| > 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. |