[HN Gopher] The hierarchy of innovation (2012)
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The hierarchy of innovation (2012)
Author : razorburn
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-08-26 00:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.roughtype.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.roughtype.com)
| ssss11 wrote:
| Who came up with this pyramid? And why should technologies of the
| self be at the top? I feel like identity should be much lower and
| is much more fundamental but the way the internet was constructed
| it was missed. Or it was never built for "users". It's the
| databases of data brokers.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Based on the line "Here's my crack at what the hierarchy of
| innovation looks like", I'd presume the author did.
|
| Based on "there's a hierarchy of innovation that runs in
| parallel with Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs",
| it's, well, strongly influenced by Maslow's hierarchy (which
| seemed immediately evident to me simply based on the pyramidal
| shape and nature of the levels).
| smitty1e wrote:
| The Famous Article allows that it's based upon Maslow's
| hierarchy.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
| countWSS wrote:
| Modern education system destroys innovation at large, and the
| economies of modern world don't support invention at rate you'd
| expect to influence technology. There is no stimulus/prestige to
| be an inventor, the focus is either money or fame, with prestige
| of science being severely diminished in favor of pop culture
| "recognition"(viral/memetic). Science itself shifted from lone
| genius inventors towards teams working for Big Science/Corporate
| world, without individual recognition and respect, reducing
| motivation towards the minimum work required to function inside a
| structured "science team" churning papers for more funding. These
| teams do invent stuff, but only because these teams get better
| equipment, funding and social support. Only rich eccentrics can
| fund "garage science", with rest trying "startup culture" to
| monetize inventions which incentivizes business-centric approach
| to "get something quick to market to get rich" - which attracts
| far different people than lone inventors working "for science":
| people today want to protect/patent/safeguard their invention far
| more than they want for it to be famous or recognized, fearing
| being left in the dust while megacorporations steal their
| inventions and mass-produce cheapest version of their design at
| economic advantage.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Kind of agree. Wish there was still some prestige with 'basic
| science'. The day-to-day plugging away. The big breakthroughs
| wouldn't happen without the basic building blocks, but the
| basics don't get the funding or the glamor.
|
| And of course, corporate greed that just wants to suck up the
| breakthroughs.
|
| But seems like we are at an impasse with current structures.
| We've reached some stability points that are not good, but have
| entrenched interests.
|
| It's all Moloch.
| https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| There is a lot of backing for this concept that innovation is
| continuing, and also that past innovation was not the 'big-bang'
| explosion that we remember.
|
| We only remember the big changes, we don't remember the decades
| to produce them.
|
| Just look back at the studies on the Industrial Revolution. We
| think of them as great progress, great innovation. But that is
| only looking back at the results. The Industrial Revolution
| actually stretched over hundred years, and when the individual
| year-to-year progress is mapped out, then it was really more of a
| continuum that continues to today.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171333
| nologic01 wrote:
| > why is innovation less impressive today?
|
| Maybe it helps to split innovation into its main two
| constituents: I. scientific innovation (biological, chemical,
| mechanical, physical etc. domains) that pertains to the external,
| physical world and II. innovation that concerns the constitution
| of human society (laws, governance schemes, economic
| organization, information recording and transmission
| infrastructure etc.).
|
| The two types of innovation are deeply interconnected. Exploring,
| understanding and (where applicable) controlling the external
| world requires certain types of enabling social innovations
| (script, educational systems, well-fed and trained scientists
| etc). In a virtuous cycle, understanding the physical world
| enables more social innovation (medicine produces healthier
| scientists, physics produces electromagnetic / digital devices
| and thus more informed ones etc.)
|
| So where does it all go wrong?
|
| Innovation to push our external interface faces a stark and
| unrelenting reality. The Universe is what it is. It has always
| been so. The amount of required effort and ingenuity for the next
| breakthrough in the various fronts varies and is not knowable in
| advance. Room-temperature superconductors may be around the
| corner or not possible in this universe. The cure for cancer may
| be within sight or it might dissolve in a fractal chase of
| myriads of different pathologies.
|
| On the social innovation front it is a very different
| predicament. Nothing "is-what-it-is" except some very primitive
| innate behaviors. Everything is culturally conditioned, but those
| constructs carry a lot of inertia. Vast numbers of people remain
| unhealthy, uneducated, uninformed etc. even though there is
| absolutely no objective reason for this to be the case.
| Priorities on where to innovate are not set by objective needs
| but must pass arbitrary yet very "real" political, social and
| economic filters.
|
| So if innovation is less impressive today it is to some
| (unknowable) degree because of external factors but certainly in
| good part due to social stagnation - if not regression, which
| hinders the diffusion and acceleration of innovation that
| characterised past centuries.
|
| > We're getting precisely the kind of innovation that we desire -
| and that we deserve.
|
| Indeed. While not _precisely_ , arguably to a large extent.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Just wanted to comment about the quote at the top of this
| article:
|
| > If you could choose only one of the following two inventions,
| indoor plumbing or the Internet, which would you choose?
|
| One feeling I've been having a lot recently is that the majority
| of new technology is no longer "in service of the people". That
| is, it no longer is created to solve pressing problems everyday
| people have. And, as a technologist who was super optimistic
| about the direction of tech in the late 90s, this has made me
| pretty depressed.
|
| If you think about things like indoor plumbing, electricity,
| washing machines, dishwashers, airplanes, etc., they all
| basically solved an intrinsic, existing problem people had, and
| they drastically improved life for people with access to them.
| This isn't to say they don't have some substantial negative side
| effects, but they were created with the idea that people would
| buy and use them to improve their lives.
|
| Nowadays, I feel like new tech is either (a) created to addict
| us, or (b) just there to help solve some problems tech created in
| the first place. I see these "addiction economics" _everywhere_
| these days: social media obviously, but also things like the
| economics of video games ( "gamification" really means: how can
| we addict you), crypto is just another tool for gamblers (and
| ransomware attackers), etc. Even most of the stuff around VR/AR
| is asking for solutions to problems people don't have: Apple's
| Vision Pro may be an amazing piece of tech, but the open question
| is still "why do we want to use this thing?" On my second point,
| working in fintech, so much of "fintech" is just "dealing with
| the insane complexity we've created in the first place", e.g. the
| way we pay for healthcare.
|
| There are obvious exceptions: I wouldn't say the nuclear weapons
| we invented in the 40s were really "in service of the people",
| and as controversial as they may be in some respects, I think
| self-driving cars definitely fit in the mold of improving
| people's lives. On my point about side effects, there are also
| obviously negative side effects to even beneficial inventions;
| maybe one reason our "pace of innovation" has slowed is that it
| was never sustainable in the first place, as my summer of
| continual 105+ degree days is attesting.
|
| But I really think our economy has changed over the past 25 years
| or so such that in many cases the payoff is better when
| entrepreneurs just find a more successful way to addict us. When
| I look around my own life and ways to improve it, most of them
| involve using technology _less_. Pretty much the only invention
| that I think would have a significant positive impact on my life
| and wellbeing at the moment is a machine that automatically folds
| laundry, and I don 't see a huge corporate focus on that area.
| irq-1 wrote:
| > If you could choose only one of the following two inventions,
| indoor plumbing or [modern medicine], which would you choose?
|
| It's an empty question that relies on the internet not being
| life-or-death.
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