A corollary is that once someone announces a new type of invention or product, a competitor can usually work out how to build the same invention in short order, without espionage.
All that is needed is the information that it can be done.
As a working researcher in science, much innovation and discovery is driven by the **assumption** that something outlandish is possible, well before it is reasonable to think it so. And ofc that pans out badly a lot of the time!
The other corollary is one that Derek wrote about is the Atlantic: It it not always the inventors who matter most, but the implementers. "Inventions do matter greatly to progress, of course," the article says. "But too often, when we isolate these famous eureka moments, we leave out the most important chapters of the story—the ones that follow the initial lightning bolt of discovery....[P]rogress is as much about implementation as it is about invention. The way individuals and institutions take an idea from one to 1 billion is the story of how the world really changes." My example is radio. The technology of using wireless as a music box was around for at least a decade before Westinghouse Electric poured in the capital and expertise to make a commercial service of it in 1920.
The thing about Malthus is that he was right about almost all of human history up to the moment in which he was living, as Brad DeLong has eloquently described. Then suddenly, productivity accelerated in a totally unprecedented way, such that we could actually produce enough to start lifting an ever-greater share of humanity out of bare-subsistence poverty.
Kevin Kelly offers a slightly different explanation for this in "What Technology Wants". My memory of it is that once the prerequisite knowledge is in place, people are (for example) constantly inventing the light bulb, but its only once the social need is there and the capital requirements are filled that anyone takes any notice. The technium wants what it wants, and people just provide it once the technium is ready.
But there are things where an innovation really seems to have been unique and enabled enormous changes. People were trying to invent usable chatbots for the last couple of decades, but it was only the invention the transformer that made this actually possible. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else came up with the idea before Google published it, but I don't know of any evidence that they did.
A corollary is that once someone announces a new type of invention or product, a competitor can usually work out how to build the same invention in short order, without espionage.
All that is needed is the information that it can be done.
As a working researcher in science, much innovation and discovery is driven by the **assumption** that something outlandish is possible, well before it is reasonable to think it so. And ofc that pans out badly a lot of the time!
Made me think of the Founders as well where the question/frame was how to create a Republic that would endure.
The other corollary is one that Derek wrote about is the Atlantic: It it not always the inventors who matter most, but the implementers. "Inventions do matter greatly to progress, of course," the article says. "But too often, when we isolate these famous eureka moments, we leave out the most important chapters of the story—the ones that follow the initial lightning bolt of discovery....[P]rogress is as much about implementation as it is about invention. The way individuals and institutions take an idea from one to 1 billion is the story of how the world really changes." My example is radio. The technology of using wireless as a music box was around for at least a decade before Westinghouse Electric poured in the capital and expertise to make a commercial service of it in 1920.
The thing about Malthus is that he was right about almost all of human history up to the moment in which he was living, as Brad DeLong has eloquently described. Then suddenly, productivity accelerated in a totally unprecedented way, such that we could actually produce enough to start lifting an ever-greater share of humanity out of bare-subsistence poverty.
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/ensorcelled-by-e-devil-of-malthus
Kevin Kelly offers a slightly different explanation for this in "What Technology Wants". My memory of it is that once the prerequisite knowledge is in place, people are (for example) constantly inventing the light bulb, but its only once the social need is there and the capital requirements are filled that anyone takes any notice. The technium wants what it wants, and people just provide it once the technium is ready.
But there are things where an innovation really seems to have been unique and enabled enormous changes. People were trying to invent usable chatbots for the last couple of decades, but it was only the invention the transformer that made this actually possible. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else came up with the idea before Google published it, but I don't know of any evidence that they did.
Thank you!
Will delete now