918.

So, it's the Baby Boomers, the _children_ of the Greatest Generation that did all those great government infrastructure and technology buildouts, who are holding us back from being able to do those great things again? My mistake, then!

But then it begs the question: Why do they want to do that?

Because they're scared of losing their power and being left behind by new technologies. And because they'd rather invest in life extension.

And keep your government hands off my medicare!!

I really have a problem with the labeling "Greatest Generation". It seems misplaced given the entire history of the USA and the constant struggle to be better. It also shows a pretty horrible sense of history about the founders, and it forgets that the whole point is to make sure the next generation is greater than the current.

If the next generation isn't "greater", then the USA is in decline and the one who didn't enable their children to be greater shouldn't be held up as greatest.

I believe, and think I do so based on reasonable evidence, that the "Greatest Generation" was in fact particularly good, and the Baby Boomers were quite possibly the worst cohort in the US of all time. Gen X was probably on par with the Greatest Generation in many ways, and Gen Y/Mill are too soon to tell, but certainly appear better than Baby Boomers.

Strauss and Howe's book "Generations" or "Fourth Turning" seems pretty reasonable. (http://www.timepage.org/time.html)

While I might not push the "redact the boomers" button (maybe...), it would pretty much fix all of the major problems in the US. Their outsize numbers have imposed a lot of costs on society, so even if their politics and economics weren't also destructive, they would have seriously stressed medicare and social security. Couple that with that seems to be the worst of both conservatism (lack of investment) and liberalism (lack of discipline), and they're a serious threat.

I guess my central thesis is if generation n didn't teach/push generation n+1 to be better than them, then they failed at continuing the chain and don't deserve the title.

I think Wilson and FDR's group did more damage to the future US generations than the Baby Boomers did.

I don't think there's a lack of radical innovation. maybe it's less concentrated in silicon valley , but all across the u.s. and worldwide you can see radical innovations unfolding.

Things like robotics and artificial intelligence are probably the most radical technologies since the industrial revolution. probably much more radical.

And what about clean energy and clean technology ? the solution to the biggest problem of the 21th century ? and on the way make our chemical manufacturing clean ?

And what about stem cells ? they hold the potential to be a cure to many chronic diseases.

And telepresence , the holodeck at every home?

Things just take time , that's all.

It's a strange example to use in a story bemoaning the decline in startup innovation as well, since the interstate highway system and the Manhattan Project were not exactly things done by startups.

Yeah, particularly strange for somebody who sees himself as a libertarian. Oh well. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

I don't think you can compare generational innovation. These things are all relative. It's hard for me to believe that today's minds who are building a supercomputer that can reproduce human logic and understanding couldn't produce the Manhattan Project.

We aren't becoming more short-term focused, rather the future is shrinking. A 20 year time frame in past generations is now 3 years. In this day, if you have a long-term scope and vision you will become obsolete in five years. Adaptation is crucial to innovation as well.

I'd love to find links to old newspaper articles talking about building interstate highways and such. Doing nearly anything today seems like it is near impossible. The costs, the time, and the political divisiveness (at even the city local level) makes doing a monorail or adding a line seem like Roe v Wade.

The health care debate in the U.S is a microcosm of all this. The only thing that people argue about is how much more money we're going to spend on it, and we already spend far more, as a percentage of GDP, on health care than any other nation.

Any solution that has to do with process innovation, technology innovation or any sort of thing that would otherwise upset the status quo besides more money is largely ignored. There are so many vested interest involved that the only thing they can all support is even more money being poured down the same old rathole.

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