[countWSS]

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.

[greggsy]

This completely ignores the maker boom of the last 15 years. 3D printers makes tinkering incredibly cheap, and complex electronic components and tooling are unimaginably easy to acquire through AliExpress. There are 28 million repositories on GutHub alone - if only a small proportion of those aren’t blank or forks, there’s still a huge number of unique and novel ideas being developed.

There’s a healthy number of blogs, tweets, and repo comments and communities (HN even) helping people understand these technical areas, drastically reducing the barrier to entry.

There certainly is a lot of protectionism putting a damper on things in many areas, but you’re talking about mass-production, which isn’t necessarily required in all cases, especially when there’s so many alternatives equivalents available these days.

[FrustratedMonky]

Kind of agree. Wish there was still some prestige with 'basic science'. The day-to-day plugging away. The big breakthroughs wouldn't happen without the basic building blocks, but the basics don't get the funding or the glamor.

And of course, corporate greed that just wants to suck up the breakthroughs.

But seems like we are at an impasse with current structures. We've reached some stability points that are not good, but have entrenched interests.

It's all Moloch. https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch