The hierarchy of innovation (2012)

Modern education system destroys innovation at large, and the economies of modern world don't support invention at rate you'd expect to influence technology. There is no stimulus/prestige to be an inventor, the focus is either money or fame, with prestige of science being severely diminished in favor of pop culture "recognition"(viral/memetic). Science itself shifted from lone genius inventors towards teams working for Big Science/Corporate world, without individual recognition and respect, reducing motivation towards the minimum work required to function inside a structured "science team" churning papers for more funding. These teams do invent stuff, but only because these teams get better equipment, funding and social support. Only rich eccentrics can fund "garage science", with rest trying "startup culture" to monetize inventions which incentivizes business-centric approach to "get something quick to market to get rich" - which attracts far different people than lone inventors working "for science": people today want to protect/patent/safeguard their invention far more than they want for it to be famous or recognized, fearing being left in the dust while megacorporations steal their inventions and mass-produce cheapest version of their design at economic advantage.

> why is innovation less impressive today?

Maybe it helps to split innovation into its main two constituents: I. scientific innovation (biological, chemical, mechanical, physical etc. domains) that pertains to the external, physical world and II. innovation that concerns the constitution of human society (laws, governance schemes, economic organization, information recording and transmission infrastructure etc.).

The two types of innovation are deeply interconnected. Exploring, understanding and (where applicable) controlling the external world requires certain types of enabling social innovations (script, educational systems, well-fed and trained scientists etc). In a virtuous cycle, understanding the physical world enables more social innovation (medicine produces healthier scientists, physics produces electromagnetic / digital devices and thus more informed ones etc.)

So where does it all go wrong?

Innovation to push our external interface faces a stark and unrelenting reality. The Universe is what it is. It has always been so. The amount of required effort and ingenuity for the next breakthrough in the various fronts varies and is not knowable in advance. Room-temperature superconductors may be around the corner or not possible in this universe. The cure for cancer may be within sight or it might dissolve in a fractal chase of myriads of different pathologies.

On the social innovation front it is a very different predicament. Nothing "is-what-it-is" except some very primitive innate behaviors. Everything is culturally conditioned, but those constructs carry a lot of inertia. Vast numbers of people remain unhealthy, uneducated, uninformed etc. even though there is absolutely no objective reason for this to be the case. Priorities on where to innovate are not set by objective needs but must pass arbitrary yet very "real" political, social and economic filters.

So if innovation is less impressive today it is to some (unknowable) degree because of external factors but certainly in good part due to social stagnation - if not regression, which hinders the diffusion and acceleration of innovation that characterised past centuries.

> We’re getting precisely the kind of innovation that we desire – and that we deserve.

Indeed. While not precisely, arguably to a large extent.

There is a lot of backing for this concept that innovation is continuing, and also that past innovation was not the 'big-bang' explosion that we remember.

We only remember the big changes, we don't remember the decades to produce them.

Just look back at the studies on the Industrial Revolution. We think of them as great progress, great innovation. But that is only looking back at the results. The Industrial Revolution actually stretched over hundred years, and when the individual year-to-year progress is mapped out, then it was really more of a continuum that continues to today.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171333

Who came up with this pyramid? And why should technologies of the self be at the top? I feel like identity should be much lower and is much more fundamental but the way the internet was constructed it was missed. Or it was never built for “users”. It’s the databases of data brokers.

Just wanted to comment about the quote at the top of this article:

> If you could choose only one of the following two inventions, indoor plumbing or the Internet, which would you choose?

One feeling I've been having a lot recently is that the majority of new technology is no longer "in service of the people". That is, it no longer is created to solve pressing problems everyday people have. And, as a technologist who was super optimistic about the direction of tech in the late 90s, this has made me pretty depressed.

If you think about things like indoor plumbing, electricity, washing machines, dishwashers, airplanes, etc., they all basically solved an intrinsic, existing problem people had, and they drastically improved life for people with access to them. This isn't to say they don't have some substantial negative side effects, but they were created with the idea that people would buy and use them to improve their lives.

Nowadays, I feel like new tech is either (a) created to addict us, or (b) just there to help solve some problems tech created in the first place. I see these "addiction economics" everywhere these days: social media obviously, but also things like the economics of video games ("gamification" really means: how can we addict you), crypto is just another tool for gamblers (and ransomware attackers), etc. Even most of the stuff around VR/AR is asking for solutions to problems people don't have: Apple's Vision Pro may be an amazing piece of tech, but the open question is still "why do we want to use this thing?" On my second point, working in fintech, so much of "fintech" is just "dealing with the insane complexity we've created in the first place", e.g. the way we pay for healthcare.

There are obvious exceptions: I wouldn't say the nuclear weapons we invented in the 40s were really "in service of the people", and as controversial as they may be in some respects, I think self-driving cars definitely fit in the mold of improving people's lives. On my point about side effects, there are also obviously negative side effects to even beneficial inventions; maybe one reason our "pace of innovation" has slowed is that it was never sustainable in the first place, as my summer of continual 105+ degree days is attesting.

But I really think our economy has changed over the past 25 years or so such that in many cases the payoff is better when entrepreneurs just find a more successful way to addict us. When I look around my own life and ways to improve it, most of them involve using technology less. Pretty much the only invention that I think would have a significant positive impact on my life and wellbeing at the moment is a machine that automatically folds laundry, and I don't see a huge corporate focus on that area.