Disruptive innovation's like a party. It's always happening elsewhere There may be little to agree on in these fractured, fractious times, but nobody can deny the fact of progress. We see it in tech up close and personal: news keeps coming thick and fast from medicine, material science, energy, cosmology, palaeontology, environmental sciences, you name it. The speed of change is just breathtaking …
It always looks like innovation is dying, because you can’t see what was truly innovative until 40-50 years have passed. When I started programming in ‘72, no one thought computers would revolutionize anything — they were just giant adding machines. I wrote a program to compute e**x, and was very proud of it, but I couldn’t see how pervasive computing would change the world.
There were those brighter than I that did make those predictions, but those predictions didn’t show up for decades.
Today, it is obvious that we’re at the cusp of all sorts of biological and drug creation innovation, which I’d guess will be as big a deal as computation over the next 50 years. Learning how to harness and scale ML will likely also be important. But we can only glimpse the possibilities at present.
"Innovation" is leading to people using Windows 11 these days and thinking that it's an improvement and much better than Windows XP ... an innovation that started with Windows Me (Argggggg, the icon is a joke). It's not "better" - it's different ... don't panic, I'm talking about an operating system not fooled into thinking that Fentanyl is an innovation much better than smoking a little ball of opium to sleep well ... although I just woke up and I am using Windows 11 this morning.
The underlying problem, illustrated above, is not a matter of if or when any new thought may "arrive"; it is the long term effects of the way new thinking is currently funded; where the large corporate or government program has an undeniable advantage simply though being able to easily access the funds necessary to allow progress. While at one and the same time, a lack of access to necessary funding, often ending with the originator being "bought". Another example has to be the way, as William Kingston has frequently described; "Kingston's conviction that intellectual property no longer serves the purposes for which it was originally set up is reflected in many publications arguing for its reform. His research revealed the extent to which owners of patents or copyrights are intimidated by firms which have large funds for litigation. It led him to propose that compulsory technical arbitration should be a pre-condition for any reference to the Courts . . . Inevitably, Kingston's concern with intellectual property spread to interest in property rights in general, and especially in those rights which lead to business becoming global in scope. An aspect of this is the growth of bureaucracies, both national and international, on which he has also written. In his view, this development reflects policies that are inimical to innovation." (Taken from the cover sheet of: INNOVATION The Creative Impulse in Human Progress, by William Kingston).
My own experience has clearly demonstrated to me that science, as practised here in the UK, has no real interest in any new thinking that in any way, damages the career prospects of existing proponents of a failed theory; instead they will do everything in their power, to suppress it to cover up their own failures. And who cares?
When I was at university, Dave Gifford introduced me to the concept of a "Least Publishable Unit," and explained how in academia, publication was the name of the game. He referenced this in respect to some absolutely brilliant paper by Butler Lampson, noting that the number of LPUs in the paper was almost off the charts and that someone less secure in their position could have strung out the ideas in the paper through a dozen different publications. I would fully expect that as smart people get better at gaming the system, the average content of a paper or patent hyperbolically approaches the LPU, and so each individual paper/patent is almost insignificant, but in aggregate, something more interesting emerges.
so each individual paper/patent is almost insignificant, but in aggregate, something more interesting emerges.
The problem with that is that you have to find and read all the papers, which will be largely repetitive padding, in order to get the interesting idea. This both wastes time and delays understanding and generally hurts research.
Funding is the root of the problem. These days every investor wants to know when their funding will give them a return in cold hard cash. Very few companies do any "blue sky" research any more because they are all run by accountants and all accountants can understand is monetary profit, so what we end up with is creeping research but nothing truly innovative or original. Additionally patents and copyright run for so long now that very few can afford to pay for the searches to make sure that they are not stepping on someone else's patent/copyright so they simply don't bother and then get their work stolen by some patent farm's lawyers.
As for the paper chain padding, that reminds me of the latest fashion in SF novel writing. You have a nice idea for a story, but to make any money you will have to stretch that single novel story over a 12 novel series. I can't begin to count the number of such series I have given up on half way through due to sheer boredom. I have gone back to re-reading the old masters. They are so much more enjoyable since they manage to tell the story in one novel or at worst a trilogy, and if it was popular then they wrote sequels and prequels.
That last paragraph, Rupert Goodwins, .....
Rest easy. There are inventions, discoveries and massive surprises aplenty still to come, Even if the core ideas of digital technology as we've known it are settled, they provide an incredible platform to build upon, a stable ecosystem for new species to make their own. AI/ML? Quantum systems? Exotic physics? Metamaterials? There's plenty of disruption to come – just let's try to steer clear of extension.
..... is a class act, but tells only of the fuse that has been lit under the explosive charges of fast approaching apocalyptic disturbances, for the core ideas of digital technology are far from being settled and the incredible platforms upon which reset futures are being rapidly ACTively built have past traditional established models of anarchy and oligarchy quite righty terrified for the own continuing safety and future leading survival in an existence of their own choosing.
A fate and destiny however which their former activities have led new age pioneers to both recognise and realise they richly deserve for all of the troubles for which they are responsible and accountable.
To even imagine, let alone believe that things are going to be very much the same as they have been for quite some time now, rather than radically different because of all the disruptive virtual technology available for ready exercise at our fingertips, identifies one as delusional and most kindly diagnosed as suffering from acute learning difficulties and mentally deficient.
I wonder if our technical knowledge is becoming more refined in terms of its quality compared to the earlier times, from say the 1940s.
If much of our innovation was just discovering how wrong we were about things prior, then we could say that the perceived lack of innovation rate is a function of us being more and more correct about what we think we know over time.
1. Too much money and tech is spent on entertainment. Maybe tax it more. Spend those taxes on education and research. Also "entertaining to death" is a great mental distraction from solving serious problems.
2. Pay walls are likely the reason why scientific research in medicine and some engineering has been much slower than in software. Github and open-source accelerated software development several orders of magnitude. Hand-written manuscripts vs printed books is a great analogy from historical perspective.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
