The problem with big innovations

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-problem-with-big-innovations-178e025ba8

by ChanningAllen • 4 years ago

65 25 4 years ago

jmmv• 4 years ago

This reminds me of how I was described self-driving cars at some point: yes, they are a great invention, but actually… they would not have been possible without many more other inventions happening earlier: GPS, digital maps, route mapping algorithms, computer vision, neural networks, etc.

We easily see the flashy invention that combines everything that came before but often fail to recognize those dependent inventions.

baxtr2• 4 years ago

And even with all those inventions, self-driving cars are not available at a mass scale yet. I hope the tech won’t suffer the same fate as fission: Always just around the corner!

nibbleshifter• 4 years ago

s/fission/fusion/g (fission is how we currently do nuclear power, fusion is "just round the corner...")

ChadNauseam• 4 years ago

I have some good news for you about fission :P

spaetzleesser2• 4 years ago

I think the iPhone is a great example. Apple was very good at recognizing the time when all the pieces needed for a great phone were available or possible within a reasonable time frame.

neh_89• 4 years ago

True, iPhone was an avant garde invention when it was launched. Having said that, it's sad the glory days of iPhone seem to be fading away. Every innovation has its time and place, and it's about time new technologies are given their due, such as blockchain and crypto. We have to come out of our shadows thinking these are harmful for the mankind.

twobitshifter• 4 years ago

I was just explaining how the invention of the automobile really wasn’t much of a leap at all. Carl Benz is credited with inventing an automobile, but who wouldn’t have thought of taking the steam engine off the rails? And if you look they’d been trying to do this for a long time. In fact, the idea predated steam locomotives even. It just took a while for tires and internal combustion engines to come to be.

planarhobbit• 4 years ago

So what's going on here? Magic? Graham Hancock thinks a lost civilization of advanced humans visited the peoples of different continents and shared techniques like agriculture with them. Now, I like science fiction, but I think there's a better and simpler explanation for the agricultural multiple as well as all the other examples of simultaneous invention that have puzzled scholars over the decades.

Not to detract from the rest of the article but this is probably the least derisive, fair summary of GH’s work I have come across anywhere close to on a “mainstream” tech news site. Hell must be freezing over if people aren’t calling him a charlatan without actually bothering to read his work and listen to him, first hand, articulate his rationale.

Apocryphon• 4 years ago

Isn't this just the ancient astronaut theory without space travel.

imadr• 4 years ago

It's like the technology tree in the game Civilization, each discovery depends on others that came before it

bena2• 4 years ago

I've talked with someone about this recently and that was their take as well. That eventually, certain discoveries are inevitable. Because everything builds on everything else.

If it wasn't Newton/Leibniz, it would have been someone else. Galileo may have been the first/most prominent, but if it weren't him, it would have been someone else.

spaetzleesser2• 4 years ago

Agreed. Darwin had to rush publishing the theory of natural selection before Russell did it.

pirate787• 4 years ago

Galileo's accomplishments were extraordinary, and made at significant personal risk -- he was the subject of an Inquisition. He was a polymath who made groundbreaking contributions to observational astronomy, modern physics, and the scientific method/ practice of modern science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

bena2• 4 years ago

That is all true.

And it would have been someone else if not him. Maybe not exactly right then, but in that time frame.

We were ready to discover these things. Let me put it this way, if Galileo lived in another time frame, he would have discovered calculus. He would have invented the steam engine. Etc.

Yes, his intellect allowed him to be able to get there, but a man like Galileo would have been at the forefront of his chosen field in any time period. And many men like Galileo have existed throughout time. Even contemporaneously with Galileo.

mikewarot• 4 years ago

Charles Babbage clearly invented the CPU in 1837, under a different name, "The Analytical Engine"[1], he just didn't finish it. The technology of the time was barely up to the task of making a difference engine, but his failure to manage his relationship with his machinist, meant that it didn't happen. If he had a competent and aggressive project manager, it could have been done.

As for the simultaneous rise of agriculture everywhere, could it simply be that much of the productive farmland got flooded circa 12,000 BCE when the sea levels rose 100 feet? [2]

  [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine  
  [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise

gumby• 4 years ago

As for the simultaneous rise of agriculture everywhere,

Not to mention that such a phenomenon is not exact (there's no sharp dividing line between "non-ag" and "ag"), "agriculture" embraces lots of disjoint activity (rice needing water to support it vs wheat in a dry field), and "simultaneously" covers centuries if not millennia.

bumbledraven• 4 years ago

200 feet! Wikipedia sayeth: "The early Holocene sea level rise (EHSLR) was a significant jump in sea level by about 60 m (197 ft) during the early Holocene…"

beautifulfreak• 4 years ago

It's not a given that Leibniz invented calculus independently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_contro...

zh3• 4 years ago

Reminds me of Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance. Unlikely (to my way of thinking), but is an amusing alternative explanation of why breakthroughs happen at the same time (it's all those minds resonating through spooky action at a distance, not quite like the clocks on Huygen's shelf but loosely analogous).

kabes• 4 years ago

The higgs boson was also theorized by 3 teams independently of each other around the same time

tabtab• 4 years ago

The original inventor(s) often doesn't make much money, at least not proportional to the power of the idea. It's usually somebody who comes along and implements it better who gets rich. Truly innovative things often take tinkering to become practical.

Examples: TV, jets, VCR, desktop computer (existed in 60's), GUI, personal digital assistant ("smart phone"), neural nets.

pasttense01• 4 years ago

It's very seldom that the original inventor makes a lot of money--instead it's the businessman/entrepreneur who pushes the inventor's invention.

manmal• 4 years ago

This reads like a summary of „Where good ideas come from“, a book that I‘d recommend if you want to dig deeper and potentially improve your own having-good-ideas game.

Nomentatus• 4 years ago

There are a great many exceptions; too many to list - think just of the inventions that have been lost for centuries or millenia. Forceps were the trade secret of one family of doctors for many generations. The Chinese invented stainless steel, the Romans succumbed to armies equipped with it in the east but never discovered how to make it. Mendel. Etc, etc. Some discoveries, once overlooked, can be overlooked for a very long time. But this may reinforce the author's point - new fields don't stay new, everyone's attention moves on and the chance for easy discovery may be lost. We would be wise to invest heavily in trying to discover what we've overlooked.

The problem with big innovations

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