James Woods, writing in the Industrial Thin Client Blog, provides an interesting overview of technological innovation over the past century or so.
He concludes, “So what is the lesson to be learned here? As long as there are people with innovative ideas and large corporations to buy and proliferate those ideas, there will continue to be technological innovation…even if individuals working out of a tiny garage are no longer the ones to deliver those ideas to the masses.”
He hits on a key point that I think is often missed in technology futurist pundits’ analyses. It’s innovation. Machines really can’t do innovation–or at least not significantly. When we think that we’re at the end of some trend, then someone innovates a technology and we set off in new directions. Human society has been doing that for millennia. There’s no reason to think that we’ve hit the end of the road. The end of the road will happen when the sun starts dying, expands into a red giant and then collapses into a black hole.
[side note] I can’t believe that it’s been all week and I haven’t written anything. I have several things started, but I’ve had a lot to wade through. More coming in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to seeing everyone in Orlando at the ARC Forum. It should be a good time.
