It's the end of the world!!!!
Discussion
I blame the slow down of innovation on the rise of home entertainment. What happened to 'hobbies' these days, no one has one anymore, just another night vegetating infront of the idiot box for most people.
I always thought wars where the best drivers of innovation, look at WW2 for instance. The solution seems very clear now...
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 25th October 16:31
I always thought wars where the best drivers of innovation, look at WW2 for instance. The solution seems very clear now...
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 25th October 16:31
I don't think there is a slowdown in innovation really. I got an encyclopedia CDROM with my first PC in 1993 that had no entry under the word 'internet'. When I started Uni in 1998 only about 10% of us had mobile phones. Just because some chap did some 'advanced maths' or whatever the article said doesn't mean he was right.
The oil thing is a little worrying but I think I'm right in saying that there is absolutely masses of oil left its just not worthwhile to recover it at the moment because its so deep. There must be some way round this, pump something equally dense back down the hole for example to recover the work?
Plastic bin-bags and coke bottles are all well and good but taking them away would hardly lead to a dark-age.
I'm also a big believer in the power of a free-market economy, if the oil really does start to run out just watch the multinationals pump money into researching alternatives.
One thing that I think might happen in the future is a massive levelling of the global marketplace as more out-sourcing takes place and China etc. catches us up in terms of knowledge. This may be a bad thing for those of us in the current 'elite' countries but a very good thing for a lot of the rest of the world.
>> Edited by dieseljohn on Tuesday 25th October 16:34
The oil thing is a little worrying but I think I'm right in saying that there is absolutely masses of oil left its just not worthwhile to recover it at the moment because its so deep. There must be some way round this, pump something equally dense back down the hole for example to recover the work?
Plastic bin-bags and coke bottles are all well and good but taking them away would hardly lead to a dark-age.
I'm also a big believer in the power of a free-market economy, if the oil really does start to run out just watch the multinationals pump money into researching alternatives.
One thing that I think might happen in the future is a massive levelling of the global marketplace as more out-sourcing takes place and China etc. catches us up in terms of knowledge. This may be a bad thing for those of us in the current 'elite' countries but a very good thing for a lot of the rest of the world.
>> Edited by dieseljohn on Tuesday 25th October 16:34
scorp said:
Mobile phones and the internet aren't really massive leaps of innovation, its true they are revolutionary in their application but technically it's not that 'clever'.
I thing innovations should be rated on how much they change the world not how 'clever' they are really. Hawking's work on black holes is clever but almost totally irrelevant for example.
dieseljohn said:
scorp said:
Mobile phones and the internet aren't really massive leaps of innovation, its true they are revolutionary in their application but technically it's not that 'clever'.
I thing innovations should be rated on how much they change the world not how 'clever' they are really. Hawking's work on black holes is clever but almost totally irrelevant for example.
Im not so sure, if someone was to invent a new kind of combustion engine that run on water for instance, that would be a true innovation, something which shifts the paradigm so to speak. The mobile phone is simply a miniature field radio, sat on top of old discoveries and already invented technologies, it doesn't really bring anything new into the world of technology. Perhaps innovation by its own definition is too subjective to measure (a valid complaint by another scientist in the article if i remember).
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 25th October 16:54
While the rate of innovation may have slowed down, we cannot predict what is just around the chronological corner. The human race may slowdown, stagnate and then nuke itself into history. Alternatively we may suddenly develop a clean source of power with capacity far beyond even nuclear fuels, computers so powerfull they can model new chemicals and create new drugs to replace the ones that become ineffective, new forms of personal transport, robots, enlightened and informed social policies that benefit all mankind. Who knows?
Either way, the next 4 or 5 decades looks like its going to be very interesting
>> Edited by mr clive on Tuesday 25th October 16:56
Either way, the next 4 or 5 decades looks like its going to be very interesting
>> Edited by mr clive on Tuesday 25th October 16:56
scorp said:
scorp said:
Mobile phones and the internet aren't really massive leaps of innovation, its true they are revolutionary in their application but technically it's not that 'clever'.
I thing innovations should be rated on how much they change the world not how 'clever' they are really. Hawking's work on black holes is clever but almost totally irrelevant for example.
Im not so sure, if someone was to invent a new kind of combustion engine that run on water for instance, that would be a true innovation, something which shifts the paradigm so to speak. The mobile phone is simply a miniature field radio, sat on top of old discoveries and already invented technologies, it doesn't really bring anything new into the world of technology. Perhaps innovation by its own definition is too subjective to measure.
Fair point.
Another question is whether the plasuable innovations are running out though. An ICE that ran on water would be more of a miracle than an innovation for example.
What i want to know is, what qualifies these people to better predict the future than the rest of us. Complete and utter delusion.I'll accept his point about the earliest innovators and the 'picking the lowest fruit' analogy, but innovation has always gone in fits and starts and just because major developments right now might be a bit slow doesn't mean that much, IMHO. Lazy journalists are always so willing to spot trends over statistically inconsequential timeframes.
Maybe we need a big, long, world war to kick things off again...after all, look at what WWII did for innovation of all sorts...
Maybe we need a big, long, world war to kick things off again...after all, look at what WWII did for innovation of all sorts...
dieseljohn said:
Fair point.
Another question is whether the plasuable innovations are running out though. An ICE that ran on water would be more of a miracle than an innovation for example.
I don't think we have invented everything yet, one valid reason i was thinking of earlier is that perhaps we are all content living in the modern world, there is little necessity to innovate anymore when we have everything we need. Funny how a war or something seems to accelerate military technology decades ahead in a short space of time, as they say "necessity is the mother of invention".
scorp said:
Mobile phones and the internet aren't really massive leaps of innovation, its true they are revolutionary in their application but technically it's not that 'clever'.
Then again a steam engine is very simple when you look at it...
The internet has had a massive effect on all walks of life and as for mobiles, good or bad, they are a massive leap as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised if some bod were to suggest that the invention and popularisation of mobile phones wasn't the precursor of the single most radical change in human communication since AGB said hello.
rude-boy said:
scorp said:
Mobile phones and the internet aren't really massive leaps of innovation, its true they are revolutionary in their application but technically it's not that 'clever'.
Then again a steam engine is very simple when you look at it...
The internet has had a massive effect on all walks of life and as for mobiles, good or bad, they are a massive leap as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised if some bod were to suggest that the invention and popularisation of mobile phones wasn't the precursor of the single most radical change in human communication since AGB said hello.
My point is, the mobile phone was just a small natural progression of already existing technologies. The steam engine you cite was a gigantic leap of thought for the time, a revolutionary idea with millions of other uses.
The printing press has to be the most important innovation in human technology as that has had by far the biggest impact on our civilisation as a whole.
the printing press idea was plagiarised from something on tv i watched which happened to document mankinds most innovative inventions
>> Edited by scorp on Tuesday 25th October 17:15
Harry Flashman said:
The dependence on oil points are good ones, though. We are going to see the oil tun out in our or our childrens' lifetimes and, as yet, do not have a viable alternative...
Do you believe that shit then? Why do you think we went to war over the Faulklands? Are you aware that the Tar sands in Canada contain more oil than has been extracted from the rest of the planet to date. Why is it when some tosser stands up takes a big drag on his spliff and says "Riiiiiight the oils all gonna run out in 10 yeeeeaars" Instead of laughing we take it seriously. Bearing in mind China and America are stockpiling the stuff which has caused the price increase, just what evidence and I mean evidence not green speculation or frigging computer models is there that the oil supply will run out in 50 years?
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff