I was surprised there was no mention of innovation enabling innovations.
Personally, I see the greatest benefit of the internet being the way it
organizes and collects scientific information for anyone to use or innovate
with. I know there is still a lot of junk out there on the web, but a
professional scientist today has easy access to all kinds of information on
a variety of disciplines from anywhere in the world. I wonder how much Pub
Med alone has helped push forward innovation.
Also, there is no mention about the increase in intellectual capital being
developed in countries like India and China. These countries are developing
an ever increasingly educated work-force and will soon be able to contribute
substantially more to world innovation. It will help a lot when we have 1
million Chinese biochemists looking at the same hard medical problems we are
in the West.
From: "Lúcio de Souza Coelho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
To: singularity@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [singularity] Counter-argument
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 23:34:49 -0300
On 10/4/06, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(...)
- In fig. 1, what is the justification for dividing by population? Isn't
the absolute rate of innovation more important than innovation per person?
(...)
I also think that's the most problematic assumption the article.
Indeed absolute rate of innovation is the only thing that matters, for
once an innovation is produced, it is replicated/copied by entities
that had no involvement whatsoever in producing it.
That said, though, if relative innovation is really falling that may
be bad news anyway, for it is a consensus between demographers that
the population boom in the 20th century is slowing down since the 80s,
and we may stabilize at 8 billion by 2050. So a decline in relative
innovation would have a noticeable impact in absolute innovation
anyway.
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