Link Dump 1

• 3D printing trends January 2015: This trend report provides a comprehensive and unmatched perspective on the current state of the 3D printing industry. Based on data from our 3D Hubs community, which includes over 10000 printers in over 120 countries, and thousands of 3D print orders every month, we are excited to show you the printers people love and what’s trending in the world of 3D Printing. 
• Long Term (vehicle) Quality Index: The Long-Term Quality Index is a collaborative project between +Steve Lang and +Nick Lariviere, designed to give the average car buyer a picture of what the long-term reliability of different makes and models are based on real-world used vehicle data.
• The Nature of Code by +Daniel Shiffman: This book focuses on the programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems using Processing.
• How Fractal Trees Work by +Bradley C. Kuszmaul at CRIBB, November 4 2011 (pdf): Is there a data structure that is about as good as a B-tree for lookup, but has insertion performance closer to append? Yes, Fractal Trees!
• Mission: ​Funding all those small but important open-source projects by +Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: ...the problem is that there are still many small but important programs that don't get the headlines and millions of dollars of a Docker, Linux, or OpenStack. These projects get swept under the carpet even though, as Heartbleed proved, they're absolutely vital to modern IT...the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) has helped fund such tiny but significant programs as the Network Time Protocol (NTP), OpenSSH, and OpenSSL. It hasn't been enough.
• +Andreas Antonopoulos: “Give Bitcoin Two Years” by  +Hal M. Bundrick: Antonopoulos proclaimed. It’s a dumb network that supports smart devices, pushing all of the intelligence to the edge. “That means if you build a new application on top of bitcoin, you can operate the end devices and you can build an application, and you don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission to innovate. It’s innovation without permission. It’s innovation without central approval.”
• Answering the Call for +Werner Koch’s Everywhere by +Jim Zemlin: In addition to the world’s email encryption software being managed by one person, the Internet is being secured by two guys named Steve. The Network Time Protocol that manages clock synchronization for the world’s computer systems is largely maintained by a couple of folks. The examples go on.
• Legalese and coding? Yup, it's the open-source FOSDEM shindig by +Damon Hart-Davis: Where there's maturity and money there's lawyers; debugging the minutiae, a low-key dull-but-worthy message from FOSDEM. (I declare a bias, given that my IoT startup is founded on the principle of enabling a market by commoditisation of parts of it via FOSSH (free/open source software and hardware. Investors and bureaucrats no longer look at me as if I have two heads!)
• Are coders worth it? by +James Somers:  On Thursday night I got an unexpected email. It was a job offer, and these were the terms: $120,000 in salary, a $10,000 signing bonus, stock options, a free gym membership, excellent health and dental benefits, a new cellphone, and free lunch and dinner every weekday. My working day would start at about 11am. It would end whenever I liked, sometime in the early evening. The work would rarely strain me. I’d have a lot of autonomy and responsibility. My co-workers would be about my age, smart, and fun. I put my adventure on hold.

Help Open Source Ecology Change The World

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.Howard Aiken

Sometimes you stumble across an idea that's so...well, BIG that it's hard to think about let alone describe. Open Source Ecology (OSE), founded by Marcin Jakubowski, is just such an idea. Basically, what OSE is doing is recreating the entire history of technological development, without all of the false-starts, and from an open-source frame of reference. Modern civilization depends on a system of industry. OSE is going to open-source the entire system. I said it was big. The end result will be all of the technology necessary to, as Marcin says, “transform local resources into the substance of advanced civilizations.”

The initial primary focus is developing the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS).

The GVCS is a system of machines that, working together, can create a small, sustainable civilization with modern levels of technology. Starting from scratch, or from scrap, a small group of people could produce everything they need to survive and thrive.

Perhaps the most important point to consider is that the GVCS will be integrated. Each machine will be designed to maximize the performance of the entire system, not the performance of the machine itself. For example, rather than build engines into every machine, interchangeable “power cubes” will keep things moving. The flexibility to provide power to anything, anywhere, will more than offset the loss of mechanical efficiency at each machine.

They just barely failed to make it into the top 5 Best of TED 2011 over at Huffington Post, and they've been covered in the press for several years now. The wiki, which is more-or-less the central organizational structure, has a crash course. OSE just released the first 1% of the GVCS and plans to release the other 99% by year end 2012, in accordance with their Enterprise Plan.

Publications take on different forms depending on the organization doing the work. OSE is a non-profit obsessively dedicated to the principle that everyone benefits faster from doing things open-source. Contrasted against closed-source, going “open” means they actively publish their work in such a way that the entire world has all the information necessary to replicate it. When OSE shows off a brick press that works twice as fast as its commercial equivalents they follow it up by creating a detailed set of instructions. Eventually, the entire GVCS will be designed and documented. The first four machines are in the Civilization Starter Kit.

The CSK (v0.01) treads the first step on the road to industrial independence. The CSK contains all the information necessary to build the “lowest hanging fruit” of the 50 machines in the GVCS. Highlighted in brown, they are a tractor (LifeTrac), a compressed earth block press (Liberator), a soil pulverizer and a power source (Power Cube). With these tools, two people can use dirt at the construction site to create enough bricks for a house in a single day!

You don't have to pay for the instructions. Typically, the sole restriction of an open-source license is that whatever improvements you make to the machines you must release under a similar open-source license.

The important thing to communicate at this stage is that open-source technology depends on replication and guided evolution for its unmistakable cost and performance advantages. The Power Cube, LifeTrac, Soil Pulverizer (a cultivator) and Liberator have all moved beyond their first generation designs while being incubated at Factor E Farm. The next stage is for a hundred people to independently build, evaluate and refine them.

It seems to me that the most fertile soil in which to plant these designs, specifically the LifeTrac, is in the hands of the world's small and independent farmers. It can be fabricated for about $10,000 in materials, is designed to last 100 years, and has ownership costs 1/10th to 1/100th of a commercial skid-steer loader.

More importantly, the LifeTrac is a taste of what's to come. Open-source hardware is just starting to become a “thing” but for something so new it is showing remarkable promise. For example, only a few years ago Dr. Adrian Bowyer invented the RepRap, a 3D printer, and released the designs open-source. Today a RepRap costs between $500-$1,000 and surpasses the performance of commercial systems, none of which drop below $10,000.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that the LifeTrac will have one fifth the cost and twice the performance of its commercial counterparts in only a few years. Just imagine how much time and money that would free up for farmers who are already overburdened with debt. Then, imagine an entire system of machines going through the same dramatic evolution.

First, however, OSE needs people to use its machines in the real world.

This is a call to action. If you are at all interested in the GVCS then OSE wants to hear from you. Their plan is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of people/organizations replicating their machines by the end of 2012. The benefits will be immediate, because the machines in the GVCS are high-value alternatives to existing machines, and perpetual, because any improvements will be incorporated into the GVCS in a matter of months.

Freedombox, A Suggestion

The Freedombox is an idea who's time has come. Unfortunately, it's still just an idea.

Why is it still "just" an idea? Joshua Spodek has some thoughts. To paraphrase: it's probably because the idea isn't perfect yet (engineers are notorious for never being ready to release their work). He figures someone (or someones) needs to step up and organize an effort, no matter how poor the initial outcome might be. Once SOMETHING is out there it can be improved by feedback from actual users.

Pictured: users.

I agree that open-source projects either publish or cease to exist. OS projects just don't work until a person or a small group takes responsibility for getting results. Ideas are a great contribution, but someone has to contribute time and money too. Arguably an idea that can't attract even one person to take responsibility for it must not be a very good idea.

Freedombox is a great idea. We need to shift the momentum of the internet back to individual control.

That being the case, why hasn't the idea gotten more attention?

At the moment it catches the attention of people who 1) understand technology and 2) are not invested in using it to control people (for one reason or another). Unfortunately that means the vast majority of the world is not, and possibly WILL not, be captivated by the idea.

Getting a lot of people to use one is kind of the whole point of the freedombox concept, so failing to capture the collective imagination is pretty much total failure period. Therefore, it seems to me that a big part of getting some momentum behind the idea is getting people interested in it.

Or, failing that, latching onto something people are already interested in.

Time to get sneaky.

On average, people don't care about security. They will instantly compromise every single security precaution established if it saves them a moment's frustration. They will not "opt in." So, to get them to do secure things, you have to restructure their environment such that they must "opt out."

Rather than focusing on all the security advantages of the freedombox, emphasize its NON-security features. For example don't advertise the idea as a personal security initiative (freedom from oppression), instead advertise it as a personal cloud initiative (freedom from

cost/frustration). THEN build in all the security stuff you would have anyway. Tell people that's all there to guarantee the security of their cloud data. People love the idea of the cloud right now, and arguably a bunch of freedomboxes working together would fit under that umbrella.

The project could still be called "freedombox" and the product could still be pretty much the same as before, just change the marketing.

The strength of the idea is that it is the most "inherently" secure of all the options. When your data is on a company's servers it's under THEIR control. When your data is in your closet it's under YOUR control. In every society a person's home is considered more sacred than anywhere else. If an entity (cops or criminals) has to break into some faceless corporation to compromise you, that's one thing. When they have to go into your personal residence, that's an entirely different thing. No only is it simply physically easier to protect your dat

a when it's at home, but the government (even if it's corrupt) is far more likely to extend extra protections under the law to anything in your home.

Play up all the ways the freedombox will "free" people to go anywhere and still have access to their data. It will absolutely accomplish that goal. When people embrace that they'll also be getting all the security built into the gadget by its creators. If they want to turn that stuff off, they can. It's theirs and they can do what they want. Since it's open-source someone will probably even create a security-lite release that runs on the same hardware. Whatever. All the people grabbing up the "personal cloud" will create momentum that will help out the people who live under repressive governments.

Trickle down freedom.

Basically, attach the idea to something that's already popular and it will get a lot more support. Play up one or two features that appeal to the largest audience. That way the few people who can REALLY benefit from it will get it even though they would never have been able to create enough momentum on their own.

Spontaneous Misorganization Stifles Innovation at Large Companies

New ideas rarely emerge from bureaucracies. Large companies are generally bureaucratic, therefore new ideas rarely emerge from large companies. This is because people suck.

Pictured: People. Sucking.

A person doesn't suck (usually), but people do. The more persons are involved in something the more likely it is to suck. Observers often say that culture is the reason small companies are better at innovation than large companies; like Bruce Nussbaum, Marty Cagan, and Jeffrey Baumgartner. (respectively)

[large companies] don’t understand the critical cultural and social science components of [innovation].

...there is much that the typical large company could do to improve the ability of their employees to innovate.

The culprit behind this discrepancy is the decision making structure in each kind of company.

It's not culture, at least that's not the first cause, it's the number of people. That's not to say it's the number of people technically grouped together. What is important is the number of people who have power over the outcome. As a general rule, people all want something different. It is impossible for everyone in a group to have the power to get what they want, but it is possible for everyone in a group to have the power to stop the process and ensure no one else gets anything. We have a built-in feeling of what is fair or not and we act on it by refusing to accept deals in which we get something, but the something is less than we feel is fair. Give enough people power over the outcome and nothing will ever get done.

Small companies tend to have few people in them. They're "streamlined." That's a nice way of saying they have fired, or simply never hired, people they didn't need. Large companies tend to have a lot of people. They're "bloated." That's an acceptably crude way of saying there are too many people involved in what's going on. large companies provide a reliable flow of income, so they attract the people who can't hack it anywhere else. That's fine as long as they do their well-defined job and nothing else.

You can have some power when the guy above you either loses all of it or gets more.

A lot of people becomes "bloat" when those people start getting the power to make decisions affecting their own job. Since their job is all they can handle, they are not going to make decisions which result in changes to their job. This is not to say that hiring more people is bad, only that distributing power over one decision is bad, and more people hanging around makes it more likely power will end up distributed.

Large companies can innovate just fine, and do, when they realize that throwing more people at a problem actually makes it worse. As groups grow larger, and more secure in their position, they become much more likely to spontaneously mis-organize themselves.

For example, as a company grows it tends to take on larger and more complicated projects, which necissarily involve more people with specific expertise than before. That's as it should be, the mistake is giving all those people power over the project. The appropriate way to organize it is to give one person power over the project, and make sure they get good advice from all the experts. This takes deliberate structuring because anyone who feels crucial to a project's success will feel it is unfair that they have no official power over it. This makes it much more likely one of them will demand, and get, some measure of power. That makes it more likely the others will demand, and get, the same.

Then they will use their power to stop the project when it doesn't meet their standards, which it inevitably won't, as I'll explain in the next post.

National Healthcare Reform Leadership

A new national healthcare system is in the works, or at least a modified one. Which is good, because no matter how you slice it the country needs to do something about steadily increasing healthcare costs, says the CBO.

If rising healthcare costs were a steamroller. . .

In BusinessWeek, Nikos Mourkogiannis proposes that the new system should focus on cutting costs. He also says that, while that is a fairly obvious consensus view, actually implementing it will require prodigious acts of leadership. The general idea is to create a system that ensures the average person will have a minimum level of benefits.

As Mourkogiannis points out, the new healthcare system will not be able to do everything for everyone, it will have to make triage decisions which first reduce costs (and do everything else second). From the White House:

President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform in his first year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

The fun thing about mission statements is that they often utilize a lot of commas. Giving commas to a bureaucrat is the linguistic equivalent of giving a credit card to a teenager. All sorts of commitments are made with little consideration given to whether or not they can all be delivered. The term "high-quality" has a lot more wiggle-room than "affordable," and the situation demands the focus be on "affordable" anyway, so "high-quality" is really only in there to attempt to placate fears that the healthcare storm troopers are going to drag you off to the crematorium when you reach 65.

Your grandpa ran off to join the circus. Here's his replacement.

High-quality will have to be secondary to low cost. The only reason we need healthcare reform is that our current approach will bankrupt us. So, at a minimum, we have to do the same thing only cheaper. Improving quality would be nice, but it is not the primary driver; cost is.

Now, try explaining that to the people who will cost too much to take care of.

This healthcare reform situation is a good example of a situation that demands attention be paid to systems, innovation and leadership. The system is monstrously complex, implementing it won't work without some innovations that no one's thought of yet, and even then the leadership challenge is pretty much guaranteed to be beyond anyone's capabilities. We (Americans) are okay with the idea that the system can't take care of everyone. We are not okay with the idea that the system will officially not be taking care of everyone because they are officially on the wrong side of the cost/benefit analysis.

That being assumed, what sort of leadership approaches have the best chance of getting people to at least let the necessary changes happen, if not get people excited about the changes?

• "We are working hard for you, but someone/thing else is working against us." Whoever gets saddled with the job of representing healthcare reform can try casting themselves as the plucky, unquestionably-good-hearted hero valiantly struggling against an evil menace. The menace could be immigrants flooding our emergency rooms, greedy HMOs, or just the vast scale of the problem.
  
• "We all know more than you and we say this is a good idea/working." Several large stakeholders in the healthcare marketplace, like the pharm-companies and AARP, have already expressed support for healthcare reform. It could be possible to present a unified front that overwhelms any attempt to claim it's a bad idea.
• "Every alternative is worse, especially doing nothing." Proponents of healthcare reform, like me, have pretty much started here anway. This approach assumes that this will remain the primary tool moving forwards. It could be expanded upon by occasionally adding a new description of just how bad the future will/could get if things aren't done in a particular way.
• "I was worried, but now I see there's nothing to worry about." Instead of the leaders speaking, they could get average Joes and Janes to speak for them. That way the people who need to be convinced could see people just like them being convinced, rather than Ivy-league, smooth-talking socialist puppets trying to be convincing.
  

The Consciousness Consensus

There is no consensus regarding what consciousness is, let alone whether or not it can be created artificially. The introduction to Cognition Distributed does an excellent job of walking the reader all the way around the abyss that is our lack of understanding of consciousness.

It takes a $100 book to explain that something can't be explained.

When you say to yourself, "What is seven times nine?" and then "sixty three" pops up, you are certainly conscious of thinking "sixty three." So that's definitely mental; and so is the brain state that corresponds to your thinking "sixty three." But what about the brain state that actually found and delivered "sixty three"? You are certainly not conscious of that, although you were just as conscious while your brain was finding and delivering "sixty three" as while you were breathing, though you don't feel either of those states.

We can agree that consciousness emerges from a sufficiently complex system, but not from insufficiently complex systems. While the metaphysical doubt that a rock could be somehow conscious, or a tree, or Gaia, always remains. . .it is merely a qualification made to preserve intellectual honesty. The doubt is really reserved for things like biomes and planets, not for dust and bushes. It's subjective, sure, but it's the best we've got.

This question has been addressed so often that the language for discussing it is well established. It is possible there are just things that cannot be something, kind of like how "0" and "zero" are things that represent nothing. It's a paradox, not an inconsistency.

Anywho, the really interesting development is that as we offload cognition into artificial actors we are accumulating context for the discussion that was impossible before the microchip. New innovations are being created every day that do things we previously associated only with conscious actors. Since we do not consider these new mechanisms conscious, we can no longer say those functions are conscious. If a function can be provided by purely vegetative processes then consciousness must be something else.

Consciousness is one of those leading-edge concepts because everything we've nailed down as mere complexity, so far, has failed to explain it. Like how the round Earth was just a theory until someone actually managed to sail all the way around it, because the surface that had been explored up to that point didn't fully explain the Earth's roundness. I think we'll figure it out eventually. . .probably a few seconds after SkyNet becomes conscious and tries to kill us all. . .but life's a journey, not a destination.

Robots Don't Kill People, People do

Rod Furlan twittered a day in the life of a Singularity University student. At 12:08:21 PM he asked, "When a robot kills, who pulled the trigger?"

This question cycles through the public consciousness every year or so and is well illustrated by the South African National Defence Force's 'little' accident with an automated Oerlikon GDF-005 (it sprayed 500 35mm anti-aircraft shells around its firing position, killing 9 and wounding 11).

Oerlikon GDF-005, A.K.A. the T-001

At the moment no one seriously considers (except maybe the Koreans) holding the auto-turret responsible for the killings, because the system that controls the mechanical stuff isn't complicated enough to be plausibly sentient.

...as backed up by empirical research by Friedman and Millett (1997), and by Moon and Nass (1998), humans do attribute responsibility to computers. Of course, that we may be inclined to blame computers does not entail that we are justified in so doing. Although computer systems may clearly be causally responsible for the injuries and deaths that resulted from their flawed operation, it is not so clear that they can be held morally responsible for these injuries or deaths.

However, some people are really excited about the possibility that computers will eventually (sooner rather than later, yay!) be complicated enough for us to blame things on them. Without going into the background on this topic, the basic requirement for something to be responsible for its actions is that it be consciously aware of the difference between right and wrong. Since computers just do what they are programmed to do, and have no ability to understand the concept of "should," they are not responsible for anything. Computers just follow orders.

Computers totally would have let the Nuremberg Defendents off the hook.

The human brain is a system, and a computer is a system, so it is plausible that computer systems can increase in complexity and reach a par with the human brain. So, at some point we will probably have to deal with computers that actually do understand morality. Since we'll still be human, we'll probably give them a gun and tell them to go kill our enemies. However, before we can pull the "the robot did it on its own" card, we will be forced to use old-fashioned computers to kill people.

Dr. Ronald Arkin wrote a book about this, and did a few interviews, and worked on a prototype computer-based morality system. His thesis is that robots can be more moral on the battlefield than humans because they are capable of making fewer mistakes. They won't make decisions based on fear, anger or recklessness and they will evaluate every situation on its own merits instead of suffering from 'scenario fulfillment' and jumping to conclusions.

From a systems standpoint it seems fairly obvious that computers will eventually be more complicated than humans, and at that point they will probably have to start taking responsibility for their own actions (and for cleaning up that pig-stie they call a room). Until then, however, we humans will have to continue taking responsibility for robots that are put in increasingly complicated situations. Dealing with this transition period will require innovations that have not appeared yet. At some point it becomes difficult to hold a person responsible for the actions of a system they own, but that they can't possibly understand fully enough to predict its actions in all situations. Isaac Asimov built part of his career exploring the ways a robot could do totally unexpected things while blindly obeying the 3 Laws of Robotics.

We need an innovative way to interpret who is responsible for the actions autonomous (but unconscious) systems take. Even when some computers truly are unequivocally responsible for their own actions, the vast majority of computers systems will continue to be unconscious. Inevitably, some of the moral computers that we declare responsible for their own actions will assume control of non-moral computers that still aren't responsible for their own actions.

The question is, 'in the future, when a moral computer tells a non-moral computer to kill, who can I sue?'

Definition of Innovate (2 of 3)

Innovate isn't really all that hard to define, but I think rephrasing the common definition will place the emphasis on a more useful concept.

The Online Etymology Dictionary states only that the word originated in 1548 and it is based on latin 'in' (into) + 'novus' (new), so it meant 'to renew or change.'

The Random House Dictionary states: to introduce something new (for or as if for the first time), to make changes in anything established.

The American Heritage Dictionary states: to begin or introduc
e (something new) for or as if for the first time.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary states: to introduce as, or as if, new.

I think the concept of 'introduction' is important to understanding the definition of innovation. It is common to all these sources because, just like any other introduction, it must be done by a person. All innovations originate with an individual who then "introduces" the rest of us to it. This is because an innovation is relative. You can only be introduced to something once, because after the introduction you are familiar with the introduced. An idea can only be new to you the first time you are exposed to it. From then on it is no longer an innovation in your eyes, though it can still be an innovation to someone who has yet to be introduced to it.


Things are only called innovations until they are integrated into a conceptual framework. After a period of adjustment we consider any new idea to be an established part of the environment, and therefore not new. So it is a label applied by an actor, whether they be an individual or a society, when the actor is first introduced to something new.


For this approach to work we must understand it to mean that everyone is first introduced, including the person doing the introducing. The innovator, then, introduces the innovation to themselves first. This is consistent because the important event is the understanding by each individual that something is new; that is the metaphorical moment of introduction.

Therefore, I propose the following definition of innovate: to understand something to be different from anything understood before.

If you feel like researching the topic further Davit Yost, McKinsey and the World Economic Forum, and businessPOV are some resources.

Our "Self" Wants More (and More)

One of the things we humans think sets us apart from (other) animals is that we can invent and use all sorts of nifty tools. While research has demonstrated that animals can use natural tools, and even artificial tools, there is still a dramatic difference in scale (in tool use) between humans and our closest competitor.

Here we can observe an animal using a tool to extract money from a tourist.

So, for the moment, lets assume that the essence of what we are is something very specific, like genes or a soul (call it the "self"), and everything else is a tool for advancing the "self's" agenda. In this thought-experiment, then, our body is just a tool for interacting with the world and our brain is just a tool for thinking about interacting with the world.

Our body, when thought of as a tool, can be described as having certain parameters. It is a certain size, uses a certain amount of energy, produces a certain amount of force, etc. The brain can also be thought of as using a certain amount of energy, providing a certain number of calculations at a certain speed, etc. So, if our "self" became aware of the possibility of gaining access to a broader range of capabilities than our brain and body naturally provide, why wouldn't it?



This process would appear to be a gradual improvement in the options our "self" has; specifically a better body and a better brain to control it. However, the brain and body can only be improved so much. For our "self" to keep getting more options it has to start incorporating things found outside the body. These things, like the wheel, a sharp stick, and fire, are just extensions of the body. Deer happened to be born with sharp sticks on their heads, we had to invent them, same capability.

Some of our newer inventions, like writting, GPS, and the internet are extensions of our brains. Rather than expanding mechanical capabilities they expand processing capabilities. We could spend a long time trying to puzzle through the problem of navigating to our destination, or we could build a circuit to do that thinking for us just like a GPS unit does. Pulley systems allow our body to do more work than before and personal computers allow our brain to do more thinking than before.

In this sense we started "merging" with machines a long time ago, when we started using spears. The process accelerated when we invented books, and is beginning to progress wildly faster than before due to little things like the Green Revolution and the Internet.



I don't know what we'll be able to do in the future, I just know that it will be more than we can do now.


EDIT (2009AUG1) Cognition Distributed: How cognitive technology extends our minds mentions in the introduction that: "Cognitive technology does, however, extend the scope and power of cognition, exactly as sensory and motor technology extends the scope and power of the bodily senses and movement...Both sensorimotor technology and cognitive technology extend our bodys' and brains' performance capabilities...as we increase our use and reliance on cognitive technologies, they effect and modify how we cognize, how we do things and what we do. Just as motor technology extended our physical ability and modified our physical life, cognitive technology extends our cognitive ability and modifies our mental life."

Innovation Never Decreases

The great thing about innovation is that it builds on itself. The problem is that people always seem to think it doesn't.

It is not so much that every time a new innovation appears, especially a disruptive one, people publicly claim that nothing will ever top it. It is that people seem to instinctively think that a great new idea will stop more things from happening than it will initiate the beginning of. When nuclear weapons were invented people claimed it would end warfare.

The reality is that new ideas only lead to more new ideas. Yes, innovations often make something else obsolete, but they never render it completely unnecessary. By way of example, the enemy cannot launch a nuke, if you disable their hand.

Yes, a nuke is crazy effective at what it does, but it does not do everything. The invention of nuclear weapons did not render anything which had been invented before unnecessary (ED: like knives). You can see this same pattern in any other area of innovation. The invention of transistors did not render vacuum tubes unnecessary. The invention of graphic design did not render painting unnecessary.

All an innovation does is expand on what came before. It gives us new options. Because an innovation creates new options, without completely invalidating the previous options, it expands the collective number of options. This means that there are now more things to be innovated upon, which means more innovations, which means the number of options expands exponentially. It is equivalent to the expansion of the area of a circle (ED: quadratic) as the circumference increases.

Innovation is a process that makes itself more likely. Any new innovation will only provide a new possibility; it will not negate the possibilities that came before.