[lbo-talk] Entering a dark age of innovation

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Sun Jul 3 10:31:25 PDT 2005


On Sun, 3 Jul 2005, Autoplectic wrote:


> Here's a review/critique of Heubner's piece.
>
> Is it that there's been a fall in the rate of innovation or a massive
> rise in population?

If there is a significant rise in population without a commensurate rise in innovation, the population as a whole must be less innovative, yes?


> And let's not forget the US military doesn't get as much cash to do
> scientific research as it used to, so there could be other motivating
> factors leading Heubner to massage the data.

There are many factors that lead to increases or limitations in innovation; goverment funding for research is certainly one of them. However, that's not really the point here. It's highlighting our presentism and hubris: we think we live in this amazing, unparallelled era of technological innovation and we discount the huge technological changes people accomplished 100 years ago.

Look at it this way: the qualitative jump from no telephone to a telephone is a far more significant technological change than the jump from land lines to wireless phones. This applies to most of the technology we use today: electricity, cars, recording devices, radio.

Miles



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