Are we heading towards a tech armageddon?

[Paul Keith]

Sorry for the sensationalist title and if this has been repeated elsewhere before. I just realized for the first time that with usage rates heading more towards mobile that choice might be dying and in the vein of year 2012, it's hard for me to imagine we as a species can recover from this but maybe you guys know your history better.

The notability for my posting of this realization stems from something simple...we're going full circle back on things we've innovated before and there seems to be a bulk of features ignored on the left over side.

Early era, there was:

• tech (like cars, microwaves, phones)
• then there was micro tech
• then there was portable power (consoles, improved phones, pagers)
• then there was portable power with customizations (PCs)
• then there was portable power with customizations + simplicity (laptops)
• then there was portable power with customizations + simplicity + websites + freeware (PPCs, slim PCs, networks)
• then there was portable power with customizations + simplicity + adsites + freeware + shareware dying to make room for cheapware/marketware (Android Market, Steam, etc.)

...and then there's none.

I'm not saying innovation would die or there would be no futuretech and IMO such type of armageddon settings might even be good things because that means something innovative is going to add towards the list.

I think the tech armageddon comes from something worse however. Some nightmare scenarios that have already happened:

• With the popularity of mobile, many desktop software and even web software ideas get ported to mobile but mobile is not an improvement over PCs and there's many things lacking still in the PC area but due to the focus on mobile. we're caught in a "GroundHog's Decade" of developing ports instead of ideas not just for tech but for almost everything lifestyle related but at the same time there's no link. Mobile is not PC -> laptop -> netbook. Mobile is a different format. A different format with an inefficient feature revolving around touch screens
• Facebook has taught people to accept spyware walled gardens. Casual users have always accepted spyware because of ignorance but casual users have never demanded spyware and walled gardens until Facebook. Worse, we're caught in a walled garden that is Google which encompasses most search. Even if there's an alternate search engine, our idea of search means we're trapped in a paradigm of search (words), search (people) and search (files)
• Offline demand is dying. With mobile innovations, anything remotely offline must connect to mobile and if it must connect to mobile, it must connect to the web even if it's just about transporting through files. That means we've reverse-directed the flow of the internet. What used to be mass transportation at light speed is going to be gate to gate. I'm not saying it's not possible to focus on the desktop but that social expectations of the flow is dying and segregating.
• Finally we've gone full circle back to breeding horses to be better instead of cars and this time there might not be any room for cars. Barring space travel file sharing, we're now in a space where sometimes you need to use a horse, other times a camel, other times you need to walk because of the net/mobile/"OS with more capability" paradigm.

I know I'm focusing too much on the word innovation but what I meant is less so much that there's a limit to innovation potential but that the PC/internet/laptop to me seems like it's reaching the same level of evolution as cars, microwaves, elevator technology, books, etc. and IMO if it keeps heading this way that means:

• More legislative attempts on the entire area. When videogames stagnated towards net + circular cd-like object for example, it didn't matter whether it's Blu-Ray or even downloadables. It was DRM'ed and micro-separated because the tech became too stable and easy to pigeonhole around.
• More copycat technology disguising itself as ports. Imagine the innovation of the first to-do list that was available on the web. Imagine if every web service from here on out innovated less through features and more towards the backend of making something seem smoother and smoother like Google Instant. There would be little space to create unthinkable features. We'd have copycat services but not copycat features of features within services.
• More and more skilled people would focus on hybrids and that means if Facebook stole your data before, then there would be other places that would also steal your data and steal your data until it no longer just becomes a case of easy searching for someone on the web, it would be a case where the people you know more than ever would demand you to install spyware and give up your info and worse of all, that would be where most of the socially perceived innovation comes from. It'd be like turning the ocean into a place sometimes with sharks and sometimes a place you can swim or fish or travel into a place full of dead zones separated by mini-whirlpools which can either suck a small boat or push ships into said dead zones.
• Innovation would be more exclusive. The market would have a difficult time catching up. If poor countries didn't have laptops before, over time you can't even hand them a laptop or a phone. Hell, I recently asked a stranger if I could borrow their cellphone for a while and they acted like I was mad for not having a cellphone. They didn't just say No. They acted like I was asking for their credit card. What happens when most of the world is supposed to be wielding a Tablet PC. It would not only be impossible to scale but if it was scaled, it would segregate software too much from each other. It would be like the difference between renting a horse instead of a car all over again except you're renting the feature of the horse that the car couldn't replicate. We would be renting a space in the net that allows a certain feature like gmail for gmail's feature instead of just webmail. Worse, unlike with horses, the better option would be to stifle innovation. If forums remained forums, then there won't be another FB but if there's an innovation for forums instead of an improvement, it'd become too Linux. Every piece of service or software would end up having that curse of the Windows OS being better because it supports outdated legacies. I don't think that has ever happened before for tech innovation and even for other innovations, the list of such gridlock are few and far between such as the demand for oil.

[Curt]

for the first time in five years I have printed a DC post. 
Thank you, Paul Keith!

------------------
On a side-note your post also made me think about modern Cell/Mobile Phones and their integrated cameras and media players; their picture and sound qualities are like it was thirty or even forty years ago.
But I think that problem has been discussed elsewhere.

[Renegade]

I don't think the title is too sensationalist. It's more accurate than most people are comfortable with.

I've ranted at length before about input methods. Small touch-screens aren't really conducive to much more than consumption or minimal production. Which is why I bought a keyboard for my tablet. It turns it into a mini-laptop/netbook if needed. Also serves as a good prop for listening to videos while I wash dishes.

But when it comes to technology, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

The obvious example is voting machines. They are regularly rigged. It makes a mockery of elections. Shameful at best. Paper ballots are much better there.

Another area is NFC -- it's going to be very, very, very bad. I posted a quick blog about it here and a brief comment about why it is so sinister here (or here). It wouldn't make much sense to quote it here as the context would be lost, but the long & short of it is that it accelerates the velocity of money through the fractional reserve banking system and leaves open the possibility of excluding people from participation in society, e.g. As in a company/government/fascist dictatorship revoking someone's ability to make payments. Digital money is NOT a good thing. It's another brick in the road to totalitarianism.

Then there's the whole issue of chipping people... Nuff said there. You basically have to be brain-dead to not understand how that can be horribly abused by our fascist overloads in government. (Again, democide is the norm, and it will happen "here" (if you accept that it isn't already happening) if we don't take steps to stop it.)

Innovation can be a good thing, and it can be a curse.

For applications moving over to mobile platforms, this isn't a good thing for consumers, but it's good for companies. Fact is, you make more money by tying people to your online platform than you do by providing the goods offline.

Online will NEVER beat offline for privacy. It's just not possible.

But, we still fall into the trap of thinking, "I've got nothing to hide..." and willingly surrender to our online surveillance masters.

Technology is just a tool. And just like with a hammer you can build things or bash people's skulls in, technology can enhance or destroy us. Innovation is neutral. The question is, what are we innovating towards?

[Paul Keith]

True but, though I love your posts on this topic (unusually rare for a non-politically based forum to provide a link to a topic that puts most politic blog subjects/forum topics to shame), the innovation is a curse thing still implies that there is going to be a direction of innovation hence no tech armageddon.

Like I hate touch screens too but it is a compromise technology that can spell new areas of interaction in the space of voice, motion sensors and art.

It is when both the blessing and the curse disappears that the magic of innovation dies IMO.

Think of it like a skill tree in gaming. Now some branches might unlock skills that are aesthetic or useless or even broken but as long as the branch continues to grow (even if it stops and then gets refurnished in a sequel/game update), things continue to grow.

However if you reach the end of the branch, that's when not only innovation dies but when gamers most look to exploit any overpowered route and that turns into guides and those guides turns into more ways to cheapen the innovative quality of a skill tree which then not only kills the choice but if made popular, produces games who copies more of those skill branches like adding a fire element or a water element as choices to a separate game. When that happens, the innovative concept of a skill tree dies and the skill tree ends up becoming a fancy ui as opposed to a concept of innovating how a videogame character would grow in a manner different from what's been done before for it. The skill tree will still exist but people would talk more about the balance of the skills as they are unlock and the skill tree...well, it's just there.

If touch screens and NFCs were isolated incidents on their own, IMO they would be no more different than the evil that would befall under tech users if Apple and Google's close minded Software Market policy was adopted towards everything. Tech growth however would still be moving and innovations bypassing such tech curses would still lead to better innovations even if it's a route towards hacking on closed innovations.

In order for pure touch screen technology to halt innovation, it would have to keep you from buying a keyboard in a certain major part of the planet. That isn't the case though. Touch screen + mobile becomes a gridlock though when, as Curt alluded, the touch screen is used on mobile to replicate and updated dated products such as poor cameras and then gets innovated into better cameras with better resolutions and then so on and so forth while the users demand more of the same route of false innovation like a circle of Pokemon fanatics who will pay and finish Pokemon Red and then accept and pay for Pokemon FireRed only Pokemon is just a game and one game at that. Mobile + Touch Screen tech is a wider net. It can impact web page designs, software designs, web browser designs, game design, cultural method of mass communication, etc.

It's when touch screens start being made for a certain quality of touch screens that are exclusive to a certain level of hardware that the gridlock happens. It's like oil, if consumers can just buy a cheap touch screen tablet and then buy an external object like a keyboard...that's bad but it's doable.

What happens though when the day comes that you have to buy a more expensive piece of tablet that supports the latest Android/Iphone just to work a piece of software that should be compatible on all touch screens but because your piece of hardware is of an older model, you're tasked to unnecessarily move to a newer piece of technology AND THEN still buy a specific type of more expensive keyboard just to make up for the lag, the screen resolution, a hardware that can match the innovation supplied by people finding smarter ways to utilize better touch screens? Demand wouldn't be able to cheapen supply like there's no way to make up the difference between a bicycle and a SUV so poor people can't just replace a bicycle with a car if they have specific demands that need a SUV where as the SUV market would have better off people acquiring SUVs when they don't need to. Only again, the range of impact of cars does not compare to the impact of changing both the internet and OS interaction as far as innovation goes. Cars before the concepts of SUV were pretty much dead on innovation and the SUV was more an application of the redefined definition of innovation that involves upgrades like better horsepower, better fuel management, better some other parts so complicated to explain that they just provide better boosts.

NFCs are the same. The slippery slope implications are bad but as long as the nightmare situation is closer to Orwell's 1984, it would always fail to slip too much because the market demand would keep it from becoming true. Even now the demand for the internet keeps internet censorship laws from taking off even in places where the internet has been censored. It's as Postman wrote in Amusing to Death. In order for our society to give up our rights, we have to turn more towards Huxley's Brave New World than Orwell's 1984 or as social psychology puts it: Moral disengagement

With NFC, the control there is too much but if it's really flawed, it won't take off globally as a technological innovation but if it does take off, it won't be allowed to head towards an extreme dark and nightmarish slippery slope by the people. For it to get into that dark place, people would have to be hijacked by a different thought process.

Like at the heart of rigging voting machines is not the machines itself nor of paper ballots. The heart of it is based on the faith of people wanting to make it right thinking voting is the ideal way to change their lives for the better. That too linked in people having faith in the president which is linked to having faith that government can be made effective even if it has a 99% chance of being ineffective everywhere especially when the person being voted up is a product of the status quo.

NFCs would have to be hijacked in the same way IMO before it suffers through an armageddon specific to it's technology. People would have to be so hooked in NFCs that they would reject FFCs because NFCs is so much cheaper, better, more accessible but the likelihood for that is unlikely as people have been introduced to more FFC potential type innovations than NFCs such as remote desktops, webcams, GPS, etc.

IMO, only on a grander scale would NFCs be contributive to tech armageddon and that criteria is as much the problem with mobile as it is with mobile having NFCs.

The problem is still social perception of exclusivity. Like a cellphone is still a mobile phone but if as a society you would be fine with me asking you whether I can borrow your phone (even if it's just feeling fine in saying "No") then the phone can still be innovated into things like portable phones. However if as a society you slowly become more skeptical and weirded out by a request of lending out a cellphone, regardless whether you say Yes or No, something has changed.

That's still not contributive to tech armageddon because that's just a consequence of cellphones supporting things like private messages, being easily nabbed and run away with or possessing private numbers thanks to address books. It's not the slippery slope that would kill tech innovations. I believe the same thing applies to NFC.

The issue is a serious one but as a tech, it's problems are not related to tech armageddon and more to potential tech slavery. As a tech, it's still a tech where you can create an argument for why it shouldn't be pursued.

My fear of tech armaggedon IMO is not even the opposite. Tech armaggedon is a situation where regardless whether you do it or not do it, there would be an armaggedon in innovation. It's the proverbial, "damned if you do, damned if you don't". With NFCs for example, a case can be made for both pursuing it and not pursuing it but it's still not close to a Brave New World scenario. We're still not in a world where we think NFCs are necessary to progress unlike say the existence of a democratic republic type voting being perceived as must even in non-democratic republic type settings which then pumps up the glorious myth that most of the problems we need to focus on is on the "fairness" of voting because if fair voting works, then progress has a chance even though we're not allowed to step away from a certain mindset of government being naturally ineffective or else we'd be painted as anarchists or some other perceived opposite spectrum of an extreme line of thinking.

The PC-mobile-net paradigm though is close to getting that way and not because of a slippery slope. If it's just cross-platform or if it's just cross-adaptation of a cross-cloud-offline flow then innovation IMO wouldn't be heading towards an armaggedon. After all, even in PCs, do we not like it if we can switch to Linux and still play our favorite games and utilize our favorite pet software in their own ui? Do we not accept that sometimes we have to move on to an updated OS so that certain software can work with it? Is it not also possible (albeit with a ton of work) to move back to an older piece of hardware and software as long as you accept that you would have to sacrifice a necessary piece of innovation? None of this had gridlock innovation because innovation is not set up so that the new OS has to pander to the old OS except for Windows which is still just one piece of tech.

The modern paradigm of PC-net-mobile isn't heading towards that manner of simply being cross-platform. The convenience selling point of NFCs isn't simply being in NFCs otherwise it would still be an innovative curse/blessing on accessing information in ways that couldn't be done before. It's that NFC is not only exclusive to a piece of tech attributes: mobile and portable but it's aiming towards eating up everything of our known lifestyle in a manner that's never been done before except for oil. Not even by the internet on it's own.

To simplify this distinction (because I have a hard time in distinguishing too), take that sort of tongue in cheek image for NFCs in mashable's article:

If that's just a graveyard, then cool. But then it slowly increases in cost with each adoption.

People would be refurnishing old grave stones and rainy days would be an all time never before seen pain when you're visiting graveyards. That's bad but it doesn't kill innovation though it is a curse. (albeit minor compared to other curses related to NFC)

It only becomes tech armaggedon when every innovation, building, lifestyle is supposed to "port over" to NFC and that's what's accepted by the people (this latter criteria being the most important).

A world where you don't just need and get addicted to mobile (like it goes with the internet) but a world where mobile has a different meaning to just being a portable phone/smartphone.

PC would lose it's exclusivity of being a PC and to get back that utility, you need PC + mobile + offline storage of net even when you do have access to the internet.

The internet would flip around. What used to be a place where you have tons of places to visit and maybe 1 or 2 spyware sites to avoid would have most popular sites filled with Facebook level spyware and the more you're just born to this world, the more you have to stumble on such sites before you can get on a site like DC unless forums don't innovate and innovation dies over mini-changes. (Again, damned if you do, damned if you don't.)

Even the September that Never Ended did not kill innovation despite changing UseNet forever (based on the accounts detailed on it) unlike what this new paradigm is already changing in our society. The worse of this is that innovators have it bad most of all. There used to be a time when improving means usenet+ or forum+ or Facebook- (Diaspora) or mobile+ or internet experience+.

Now it's not. Now its:

• Facebook+
• Smartphone + phone-
• Desktop+Online;Desktop+Offline-

...and that combination is setting up for the equivalent of a class segregation but on tech rather than race, culture or materials. It's like oil. Oil is a battle all it's own. People would go to wars on oil, countries would become more powerful gaining oil, oil would have an unprecedented acceptance even if it's railed against. It would be a category of it's own and many innovations would often need to pander to oil.

The tech branch relating to PCs and smartphones, never used to be this way. There were some innovations on the area of sharing, some innovations on the area of portability, some innovations on the area of aesthetics. If something closely updated itself but didn't show any major feature changes, chances are most of it would have been major updates on the backend. Right now, it's getting to a spot where it's not. If you don't innovate, innovation like a skill tree stops adding and then it's dead. If you try to innovate, innovation as it's currently is, remains dead while a new definition of innovation becomes accepted for this branch of tech where having a great camera on a cellphone or having a great processor on a tablet = innovative.

[Target]

I won't pretent to understand all you seem to be saying or implying, but it seems to me that a significant amount of the 'innovation' we see is just marketing hype.

adding gadgets or functionality to a device that doesn't enhance the performance of the device or our interaction with it is certainly not innovative, but because we've been conditioned to consume we eat this stuff up (how many people do you know that 'update' their phones at least once a year, whether they need to or not)

unfortunately I also think your SUV analogy was a poor one - SUV's are a classic example of the 'clever' marketing of what was previously a utility vehicle.  By making it 'fashionable' they were able to generate a whole new market.  Were they innovative?  not by a long shot, and all they're doing now is incorporating features and functionality that had been common in passenger vehicles for years.  Net result is that some (?) of their previous functionality is lost or compromised as they become more like the passenger vehicles they're trying to differentiate from

[Paul Keith]

If it seems like marketing hype, it would be because old school pre-labeled marketing has always been central to innovation IMO and nothing has changed in that area except that as marketing gets dwindled down from innovation to marketing + PR + sales technique hybrid then it's easier to create false innovations but even the emotional high of false innovation hype (as a feeling) is no different than real innovation. It's all relative to what we consider a false innovative product versus a real innovative product and that changes based on our background knowledge and what we look for in an item.

Look at the history of cars, if cars weren't marketed, no matter how superior cars were then most people would prefer horses. For the first car to take off from luxury to choice to a viable entity for mass production and mass selling - someone needed to make that first car (that bad car) take off to enough of an audience that the next innovation for cars could be a viable innovation to pursue as a mass produced product. (that innovation of the "decent" mass produced version that's viable enough to replace a horse).  

I don't really see where the SUV analogy was a poor one and I actually thought you strengthened my idea by bringing that piece of adjective: Fashionable. Marketing always has to breed a market but when a piece of innovation gets redefined as fashionable, innovation dies because it gets redefined into fashionable so the next innovation that continues from fashionable tends to become the more commonly labeled "marketing hype" as fashion by definition can produce unnecessary hype for a mini feature depending on such cheap things as moods, seasons, colors, etc. Of course if there's something really innovative that can still be done for a product and someone did it, then both real and fake innovation lives side by side with each stealing the thunder of the other from time to time.

The paradox of course is that in order for something to get that first label of fashionable, the very first piece of concept/item has to be made interesting and sometimes interest comes from being fashionable enough the first time. Ironically that same criteria is necessary to stave off tech armageddon. If there's too much demand towards the fashionable then even innovation would try to pander to something fashionable until innovation dies because innovation is not allowed to be respected on it's own anymore.

The confusion may come from how the length may have disguised the relevance of why I made that analogy. The part where I brought up the SUV analogy was brought up to focus on the case of whether touch screens (as an isolated concept) was bringing forth a tech armageddon since my case was that it didn't where as Ren's case was more towards "look at how much waste these new pursuit for false innovation is making things more cursed":

What happens though when the day comes that you have to buy a more expensive piece of tablet that supports the latest Android/Iphone just to work a piece of software that should be compatible on all touch screens but because your piece of hardware is of an older model, you're tasked to unnecessarily move to a newer piece of technology AND THEN still buy a specific type of more expensive keyboard just to make up for the lag, the screen resolution, a hardware that can match the innovation supplied by people finding smarter ways to utilize better touch screens?

Demand wouldn't be able to cheapen supply like there's no way to make up the difference between a bicycle and a SUV so poor people can't just replace a bicycle with a car if they have specific demands that need a SUV where as the SUV market would have better off people acquiring SUVs when they don't need to. Only again, the range of impact of cars does not compare to the impact of changing both the internet and OS interaction as far as innovation goes. Cars before the concepts of SUV were pretty much dead on innovation and the SUV was more an application of the redefined definition of innovation that involves upgrades like better horsepower, better fuel management, better some other parts so complicated to explain that they just provide better boosts.

As you'll hopefully notice with the bolded part, the reason I used the SUV analogy was not about whether the SUV was a fake marketed innovation or a real one. Not saying my post didn't deal with this somewhat but in the case of the SUV analogy it would indeed be a poor example to use under that pretext because some might not know the marketing history of the SUV. Others might have a better knowledge of the marketing hype of the SUV. Still others who see cars in a more technical light (an aspect I am mostly ignorant of) might look down at the lack of technical prowess the SUV has when it did take off.

Instead, I try to simply bring a general comparison between SUVs and a bicycle as regardless of your knowledge of SUVs, you'll know it's not just a bicycle and most would have an idea how it's not just a car-bicycle comparison as shown by the fact that I used SUVs instead of cars.

By trying to establish this concept, it can make it simpler to present a case where demand (the want for a SUV) didn't mean that the SUV would be cheaper. The SUV (as a concept) would in turn have gone through an innovation armageddon because now even the consumers would not respect a better SUV nor would the poorer consumers who couldn't afford it be able to catch up to every latest modern fashionable upgrade of a SUV even the cheapest model that is readily sold in most areas of the world so the price for a SUV would always be an "above the normal cost" of cars especially from the perspective of poorer countries where cars even the cheaper ones are a luxury to attain.

Notice however that I said cars had already gone through a tech armageddon but because cars were a finished concept focusing on an isolated need (non-fatigue based travel), the consequences were not close to the horrors of a tech armageddon to it's users. The buyers simply have to settle on the idea that cars would now improve towards better and that better would be what is defined as innovative rather than the innovativeness of the concept of a car itself.

The same can be said if you just focus on touch screens in isolation. If touch screens usurped better utilization and you were no good with touch screens, that would be a horrible world for many people but it wouldn't kill innovation simply because in isolation, the tech can be sidestepped by innovations in the area of choice like adding keyboards, E-ink, creating a market for non-touch screens which keeps touch screens from being a monopoly + touch screen innovation (even if it's the cream of the crop of cheap gadgets)...means innovation rolls on as usability in itself could be an innovation or lead to more innovation. (The usability + fashionable perception that Apple got from the Ipod is what gave their fanbase the demand to try the Iphone and that in turn lead to the Ipad not being just a fashion statement but a game changer that many people wanted to acquire even poor people because the demand created cheap knock-offs: a phenomenon that just wasn't viable for a PPC or a Palm market.)

It's when linked to the tool of mobile to acquire just as a SUV is linked to the concept of cars to acquire that innovation could be killed because of things like fashion. Of course fashion is not the only factor and really fashion as a term is more associated to dresses, bags and less old people stuff like SUVs and touch screens where the idea of fashionable is closely linked to things like SUVs can better suit babies or touch screens can be more of a point of awe at the touch screen rather than something like a dress where you say you wear it because it makes you hip.

Let's just ignore that last paragraph and focus on fashion though. As you so highlighted with the SUV analogy, it strengthens my argument because fashion equates to a sense of style. Innovation equates to a sense of progress. By creating that distinction, you build up my case of innovation being redefined hence innovation redefined is much dangerous than the reality or perception of innovation used as a tool for slavery or innovative ideas dying out for a certain product used to be presented as innovative. Your reply then to me comes off like you're strengthening my argument and thus it's a good analogy and where it only became a bad analogy is where my poor communication skills wasn't able to create enough of a distinction to you to make you realize I was using the analogy to make the case for/against touch screens and you assumed I was bringing up the SUV analogy as a case for a real/fake example of innovation when that area of discourse is found elsewhere in my reply.

[Target]

so what I get from that is that regardless of whether it's actual or percieved, an innovation is an innovation if someone says it is?



FWIW I have a technical background so it's probably safe to say I have a different view on this to you - i tend to view innovation in a technical light, and fashion is of little interest to me (in fact I'd go so far as to say that fashion is never innovative)

[Paul Keith]

so what I get from that is that regardless of whether it's actual or percieved, an innovation is an innovation if someone says it is?



FWIW I have a technical background so it's probably safe to say I have a different view on this to you - i tend to view innovation in a technical light, and fashion is of little interest to me (in fact I'd go so far as to say that fashion is never innovative)

Ehh...no.

Oh and my stance is not exclusive to one bias for innovation. (Another aspect that may confuse you.)

It doesn't matter whether you view things from a technical or a non-technical standpoint, the core of my msg is about the overall progress. That progress is what will decide whether you think innovation is about to die in a certain branch or whether it's not.

Of course the problem I have with communicating this is that I have to communicate several examples so you have to buy into my idea but, as I stated in my previous reply all in all it's the feeling, awe and realization that makes innovation, innovation.

In that aspect, you have to reverse the flow of your previous sentence and that would be my sentence. Note that I didn't say make the opposite meaning of what you wrote.

So something like:

• Instead of regardless of what someone says, see it from the perspective of every person having a right to feel that something is innovative regardless whether someone says it or not
• Continuing from there, regard YOUR own actual or perceived idea of an innovation and then move on to other people
• Then begin to set up the contraries. When is innovation not an innovation even when you or someone else feels it is?
• Then view it like a branch or a skill tree or a timeline. When does something which improves continue to innovate and when does something which improves end up not innovate and be simply marketing hype or be simply an upgrade? (You were actually much clearer on that with your previous reply

...of course after that, you will have to be the one that makes for the allowance on how there's no absolute lineage to innovation. Sometimes things stop only to gain a paradigm shift. Sometimes things get ignored because of social preference.

Of course that's just my idea of when innovation is still innovation versus when innovation has been redefined. Bringing up tech armageddon is a whole lot more complicated. It's like trying to bring up cancer to someone who doesn't know what cancer is. How would cancer kill the body? How would internal tech cancer development on a healthy tech innovation tree (a concept closer to my idea of what's happening) differentiate from tech virus even tech tumor development despite tumors being related to cancer (Ren's stance) or eating unhealthy tech foods which increases the risk of heart attacks (tech bubbles bursting) or even tech smoking leading to tech cancer potential and other health diseases (Yahoo) and why is tech cancer deadlier (prone to heading more towards real innovation dying for a certain genre/branch/concept)? Of course the weakness of this last point is now I've branched off in an all together new analogy, one that assumes there's no debate on cancer anymore but that will always be the complexity of bringing up analogies in a mass subject such as this especially with different degrees of technical knowledge/perceived ideas. Even replacing cancer or SUVs with tech zombie-fication can have different meanings depending on which zombie movies you're referring to and with what that zombie does.

Edit:

Just to highlight one more aspect as to why technical knowledge is not important, it's because caring for one subject does not even come close to caring for all aspects of one subject.

For example, I don't care about fashion either nor do I consider most fashion being innovative, but I could never say fashion is never innovative if only because I categorize certain cool things to be a byproduct of fashion.

Example: http://www.nba.com/2010/news/09/21/adidas-uniforms/index.html

[Target]

so it's all relative?

surely innovation is pretty much by definition a paradigm shift, and in the absence of such a shift products evolve.

products evolve all the time as designs, materials, and methodologies are refined.  Many of these refinements are themselves the result of innovations upstream, though that doesn't necessarily make the end products innovative (though FWIW, many of the products are only possible because of innovations upstream)

and paradigm shifts are almost certainly the result of evolution.  As we build our knowledge and experience we see new possibilities, many of which were previously beyond our capabilities.

as to the armaggedon part, I think that's unlikely

Unless the metaphorical zombie apocalypse comes and we all end up living in walled compounds out in the desert (anyone read The Passage by Justin Cronin?), at which point all this becomes moot, or we'll be sending posts by carrier pigeon (or seagull?)

In the meantime products will continue to evolve, and to innovate, though not all innovations will be apparent to us as consumer's.  As humans we can't do things any other way. 

[Paul Keith]

More like it would be a flawed premise to say something as major as tech armageddon without trying to assume every person's idea of innovation. Obviously that's impossible, as like a magic trick, it can be amazing one moment and obvious as you grow old/figure it out.

If something must be relative though, it's false hype. No one really has an accurate line for what is false innovation/false hype but everyone likes to think they are on the side of being enlightened as far as judging what is rightfully hyped vs. what is sugar coated.

As far as paradigm shifts go, my stance there is that not enough people understand or want to cling to the definition of paradigm shift as it was originally defined and there's nothing wrong with that mindset because even the best experts don't like to be regressive. We want to properly acquire and explain why the next best thing is truly innovative, not why it's not. This very flaw though makes it insufficient as an absolute definition. You can have a more valid opinion by clinging to that as a reductive standard for what is innovative but until everyone agrees on the proper conservative line of what a paradigm shift is, that only goes so far.

Even technical details which are paradigm shifting innovations might not truly be a paradigm shift for the word demands that society's mindset changes along with those details.

On evolution though, that's a much safer word but evolution does not equal innovation nor does innovation always need evolution and my stance there is sort of the opposite of the word paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts have a legitimate definition as far as defining innovation but evolution is borrowed from biology and even biology does not have a true explanation for evolution is. When you add that tech is easier to turn into a hybrid than creatures, then the slang of evolution is more of an early buzz word that over time became accepted as a general phrase and it's good for defining progress but not very good for defining why innovation might be devolving.

As far "paradigm shifts are almost certainly the result of evolution", I disagree but it be another set of paragraphs as to why that is and I don't think it's notable enough to write about for this topic.

I will just say this, I'm not talking about a zombie apocalypse and if I was, yes you'd be right. Innovation wouldn't die. That's precisely why I wrote the cancer analogy while adding all those other analogies. The tech armageddon I'm talking about would not kill evolution, it would continue it in a path where we don't even need to mutate the process for it to destroy us.

Compare the inefficiency of a zombie virus vs. the survivability rate of herpes for example if you want technical details but alas we're just jumping from analogy to analogy. I won't go into details about the carrier pigeons because that's not what I'm talking about. There's no one idea for apocalyptic scenarios especially for armageddon.

From wikipedia:

According to one premillennial Christian interpretation, the Messiah will return to earth and defeat the Antichrist (the "beast") and Satan the Devil in the Battle of Armageddon. Then Satan will be put into the "bottomless pit" or abyss for 1,000 years, known as the Millennial Age. After being released from the abyss, Satan will gather Gog and Magog (peoples of two specific nations) from the four corners of the earth. They will encamp surrounding the "holy ones" and the "beloved city" (this refers to Jerusalem). Fire will come down from God, out of heaven and devour Gog and Magog after the Millennium. The Devil, death, hell, and those not found written in the Book of Life are then thrown into Gehenna (the Lake of Fire burning with brimstone).[5]

A zombie apocalypse, metaphorical or literal, is not innovation killing because it won't lead to a 1,000 years Millenium Age. (Again both literal and metaphorical). An actual metaphorical armageddon though might actually kill this branch of tech that encompasses PC, mobile and internet services because it's not going to kill tech innovation. It's going to save/bring/innovate/false innovate tech to an entirely new progress/evolution/upgrade never before seen only to set up a post-1,000 year apocalyptic scenario similar to the modern oil dilemma and what new form of energy to replace it with only finding energy is a lot more straight forward then re-mapping a replacement for all the innovative utilities that has gone past before with regards to PC, mobile, internet innovation.

[Renegade]

Speaking of innovation...

http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/10-wild-new-patents-the-future-of-tech/6365952

A whole bunch of mind-numbingly obvious things. Sensors on glasses? No? Who'd have thought of that? Trying to determine edges of social networks? Wow... like so smart... Controlled access to medical records? Ooooo... Now we're getting fancy...

All complete total BS patents. Not that there is any other kind anymore...

[Paul Keith]

Well...it is a top 10 list so what'd you expect? 

I'm more curious on whether the science fiction genre has some revolutionary new idea.

[Renegade]

Well...it is a top 10 list so what'd you expect? 

I'm more curious on whether the science fiction genre has some revolutionary new idea.

Top 10 or patent -- either way you are guaranteed to lose a few IQ points after reading.

As for science fiction... Perhaps try science fantasy --- I saw Michio Kaku illustrate how to build a lightsaber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSNubaa7n9o

Not sure if it would work, but it was still pretty cool.

[Paul Keith]

Yeah, ironic as it is, the lightsaber has outlasted many of the innovations introduced in considered more intelligent than space opera type sci-fi.

I was going to bring it up but a lot of the recent videogame adaptation for the Star Wars universe has demystified the specialty of the lightsaber, example:

It could be fitted with cortosis weave, allowing it to parry the blows of lightsabers and energy swords.

You'd be hard pressed to convince me that this looks anything innovative:



http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vibroblade

...this? This is the thing that could parry the almighty light saber?! Not to mention how the Old Republic type Jedis going Naruto on the double bladed light sabers. A weapon that used to hold more prestige during the early EU books thanks to it's difficulty where even the cream of the crop jedis couild not have ease properly wielding an extended light saber without being the best of the best. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dual-phase_lightsaber

[Renegade]

Not to mention how the Old Republic type Jedis going Naruto on the double bladed light sabers. A weapon that used to hold more prestige during the early EU books thanks to it's difficulty where even the cream of the crop jedis couild not have ease properly wielding an extended light saber without being the best of the best. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dual-phase_lightsaber

I see your Jedi, and raise you an Indiana Jones~!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_Ds2ytz4o

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm.

Getting back to the non-lightsaber topics, I'll float some ideas on these themes. Yes, there is an Armageddon coming, "but not with a bang, but a whimper". Drawing on the pun, the whimpering will be us. Some of this won't quite hold logical consistency with itself, but here goes.

I'm on the side that innovation is a technical thing. It's a function of *doing something*. In one sense, it's impossible *not* to innovate because at the ultra smallest sense, every action of any kind that isn't performed to a tight process spec, is innovation. If you are in accounting and you are entering an invoice, and your spec is to enter five pieces of info into the computer system, there isn't much room for innovation, because there is only "one correct answer". But nearly everything else is "small innovation". Borrowing a writer's trick for breaking writer's block, let me tell you about a nice square piece of paper. What is "more boring" than paper? So I'll fold it in half. (Mock drama). "Look at me! I folded a piece of paper in half!!!" Well okay, I'm being funny. But *six* folds later, I have a 3d visual representation of an *upright piano*! Isn't that innovative? Now what if we were in a world when the grand piano style was invented first, and "all pianos must be the grand design because it simply doesn't work any other way" would be the "conventional wisdom". Then some salesman walks into a boardroom pitching his new piano design, and makes seven folds in a piece of paper and shows them a vertical design that costs 80% less to make. *Now* is it innovation?

But part of the problem with innovation is that it's the tree falling in a forest problem. If I innovate, and never show anyone, is it still innovation? So then there's some of those old philosophy chestnuts going on here. Your typical mad scientist, and all that. That's why it's always frustrating when techies tend to get outplayed by ex-jocks in suits who get the good-ol-boy-network thing. What use is my innovation if they have a vested stake in something else?

Then we have innovation vs utility. Right this minute I can probably dream up something innovative ... let's see... a data glove input alphabet system that goes to the monitor eyeglasses you wear for the perfect "meatspace" privacy in computing. Plenty innovative, but if an idea is too far ahead of its time, especially if it has some usability design mistakes, then it's still innovation and someone will go "gee, that's innovative, I'm going back to what I know now."

More in the next post.

[TaoPhoenix]

So that's some of my basic ideas about innovation. (And look, I "innovated" by splitting my posts so that if someone quotes me, it's not One Long Incredibly Unbroken Post Moving From Topic To Topic.")

Now let's make some guesses about innovation. Hoping my wording doesn't sound facile, Microsoft is Microsoft, Apple is Apple, Google is Google, Facebook is Facebook, and they'll sit there on the corporate landscape being themselves. Then once you get off that little narrow perch, you get a mind numbing explosion of "companies that are not themselves". Sun is not really Sun anymore, it's Oracle's excuse for a lawsuit. Borders Books is not Borders Books anymore, having become Nothing. RIM which used to be spoken of in hushed tones for its Blackberry line, joins the multitudes of companies that are "not really themselves anymore", but they still technically exist for now.

I think the current impression of "mobile tablets" is a brilliant marketing cover-up for the fact that Tablets are *currently* underpowered all-in-one computers. If I imagine my current computer screen instead as a 24 inch tablet, sitting on a dock base, with a keyboard and mouse, I can do "real work". Then I can put it on the car seat and lay it on a restaurant table and switch to the touch interface. All that it takes is a few years replacing fragile spin-disk hard drive storage with solid state storage, better power usage, and a few other things, and there's your Computer of the Future. Then you just have 3+1 form factors, based on screen size: Phone, "Lap-Tablet", and "Work Tablet". (The fourth +1 factor is Monitor Glasses, where the computer is your phone in your pocket.)

But then let's go back to one of Paul Keith's original phrases: "then nothing". I'm kinda nervous about never getting past the Microsoft-Apple-Google-Facebook quad. (Facebook astounds me, it feels like a Less-Is-More version of AOL. "Look, it's full of Faces and everyone likes Faces! They're so cute and smiley!")

So between that "final form factor trilogy" on the tech side, and that corporate quad and your choice of four more, what if we hit a "temporary gap" in innovation? (Say we're 20 years out from the Driverless Cars.) So without any real innovation, what do we do with ourselves?

I think the unfortunate answer is definitely becoming one giant fishbowl, but with mechanized systems to do the dystopian functions. And yes, it is 1984, as well as Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, and several more "Warning" books that are being taken as guidebooks! THAT is the current cultural feature that is maddening me the most! Instead of warnings, all those old stories are in the hands of power mongers and they're all going "neat, let's do that!"  

[Target]

I see your Jedi, and raise you an Indiana Jones~!

that's not innovative...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piWCBOsJr-w

[Paul Keith]

what if we hit a "temporary gap" in innovation? (Say we're 20 years out from the Driverless Cars.) So without any real innovation, what do we do with ourselves?

I think the unfortunate answer is definitely becoming one giant fishbowl, but with mechanized systems to do the dystopian functions. And yes, it is 1984, as well as Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, and several more "Warning" books that are being taken as guidebooks! THAT is the current cultural feature that is maddening me the most! Instead of warnings, all those old stories are in the hands of power mongers and they're all going "neat, let's do that!" 

I just want to say I have no disagreement with any of what you said except for this.

This is the thing. When we have gaps, innovation is fine. Gap means part of innovation is based on resurrecting repeat discoveries to "fill up" the gap.

It's like if society forgets everything but survives as cave men. Re-finding and re-establishing the internet would be an innovation even when to us, it may not be anymore.

The unique part about Brave New World is that it is only dystopian fiction because there's no other category to put it but it is only dystopia to us, the readers not to the characters inside unlike other dystopian fiction.

Of course my reference pertains not only to Brave New World but also to how Postman contrasts it to 1984. As a full book, it's not totally that far off from dystopian fiction. There are, however, aspects of it that aren't a warning but of a social preference. Take watching TV. We know it's bad and as a society we are warned that it's bad but many of still consume it as if it's not on the level of smoking and worse of all, even the critics, rarely realize there's a non-Luddite criticism for TV and few rarely understand/know of the difference between Postman's warning and that of the Luddite version.

This special quality of TV is often ignored in both dystopian fiction and negative utopian fiction. Dystopian fiction often demands that TV must be a brain washing tool. Negative utopian fiction often demands that TV is on par with being addicted to a sex toy. Because of this, there's always "something" because we know, if we're given a hint of control, we'd not be content with "nothing" which is why many books on dystopian fiction provides a main plot line of rebellion. Only if we willingly accept "something" will there be truly "nothing" for by accepting "something", we are most receptive in accepting the idea that "nothing should replace that something".

[Paul Keith]

To simplify the difference between the warnings of Dystopia, Negative Utopia and Armageddon, here's a post found in the IMDB page for the doc Inside Job and why it's confusing but also simple to understand:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/board/flat/197798231

People who are buying into the message in this movie are doing *exactly* what the big bankers want you to do. Their nightmare would be:
1. To have to compete against start-up banks and each other in a free market
2. When their ill-advised loans fall through, in a free market no one would bail them out and they would actually face the possibility of losing money.

They want neither of these. What they want is a system that locks out competition and gives them a no-lose situation where even if their loans fail, the government taxpayer has their backs.

This movie is their piece of propaganda. They will pretend it is against their wishes and say, "Oh, please don't regulate us!" Meanwhile, they work pen in hand with legislators to make sure the legislation freezes out competition and perpetuates the status quo.

Their worst nightmare is a free market system which would allow competition among the banks, allow new entrants into the industry, and no one to bail them out. The Freddy Kruger in their nightmares isn't someone like Barney Frank, it's Ron Paul.

You can tell this movie is the ruling class explanation for the financial disaster because it is being pushed into the school curriculum and teachers are showing this movie to their students. This is playing right into the bankers wishes. There are two explanations as to the economic failure: not enough regulations, and the other explanation is that there was too much government interference. They really don't want people to think too hard about the second possibility.

So you are saying that it is bad that we believe in the messadge of this movie, then go telling is that bankers fear the messadge in this movie, then claim its propaganda. so it turns out, you want the banks to be bailed out. good call!

I agree wholeheartedly. a real free market will ACTUALLY punish those that take risk without losing out. Keynesian school of thought only works if the private sector is actually trying, not just waiting to take advantage of policy that protects them.

The real problem in my opinions are the bailouts. Bailouts are only needed if the sufferers were really needing basic human necessities to survive, not to save the private sector from indulging in bonuses.

I still don't get how lobbyist still have a job or how lobbying is legal. But this said, the general public usually goes along with the media brainwashing, so if Occupying a city park or protesting WTO meetings is the best we can come up with, nothing will change sadly.

The above type of propaganda would never happen in a dystopian society because they don't need to.

It would happen in a negative utopian society but either people would rebel or they would never criticize such attempted propaganda.

In reality though, people will both praise and criticize but not enough people will stand up hence in order for people to stand up: a greater disaster is required to happen hence the likelihood of this killing the thought of society being ever for true economic reforms.

It gets better (and worse) assuming we're taking the idea of a metaphorical armageddon with a more literal mechanic and IMO this branch of tech is more complicated than economics. As complicated as economics is, it is still currency distribution even if things like behaviour economics can be said as distributing the currency of will rather than the currency of paper or gold. PCs/mobile and the internet though deal with a much wider net of subjects: information, education, entertainment, usability, security, the list goes on and on.