When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End?

There is some truth to this notion. I visited a new hands-on science museum somewhere and was appalled. Nearly all of the (supposedly) 'hands on' devices were computer touch screens demonstrating some physics principal. There was no ability for each person (kid) to really interact with the exhibits, there was just a menu of choices of pre-programmed cartoons and graphics.

I think that a lot of research is going this way; if something is not available via the internet -- if you can't see it on a computer monitor -- it doesn't exist.

That didn't just happen, it gradually happen in one generation, Gen "X". An example, I had an engineer work for me, from Michigan tech. Smart guy, but if he had to figure out a calculation by hand, he was phucked. Fortunately, not all are like this some actually know the fundamentals.

I used to manage a design engineering department that designed wet fab equipment. Lots of plumbing and pumps. The guys used AutoCad XXXx.

Our customer came one day and needed a ruf hook-up sketch for a piece of equipment.

The sketch consisted of locating two plumbing fittings, in space relative to the machine features. Simple plumbing hook-up. A tape measure, pencil and piece of paper was all that was needed. I asked my two best AutoCad whiz kids to "make a quick hand sketch".

They were lost. Without a keyboard and display in front of them, they just stood around, helpless. Products of their environment.

God help us if the power ever goes off.

Can't you feel the ground rumbling, this is the calm before the storm...Never in the history of mankind has access to information been so readily available, so all-encompassing, so varied and complete...Human beings have been hit with a tsunami of knowledge, so overwhelming that the population is still staggering and struggling to realize what the possibilities are, for they have clearly changed radically from what was to be expected in all the time leading up to now....It's an exciting and somewhat confusing time, that finds society in constant flux....So this time is more about human evolution than technological innovation....imo

So much information available..........wasn't there something said like that before the arrival of the 4 horseman of apolcalypes.......oh then there's the end of that, what Mayan calendar.

" 4 horseman of apolcalypes"

Didn't they play football for the Gipper?

Exactly! Without the internet there would not be millions of people spending billions of dollars and tens of millions of man hours every year world wide trying to perfect HHO, zero point energy, paint on solar panels to run their EV's, perpetual motion, DAS valves, energy barges, and so on.

Without the internet to guide them no one would ever be able to get these concepts and systems to work and no one else would be making money off their efforts as they try.

Indeed exactly the opposite is true, these misguided and mad individuals that pursue these pseudo-science and outright bad science launched endeavors, are openly ridiculed and proven false in the cold light of scrutiny by legitimate information sites like Wikipedia, CR4, and scores more...The internet has done more to expose the truth in 10 years than was done by teaching institutions in 100 years...When the internet first started, the sites touting these free energy technologies were everywhere...Now they mainly are left standing for comedic reference and as examples of scams....

No! It cant be true that HHO is a scam. Next you will be telling me that Global Warming is a scam perpetrated by the governments to get more money and control.

NO I tell you! The people who make my foil hats can't be wrong!

(Sorry its just that I have been stuck at work for 11+ hours now In a 8' x 20' shed with nothing to do but watch it rain and eat sugary snacks while I play around online. I cant even force myself to sleep any more. Do you have any idea what thats like?)

.........and then there was the Japanese family who were found in a desicated state of preservation having forgotten to eat or drink whilst playing an interactive video game...........

...........or my neighbours 35 yr old son who hasn't seen the light of day in years, has lost all social and hygiene skills and will probably be extricated from the basement with a crane

...........or the English couples divorce over having had sex with a cartoon

yeah...it's getting interesting!

The internet makes education available to anybody, like any powerful tool, it can be used for good or evil...

"The Sloan Consortium, based on data collected from over 2,200 U.S. colleges and universities, reports that nearly 3.2 million students took at least one online course during 2005 (a significant increase over the 2.3 million reported in 2004). According to the same report, about two-thirds of the largest institutions have fully online programs."

Note; this data is from 2005, in the past 7 years these numbers have exploded...

Ya! Much credibilty all around but It's the goofy stuff that mankind comes up with given a new toy. I mean, really, sex with a cartoon became a legal document in a divorce proceeding?! There's even an internet saint!

Given the above one has to wonder whether the fabric of todays reality is now woven with intangibles or whether that same reality is mutating into some aethereal void.

"Innovation" is too vague a term to be useful except for business theorists because -- in addition to real inventions -- "innovation" comprises software, trivial tweaks like social media, packaging design, and business methods. Pieces like this one are calling for more attention to what is truly new and useful in a real way, to solve an important problem, and less to ephemeral tweaks for online time sucks like games and social media.

"Technology" -- at least for newspapers and therefore for politicians -- has come to mean software and cheap made-in-China consumer gadgets. So not only has invention been debased, but its subject matter has been so circumscribed that real technology needs are ignored and underfunded.

Conflating business methods and software with real inventions has at last been rectified by recent patent law. There has to be a physical basis, not just an algorithm, in order for there to be patentable subject matter.

I look forward to the day when it is no longer socially acceptable for game designers to strut around in the borrowed regalia of true inventors and to get paid billions while real technology languishes. But for now, VC's and angel investors are interested only in what promises 10X in two years with minimal capital expenditures and fewest US employees.

Flip it to a bigger fool before the crash when reality intrudes, just like the last Silicon Valley bubble. That's America these days. This short-sighted business school doctrine excludes any development of patentable subject matter to solve the world's real problems.

I am to believe that the internet will pass-on like the old parts men of longago. I ran a ford Garage where a man would say I need a waterpump for 1950 ford and the parts man would walk back and lay it on the counter and write the part number and the price down, add the tax and you were on your way in 3 min. flat. Then there was only 8 styles of fords and motors..In the early 70's it all has to change. For then they had 80 different styles of fords different motors, transmissions, rear end fuel systems and the ole parts man sunk to the rear, we had to say 'Goodby'. Times are a-changing'. We hire the computer partsman,who can say in the blink of an eye, if its not in the computer we don't have it..And the part is laying on the counter next to the computer and he wouldn't know a sparkplug from a lugnut..If it isn't in a box with a number and in the proper slot. Buddy you are in trouble..This came about in 20 years.. Now we have 300 different Autos, all with 20 different motors, 200 different transmissions, 5000 different type of parts, tires, wheels, and you name it. This is just one industry..The auto is soon to become a thing of the past as new modes of travel is beginning to develope and in 20 more years a PC will be to slow and antiquated..things are a-changing'.

Yes, but bare in mind that great innovation also comes in leaps and bounds, and the invention of the microchip, the computer and the internet (to name a few) came in fairly quick succession and changed the way we think and live quite dramatically. Automobiles and flight are also recent developments to consider that had an incredible impact on humanity.

We all need some time to breath and adapt to the technology as a whole, least we race forward too quickly to our own created oblivion.