[mindtricks]

The author makes innovation out to be something akin to "if we focus on this, then it will change", but that's not how this typically works. Most development is based on smaller improvements and discoveries made years in the past. And those take time to mature and scale.

Sometimes they converge around the same time and it looks transformational. More often though, they are slowly incorporated into the progressive change we enjoy.

It's also likely that areas that are important to him, just don't have a market. It doesn't mean people aren't innovating, it just means that resource allocation towards innovation went to other areas (for good or bad).

[somethoughts]

It seems also a bit like the author is heavily relying on popular media to tell him what/where innovation is happening. Popular media - even science coverage - trends towards fast and immediate - so internet speed startups get the most attention.

Real science R&D innovation is relatively slow and full of failures and false starts. Peter Thiel made a big stink about where are flying cars but then proceeded to invest in a bunch of normal incremental improvement type startups (DTC, finch etc.). Even where Founders Fund did invest in true science - there's not much to talk about since real R&D is a slog.

If the author took the time to do actual research into innovation and took a long view - there's a lot more happening.

[winternett]

Covid mitigation doesn't have a market?

Improving social media without taxing content creators (and crediting and paying creators fairly) doesn't have a market?

Making music streaming fair to artists doesn't have a market?

Improving the quality of consumer goods on a wide-scale-basis doesn't have a market?

Not creating tons of toxic landfills filled with discarded lithium batteries from electric cars doesn't have a market?

Not wasting tons of resources, money, and not polluting the environment for space tourism in favor of improving education and living conditions of third world countries... Doesn't have a market?

These aren't just "individual personal" concerns.

We don't need gradual global transformation in my opinion. We need more drastic and game-changing innovation towards better goals.

[danaris]

The things you describe aren't areas where a traditional "market" can make much of a difference.

COVID mitigation is the closest, and...we've seen lots of innovation there, frankly. The damn disease has only existed for just over two years, and we've seen a variety of vaccines and at least a few different effective treatments appear.

Basically every other innovation you name is all about challenging powerful incumbents to improve things for ordinary people and/or the planet...and no, there's no "market" for that. Markets are terrible for that. The powerful incumbents are great at bending markets to protect the status quo, and ordinary people and the planet don't have much sway over them.

That's why we have things like regulation, antitrust laws, and government-funded science. What we need is to give them better teeth.

[megaseahorse]

Could it be that certain technologies has made some areas of innovations looks fast and easy to do that we expect other areas to make the same progress in the same amount of time and effort?

[bombcar]

Another large aspect is applying solutions from one problem space to another - a decent amount of “computerization” was this.

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

The author is more making out innovation to be lacking.

In particular, why aren’t these problems solved?

> No one has innovated a cost effective way to update office ventilation properly, and workspaces to prevent the spread of contaminants, no one has made highly comfortable yet very inexpensive N95 masks, no one has invented a fool-proof vaccination that completely prevents infection...

[ekidd]

> No one has innovated a cost effective way to update office ventilation properly,

Ventilation is building infrastructure, and building infrastructure is difficult. To use a software analogy, it's sort of like saying, "Why hasn't someone found a cost effective way to update mainframe software to support Unicode?" Basically, there's a lot of it, most of it's custom, and you have to work around things on a case-by-case basis. And a greenfield replacement is expensive. There are buildings in New York where the central heating dates back a century, and most of the people with the expertise to maintain it are over 70. (And they're second-generation legacy maintainers in some cases.) There's no cheap or easy way to update these buildings with better ventilation. Your best bet might be window units, but that poses plenty of challenges, too.

EDIT: Another commenter suggested HEPA filters, which may work for central air (if circulation is already good enough), or if you place them in standalone room units. I think the science on the latter looker promising when last I looked?

> no one has made highly comfortable yet very inexpensive N95 masks,

I've been pretty happy with the KF-94s from South Korea. I bought 20 masks each from several brands, tried them on, and ordered a big box of my favorites. Depending on your goals, there are also good N95s and KN-95s.

One of the challenges here is that many people want masks that work, and that means some kind of certification or inspection. But this means that most countries tend to standardize on one basic mask design backed up by government enforcement.

> no one has invented a fool-proof vaccination that completely prevents infection

This is a genuinely hard problem. Immunology is super complex, and every disease works differently. The particular challenge with coronaviruses, as I understand it, is that they reproduce in the nose extremely soon after initial infection. Mucosal antibodies have certain limitations compared to other antibodies, and it's hard for the body to ramp up a defense inside of 24 to 36 hours.

But we have just seen the golden age of vaccine innovation.

[winternett]

There is vast innovation granted, but with it comes huge cost because it's often investor driven... It's why we see patches and workarounds to problems far more than true fixes now more than ever.

True innovation in ventilation to mitigate Covid would look something like an inexpensive UV light air purification unit that can be mounted over the air intake of a home heating system... Many of us bought blacklights at Spencer Gifts back in the early 90s, but somehow relative lights are marked now as a "new innovation" and a high price tag is slapped on every solution involving it, along with cameras, internet connectivity, and even robotics...

This is a very generalized means of elaborating on problem cited here of course... A much bigger conversation on this could be made.

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

I think the bigger point is: why has it not yet happened?

[gjulianm]

It's fairly disingenuous to put those problems as examples.

> No one has innovated a cost effective way to update office ventilation properly,

I can find HEPA air filters in Amazon for less than $100.

> no one has made highly comfortable yet very inexpensive N95 masks,

The N95 masks I use are fairly comfortable. However, a N95 mask must be well fitted to provide protection, which means it has to be tight, which means it won't be highly comfortable. This is a physical limitation of the problem, no amount of innovation can avoid the fact that you need a tight seal.

> no one has invented a fool-proof vaccination that completely prevents infection

The mRNA vaccines are a great example of a pretty cool innovation. It doesn't completely prevent infection, yeah, but no vaccine does that. Having a vaccine in a year and a half, widely available, when the initial estimates were of two years if we were lucky...

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

> I can find HEPA air filters in Amazon for less than $100.

Can you retrofit a house’s HVAC for positive pressure ventilation for $500?

[winternett]

HEPA fiters are revolutionary, but they don't quite qualify as new innovation do they?

N95 masks have been around for ages as well. I have ideas of course on how they could be improved, as I am sure many others do, but it gets drowned out daily by all the nonsense of debating whether masks are even effective... We can't deny that politicizing mask effectiveness is in the same distraction bag as flat earth debates, but somehow we all just shrug it off not realizing that it is what clouds real discussion about meaningful innovation.

No one is disparaging the innovation behind mRNA vaccines, that is not a related or accurate talking point, it's a side-track.

[obpe]

> no one has made highly comfortable yet very inexpensive N95 masks

Because faces have a huge range of variance so the only solution is custom make masks. Technologies like additive manufacturing could solve this but like all new technologies it will take time to bring the cost down. So really, why don't they make cheaper 3D printers? So simple!

> no one has invented a fool-proof vaccination that completely prevents infection

Literally impossible!

> No one has innovated a cost effective way to update office ventilation properly, and workspaces to prevent the spread of contaminants

I do think this hits a large point because I see it from the perspective of business. Much like FAANG, if a competitor came out with a better, cheaper product just buy them and destroy the product. Free market at it's finest.

[winternett]

I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people with ideas that could get us all further toward resolution of the problems cited above, but because of the nature of online "credit theft" and the dangers of sharing unprotected IP online, they won't spill it out here. ;)

[munk-a]

Let me just add some emphasis...

> No one has innovated a cost effective way to update office ventilation properly

This isn't an easy problem but we definitely have a plethora of ways to solve office ventilation, it's just that most of them require air ducts which are expensive as all heck to boot strap to existing buildings that lack them - and most of the economic designs for central air involve air recycling (because that's good for the environment) while, during a pandemic, we probably want to focus more on air evacuation. The one area we've realized a highly effective ventilation system that is designed to operate in a closed loop is on airplanes but that system is pretty radically different than what we run in offices because, again, it's not super cost effective.

When it comes to N95 masks I've worn extremely comfortable disposable and effective masks - but they have been pricey like most disposable things - and N95 masks (from what I've seen) simply can't be sterilized properly after use and continue to be N95 masks - you might be able to make pandemic specific masks that are effectively N95 masks by forcefully sterilizing the outer surface with UV occasionally but they'll fail to be conventional N95 masks that block harmful particulates - so a cheap, comfortable, universal solution is out of reach... a cheap comfortable specialized solution is probably accomplishable, but then, after all that innovation, you'd need to handle the real uphill battle - making your mask an acceptable alternative to all the politicians everywhere who are hesitant to embrace new things in the middle of a pandemic.

Regarding the fool-proof vaccination - you know how immortality is that dream we keep futilely pursuing? Human bodies are hard to understand, we're no where near the point of having a needle full of a liquid-x that can regrow limbs and cure cancer - bodies are highly variable and we've come up with some absolutely amazing vaccines. Just because the efficacy isn't 100% doesn't mean you can sit there saying "Welp, that was a total failure".

In all of these areas we're currently making advances - but new ground breaking once a century discoveries don't happen every year.

[ska]

>In particular, why aren’t these problems solved?

I think the poster already addressed this.

>> The author makes innovation out to be something akin to "if we focus on this, then it will change", but that's not how this typically works.

This is correct. It's not like money and focus don't help, but you can't construct innovation where you want it, when you want it.

Particularly the idea that we haven't been "innovating hard enough" on vaccines is just silly. It was a innovation that let us have anything at all on the timelines we experienced.