Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part III
Anton Howesantonhowes.substack.com
Saved by sari
Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part III
"We're not as smart as we think we are!"
In his research into "How to Invent Everything," @RyanQNorth uncovered a number of inventions that humanity could have invented centuries or even millennia before we actually did, from compasses to hot air balloons to buttons. https://t.co/Rj8WfJt9wN
Long Now Foundationx.comthe process of incremental gains that has dominated the course of technical change throughout the human history is recurrently, but infrequently and unpredictably, interrupted by concentrated spurts of astonishing creativity.
Vaclav Smil • Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact (Technical Revolutions and Their Lasting Impact)
To me, the most natural fit here for both art and science is the "innovation-as-mining" hypothesis. In that hypothesis:The basic dynamic is that innovation in a given area is mostly a function of how many people are trying to innovate, but "ideas get harder to find" over time.