[meric]

The article mentioned:

"The Montgolfier brothers came up with the idea while lying beside a fire and watching hot ash and embers float upwards – and they thought about this in a military context – namely how to take Gibraltar from the British."

And later

"However, Hero of Alexandria (10–70 CE) was well known for constructing complex automata, had powered a pipe organ using his wind-wheel (windmill) and developed a variety of steam driven devices using his aeolipile; a primitive turbine type steam engine with surprising motive capacity."

From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon "Unmanned hot air balloons are popular in Chinese history. Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms era (220–80 AD) used airborne lanterns for military signaling."

"In fact, von Braun was engaged in designing and building the V-2, and much more sophisticated rockets, solely because he wanted to achieve the exploration of space; both personally and for the human species."

In each example above where technologies were invented / discovered, you can see that these innovations were driven by individuals and their purpose. In the case of the automata and the hot air balloon, both were invented by a leader of their own respective society - "Hero of Alexandria" and "Zhuge Liang" - the chinese military genius. Von Braun wanted to invent rockets for the purpose of space exploration... but his effort was redirected into war and destruction.

Comparing to innovations we've made in the past, say, 30 years, you can see the same. Bill Gates commoditized hardware and brought computers onto many desks cheaply. And Steve Jobs... you know the rest.

Each story of humans' invention seems to just as much be a story of the individual who led its discovery, rather than the environment surrounding him/her, and when the environment is taking into account, it seems it does more to stifle innovation than to foster it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

What you are ignoring is that while the individual is definitely the catalyst for the innovation, the environment is equally important.

Considered another way, there are countless people around the world with the intelligence and drive of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but they live in impoverished villages in India and Africa and struggle just to stay alive. They may do better than their neighbors, but without the support of a technologically and financially advanced society, what they can accomplish is severely limited.

[pavel_lishin]

Even people living in affluent societies may be steered from the path we imagine them to take. Bill Gates was very lucky to have access to a computer at an early age. If he'd lived in, say, San Antonio, would have have achieved what he did?

[wazoox]

> Each story of humans' invention seems to just as much be a story of the individual who led its discovery, rather than the environment surrounding him/her, and when the environment is taking into account, it seems it does more to stifle innovation than to foster it.

We can argue that the WWII may not have taken place without Hitler, however the personal computer revolution would have occurred with Commodore instead of Apple, and CP/M instead of MS-DOS, because most inventions essentially "are breathed with air" when their time's arrived.

[philwelch]

You'd also need to stop Mussolini, Stalin, and Hirohito to stop a world war from breaking out at the time. At minimum.