New research busts popular myths about innovation

wsj.com

3 points·shamoo··5 comments

This is part of a body of research pointing to the same things in different areas. Scientific and industrial progress is heterogeneous, incremental, and relentless. It's more like hordes of searchers noticing the same things simultaneously than lone geniuses in solitary labs.

One thing I wonder is how this might have changed or not over time. It seems important to know not just for historical understanding, but also to anticipate possible changes in the current regime.

Throughout history, it seems like there have been lengthy periods of technological stagnation. I once was listening to a medievalist who said people in the Middle Ages had no notion of technological progress (though I wonder if it is really true there was no tech advancement at that time).

This is one of the most fascinating academic studies I have come across recently, and I have been reading the original referenced paper linked to in the article [0]. The take away is industries that are evolving fastest are linked to software where the rate of progress is extraordinary. It really is true, “Software is eating the world”.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004873332...!

"Robotics, for example, is improving at the rate of 18.5% a year". That is a prodigious rate of improvement. That means robots will be 100 times better than they are today in 25 years. Maybe a robot that can clean my house, do my dishes, and mow my lawn may not be so far away after all.

That would be nice but it would likely just follow you around serving you ads and deliberately getting in your way to get your maximum attention!!

https://archive.is/fkxnj

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