Innovation and invention

about
my fears about the stagnation of innovation...

random issue
lately i feel people are so enamored with the products coming out of silicon valley that they are disillusioned and thinking that each new iteration of an iphone is a genuine leap in technology.

so much so, that you need to put your iphone 4s down to grab the new iphone 5, now, even thinner!

but that’s just me being a hater, and picking on apple and it’s poor fans. poor, because they can’t manage to keep any money in their pocket, they have to give it all to apple.

i’ve been trying so long to get people to understand what i mean when i say that innovation is stagnant and we’re not seeing anything really great. the last 30 or so years have just been us coasting on the same technology and ideas that we came up with in the 60s.

sure, you have video go from 8mm black and white with no sound to 7.1 dolby surround with a 2000” tv and blu-ray video.

but video is still video. beta, vhs, laserdisc, dvd, bluray is all that really changed.

we’ve got phones in our pockets, not on the walls. that’s amazing, isn’t it? not especially, the first car phone was invented in the 80s, and then wireless phones in houses have been around for ages.

i’m not saying this things aren’t really good in the way of providing and enabling life to be comfortable. all i am saying is that to think the curve of innovation took a strong exponential turn in the 90s because of the ‘dot com’ era, you might be using the wrong benchmarks.

these are just SOME of the labs here in america that are working on tomorrow’s technology:

Ames Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Idaho National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory National Energy Technology Laboratory National Renewable Energy Laboratory New Brunswick Laboratory Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Oak Ridge National Laboratory Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Radiological and Environmental Sciences Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories Savannah River Ecology Laboratory Savannah River National Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

not apple.

not microsoft.

not facebook.

not google.

part 1
i have a pessimistic vision of invention and innovation. i don’t feel most of the things coming out of silicon valley that are praised as amazing technological advances are truly innovative.

it’s a hard idea to sell, so i’ve been building up examples of what i mean. wishbone suspension is an innovation. anti-lock brakes are an innovation. the first disposable schick razor was an innovation. penicillin was an innovation. the telephone was an innovation. the first home tape recording device (beta or vcr, i don’t remember who devised it first) was an innovation. ibm cell processors are an innovation. sun’s sparc RISC architechture was an innovation. ARM was an innovation. MIPS. play-dough. the first flat panel monitor. the first color monitor. the phonograph.

i hope you get the idea.

facebook (not the first social network), not an innovation. google (not the first search engine). iphone (the original? perhaps, nokia was doing some pretty cool things, too. iphone 5, no).

what i am saying is that the minor improvements we tout as being major technological advances… aren’t.

we’re happy with less, and we don’t demand more. when we see something amazing, unless it was by google or apple, we don’t care.

don’t believe me? i showed a few tech housemates my friend’s Lytro camera. we showed them some photos taken with it, and what you could do.

‘eh, it’s a neat toy. i don’t see where the money is to be made.’

if anything had ever made me want to kill myself, that was it.

the Lytro camera is fucking astounding. it captures, in a split second, regardless of lighting (to some extremes), the full scene it is pointed at.

i have no idea how it can possibly do that, i am a photographer, i understand how film photography works. i can’t even begin to explain how this thing works. it’s mind-blowing-ly awesome.

and i mean AWESOME, literally. i was fucking awestruck by the thing.

i had heard of it before, and kind of mocked it, because it seemed way too good to be true. vaporware.

but i was holding it. and looking at photos my friend had taken of bioluminescent jellyfish in pitch dark at the aquarium. the photo was crisp and sharp. you can point anywhere on the photo, and select that point to be the focus.

oh… hmm… i may have figured it out. perhaps it takes a photo with a very small aperture, and then the depth of field is created in software… but still, capturing the details in the image, with no camera shake, with that low lighting…?

i realize the images aren’t HUGE, they’re like 600x600 or something. but… it shows promise.

anywho… i think stuff like that is neat. if it ends up pure gimmick, shame on me, but that’s why you should be curious.

take things apart, ask “what’s really ‘new’ about this?”

part 2
well, gee… MacGyver is just helping all over… watching an episode, i noted that they were doing video chat, simulated, i’m sure, but in the 80s. which got me thinking, first ‘oh man, skype is such an amazing invention’ … bullshit.

then it got me thinking about the concept of ‘first to market’; those people are not the innovators or inventors. those are the people that got the ideas from the innovators, and produced a prototype…

so, by that standard, i’d say we’re really lacking in innovation, because… where do YOU see tech in 10, 25 or 50 years? facebook 2.0? smaller smart phones? flying cars? think of something new to hope for in the next 10 years.

how about a colony on the moon in 25 years, think we can do it? we’ve got most of the tech, we know how to get to the moon, we don’t really know how to create a structure there, but we know how to do something like the ISS, so i imagine we’re not far off from having a NASA cabin on the moon; if NASA were allowed to thrive, instead of trying to privatize space travel, because THAT won’t end it tears.

instead of one company (NASA) set on helping and benefiting, you have 3 companies set on making the most money with the least amount of research.

so… i know that kind of spun off at the end. what do i want to see in 10 years. an organized method of rolling out startups, so they can easily come to market, test with minimal investment, and fail, and try again, next week.

i want to see the large companies open their datacenters for rented and leased use, to help bring down costs of colocation for startups and individuals.

i want to see an easier means to putting people to work. a reputation system that helps employers determine employee fit, to maximize production because the people working for you were placed intelligently, and happy because of it.

happy employees do better work. if you can disprove that to me, i will re-consider my statements.

what do you want to see, and by when? what will you be satisfied with?