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> But artisanal hardware is an intellectual dead end. I agree that this model of iterative improvement won't yield the next big technological breakthrough. But

> But artisanal hardware is an intellectual dead end. I agree that this model of iterative improvement won't yield the next big technological breakthrough. But the big consumer electronics manufacturers aren't really innovating either. They might make a product a little bit flatter or give it another camera, but I can't think of a real game changer in the last five years. Once all the technology is there and just improves iteratively the described model seems to be better suited to find as many local optima in the possible product space as possible (and not just a few big ones). I could see how a lack of patents would lead to more secrecy in R&D labs. If what you are doing is truly novel and complicated (like developing a smaller node type in processor manufacturing) keeping the research secret would keep you as safe from competitors as patents. And if you aren't (like inventing rounded corners on smartphones) then you shouldn't have gotten the patent in the first place imho.

archgoon 8y ago
Well; the entire modern smartphone (post iPhone) industry is only a decade old. Expecting another revolution on par with the first in 5 years seems a pretty high bar to cross.
cinquemb 8y ago
>But the big consumer electronics manufacturers aren't really innovating either. Yet they continue to attract global capital investment flows that crowd out funding for others (like those R&D labs, because they have their own in house labs with no real pressure to get anything novel to market) to explore something that might yield the next breakthrough.
ip26 8y ago
They may not be innovating, but advancing the state of the art is a gradual process, and can by itself eventually open up new opportunity. Google's lauded Portrait mode probably flat out wouldn't have worked on the phones of ten years ago due to lacking computational power, and the steady advancement of x86 has ushered in software worlds beyond an i486, including things like entirely new programming languages that would not work well on 100MHz & 4MB of memory.

archgoon 8y ago

Well; the entire modern smartphone (post iPhone) industry is only a decade old. Expecting another revolution on par with the first in 5 years seems a pretty high bar to cross.

cinquemb 8y ago

>But the big consumer electronics manufacturers aren't really innovating either. Yet they continue to attract global capital investment flows that crowd out funding for others (like those R&D labs, because they have their own in house labs with no real pressure to get anything novel to market) to explore something that might yield the next breakthrough.

ip26 8y ago

They may not be innovating, but advancing the state of the art is a gradual process, and can by itself eventually open up new opportunity. Google's lauded Portrait mode probably flat out wouldn't have worked on the phones of ten years ago due to lacking computational power, and the steady advancement of x86 has ushered in software worlds beyond an i486, including things like entirely new programming languages that would not work well on 100MHz & 4MB of memory.