What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation. - 5 views
-
Joris _ on 04 Feb 11If I could write, this is exactly what I would write about rocket, GO, and so on... :) "we are decadent and tired. But none of the bright young up-and-coming economies seem to be interested in anything besides aping what the United States and the USSR did years ago. We may, in other words, need to look beyond strictly U.S.-centric explanations for such failures of imagination and initiative. ... Those are places we need to go if we are not to end up as the Ottoman Empire of the 21st century, and yet in spite of all of the lip service that is paid to innovation in such areas, it frequently seems as though we are trapped in a collective stasis." "But those who do concern themselves with the formal regulation of "technology" might wish to worry less about possible negative effects of innovation and more about the damage being done to our environment and our prosperity by the mid-20th-century technologies that no sane and responsible person would propose today, but in which we remain trapped by mysterious and ineffable forces."
- ...4 more comments...
-
Ma Ru on 04 Feb 11Very interesting, though I'm amused how the author tends to (subconsciously?) shift the blame to non-US dictators :-) Suggestion that in absence of cold war US might have abandoned HB and ICBM programmes is ridiculous.
-
Luís F. Simões on 04 Feb 11Interesting, this was written by Neal Stephenson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Works ). Great article indeed. The videos of the event from which this arose might be equally interesting: Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future http://newamerica.net/events/2011/here_be_dragons "To employ a commonly used metaphor, our current proficiency in rocket-building is the result of a hill-climbing approach; we started at one place on the technological landscape-which must be considered a random pick, given that it was chosen for dubious reasons by a maniac-and climbed the hill from there, looking for small steps that could be taken to increase the size and efficiency of the device."
-
Joris _ on 04 Feb 11You know Luis, when I read this quote, I could help thinking about GO, which would be kind of ironic considering the context but not far from what happens in the field :p
-
LeopoldS on 05 Feb 11Fantastic!!!
-
LeopoldS on 05 Feb 11Would have been nice if it were historically more accurate and less polemic / superficial
-
pacome delva on 14 Feb 11mmmh... the wheel is also an old invention... there is an idea behind but this article is not very deepfull, and I really don't think the problem is with innovation and lack of creative young people !!! look at what is done in the financial sector...