"There's been no real innovation for the last 30 years" - Kasparov & Peter Thiel

[rogermunibond]

 

I like his thought experiment of what half century of innovation would you want to live with.

 

But it's entirely possible we are in an innovation lull, to be shortly followed by another burst of innovation driven productive growth. Punctuated phase changes. 

[PlanMaestro]

LoL, I love the smell of straw in the morning from a confessed anarchist.

 

I introduced no straw into the argument.  What you said was ridiculous and indefensible.  Which is why your only defense was an ad hominem.

 

 

OK, show some data or evidence that demonstrates the economic impact of the printing press since its invention in 1454 and let's say 1700. I've been alone here putting evidence on the table, while most dismisse it with a sleight of hand. My only defense is that evidence:

 

* Agriculture was 99.9% of the world output until the industrial revolution

* The printing press does not show in the slow advances of agriculture, detailed in 1493.

* There is no evidence in output per capita growth in history until the industrial revolution.

* The gap of the richest countries compared the poorest countries until the industrial revolution were minor compared to today's standards.

* Check the graph of historic GDP per capita. You can't see the printing press, you can see the steam engine.

 

Now, if you think that the printing press was an enabling technology for the industrial revolution 300 years later, that only reinforces the point of that post: a technology is a tool, and its worth only depends on its use. You use it for art you get Gutenberg's bible, you use it for science you get Principia Mathematica, you use it for political theory you get The Prince, you use it for religion you get Luther and the King James' bible. Why wasn't it used for agricultural innovation?

 

The industrial revolution is one of the most mysterious events in human history. What was stopping the invention of the steam engine or the cotton gin for centuries? The technologies are not that complicated. I doubt that it was the printing press but I concede that an argument can be made on it importance disseminating  the steam experiments in France from the late 1600s … but letters worked  well for Kepler and Brahe.

 

I was reading today about the semaphore, the predecessor of the telegraph, that was introduced during the French Revolution and latter perfected by Napoleon. The technology is so ridiculously simple that it is not easy to understand why it wasn't introduced thousands of years before. No need of a printing press for that.

 

The industrial revolution origins are not that clear even today after dozens of books and hundreds of years of accumulated investigation. Almost every year there is a new book (irony) that fails to solve that puzzle.

[beerbaron]

Backintheromanempirealltextswerewrittenwithoutspacesona30footlongpapyrus it took 1000 years for people to realise that spaces between words made it easier to read. Innovations can take a long time to materialize!

 

BeerBaron

[ERICOPOLY]

Hand copied texts are time consuming and expensive to produce.

 

The printing press is a labor saving device. 

 

This opens Pandora's box.

 

[stylized_fact]

The industrial revolution is one of the most mysterious events in human history. What was stopping the invention of the steam engine or the cotton gin for centuries? The technologies are not that complicated, I doubt that it was the printing press but I concede that an argument can be made on the dissemination of the steam experiments in France in the late 1600s, but letters worked just as well for Kepler and Brahe.

 

I was reading today about the semaphore, the predecessor of the telegraph, that was introduced during the French Revolution and latter perfected by Napoleon. The technology is so ridiculously simple that it is not easy to understand why it wasn't introduced thousands of years before. No need of a printing press for that.

 

The industrial revolution origins are not that clear even today after dozens of books and hundreds of years of accumulated investigation. Almost every year there is a new book (irony) that fails to solve that puzzle.

 

As was the case with standardized container shipping, I'm guessing there was a powerful status quo bias that impeded the replacement of water power with steam power during the industrial revolution.  The flying shuttle was famously unpopular when it was introduced.

 

Kahneman wrote about the status quo bias in Thinking Fast and Slow.

http://johngaynardcreativity.blogspot.com/2012/03/resistance-to-change-explained-by.html

[rkbabang]

LoL, I love the smell of straw in the morning from a confessed anarchist.

 

I introduced no straw into the argument.  What you said was ridiculous and indefensible.  Which is why your only defense was an ad hominem.

 

 

OK, show some data or evidence that demonstrates the economic impact of the printing press since its invention in 1454 and let's say 1700. I've been alone here putting evidence on the table, while most dismisse it with a sleight of hand. My only defense is that evidence:

 

* Agriculture was 99.9% of the world output until the industrial revolution

* The printing press does not show in the slow advances of agriculture, detailed in 1493.

* There is no evidence in output per capita growth in history until the industrial revolution.

* The gap of the richest countries compared the poorest countries until the industrial revolution were minor compared to today's standards.

* Check the graph of historic GDP per capita. You can't see the printing press, you can see the steam engine.

 

Now, if you think that the printing press was an enabling technology for the industrial revolution 300 years later, that only reinforces the point of that post: a technology is a tool, and its worth only depends on its use. You use it for art you get Gutenberg's bible, you use it for science you get Principia Mathematica, you use it for political theory you get The Prince, you use it for religion you get Luther and the King James' bible. Why wasn't it used for agricultural innovation?

 

The industrial revolution is one of the most mysterious events in human history. What was stopping the invention of the steam engine or the cotton gin for centuries? The technologies are not that complicated. I doubt that it was the printing press but I concede that an argument can be made on it importance disseminating  the steam experiments in France from the late 1600s … but letters worked  well for Kepler and Brahe.

 

I was reading today about the semaphore, the predecessor of the telegraph, that was introduced during the French Revolution and latter perfected by Napoleon. The technology is so ridiculously simple that it is not easy to understand why it wasn't introduced thousands of years before. No need of a printing press for that.

 

The industrial revolution origins are not that clear even today after dozens of books and hundreds of years of accumulated investigation. Almost every year there is a new book (irony) that fails to solve that puzzle.

 

Economic output was handicapped by the church and the feudal system.  These were systematic, crippling handicaps which needed to be broken and it took centuries.  The printing press is what got the ball rolling and enabled these systems to be eventually destroyed.  Look at the computer.  You don't see an immediate impact in 1946 after the first computer.  You don't see a major economic impact for another 40 years, at least.  Tt is safe to say that innovation makes an impact 10 times quicker now than it did in the 15th century, so 40 years now = 400 years then. Not to mention the computer didn't have to re-organize the way society worked before making an impact, the printing press did.  The internet is a better analogy to the printing press, in that it will eventually completely change the way society works. Destroying old systems, building new ones, destroying them and building still newer systems.  This will be a process that will take a long time.  You can see the realization beginning to dawn on some people already that business can be done between any two people on Earth as easily as it can be done locally, but all of these physical political boundaries unnecessarily complicate things and get in the way.  Look at Apple trying to figure out what to do with its cash. Where the most difficult part wasn't how to create excellent devices or how to best benefit shareholders, but rather how to make sure the parasites don't steal an excessive amount of it.  People have a resistance to changing how they view the world. Things will stay the same until the cognitive dissonance required to fool oneself becomes unbearable.  That is when (like serfdom, slavery, women's rights, or gay rights) the generally accepted way that things "have always been done", becomes generally accepted to be immoral and is changed.

 

[rkbabang]

Fusion is one of those technologies that we have known in theory how to do for a long time, but we don't yet have the enabling technology to actually do it. Just as we knew how to build a computer for hundreds of years before the vacuum tubes (and later transistors) existed enabling us to actually build one.  One day this is just going to happen and it will seem to most people like a giant leap forward in short order, even though it will have been based on a century or more of research and development.  Here is a good synopsis of the current state of the technology.  There is a lot of good info in the links.

 

Nuclear Fusion Summary - Prospects for breakthrough commercial reactors 2018-2025