Where's Today's Beethoven?

Hypothesis 3: The "innovation as mining" hypothesisThe "innovation as mining" hypothesis says that ideas naturally get harder to find over time, in both science and art. So we should expect that it takes more and more effort over time to maintain the same rate of innovation.

In effective-population-adjusted terms, we generally see pretty steady declines after any given area hits its initial peak.

Interpretation of data In absolute terms, we seem to have generally flat or rising output in both "critically acclaimed art/entertainment" and "science and technology." (The exceptions are film and modern music; I think different people will have different interpretations of the fact that these decline just before TV and video games rise.)

Three hypotheses to answer "Where's Today's Beethoven?"

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.

Hypothesis 2: The "bad taste" hypothesisThe "bad taste" hypothesis says that conventional wisdom on what art and science were "great" is consistently screwed up and biased toward the past.

Hypothesis 1: The "golden age" hypothesisThe "golden age" hypothesis says there are one or more "golden ages" from the past that were superior at producing innovation compared to today. Perhaps understanding and restoring what worked about those "golden ages" would lead to an explosion in creativity today.

So we should often expect to see the following, which seems to fit the above charts: a given area (literature, film, etc.) gains an initial surge in interest (sometimes due to new things being technologically feasible, sometimes for cultural reasons or because someone demonstrates the ability to accomplish exciting things); this leads to a surge in... See more