4 ms·

For this article, it is less about invention in the academic "I got there first" sense, but when the concept became mature enough to deliver a generally usable

For this article, it is less about invention in the academic "I got there first" sense, but when the concept became mature enough to deliver a generally usable product.

jodrellblank 7y ago
That is the opposite way I read it; the term used in the article "breakthrough" says to me "the very beginnings of a completely new thing"; not focused on who got there first but about demonstrating that a thing is possible, when it had not been possible for all of human history until that time. The article talks about "a new discovery to shatter old paradigms completely". It is hard to judge and in many ways arbitrary - there must be a lot of inventions along the way to making something mature enough to be generally available and useful, and improving things gradually does open doors to new ways of using them. Inventing a way to increase LiIon battery density 10% by new factory processes, is valuable and useful, and doing that several times makes for a sea change in the kind of devices which can be economically viable. I'm hoping for room temperature superconductivity to be discovered in my lifetime, and think it will be a breakthrough if it is; but temperatures of superconductors have increased over the years and I have no reason (layperson) to think there is an arbitrary universe cutoff around 273Kelvin, so if we keep progressing and trying, it will eventually appear. The time when Onnes discovered superconductivity at all, was much more breakthrough into new realm, even if room temperature superconductors sounds like crossing a significant threshhold. The article to me is about the feeling of novelty and new discovery missing from post-1971 life, rather than saying no economic growth in useful mature technology is happening. I was absolutely certain the article said "we've forgotten what it feels like to have a breakthrough" in more or less exactly words. And it says nothing like that, at all. This bothers me.
- Areading314 7y ago
  This is just a no true scotsman fallacy. You have defined away the feeling because you deride all modern technology as derivative, even if in fact it is extremely innovative.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    "In 1834, the first working vapor-compression refrigeration system was built." - that is not a derivative of cooling food by putting it on a block of ice brought from Canada. I'm not doing No True Scotsman because that is a true scotsman. Before it you couldn't chill things on demand below what the weather was doing, for any price. After it, you could. A breakthrough from a world where cooling was down to ice and luck, to a world where control of cooling, pumping heat, is a thing. By saying everything is innovative, you're making no distinctions - if everything is, nothing is.
    - Areading314 7y ago
      That is another widely-held fallacy, that technology moves in sudden leaps and "breakthroughs", when in fact almost all progress in science and technology is painstaking and incremental.

For this article, it is less about invention in the academic "I got there first" sense, but when the concept became mature enough to deliver a generally usable product.

jodrellblank 7y ago

That is the opposite way I read it; the term used in the article "breakthrough" says to me "the very beginnings of a completely new thing"; not focused on who got there first but about demonstrating that a thing is possible, when it had not been possible for all of human history until that time. The article talks about "a new discovery to shatter old paradigms completely". It is hard to judge and in many ways arbitrary - there must be a lot of inventions along the way to making something mature enough to be generally available and useful, and improving things gradually does open doors to new ways of using them. Inventing a way to increase LiIon battery density 10% by new factory processes, is valuable and useful, and doing that several times makes for a sea change in the kind of devices which can be economically viable. I'm hoping for room temperature superconductivity to be discovered in my lifetime, and think it will be a breakthrough if it is; but temperatures of superconductors have increased over the years and I have no reason (layperson) to think there is an arbitrary universe cutoff around 273Kelvin, so if we keep progressing and trying, it will eventually appear. The time when Onnes discovered superconductivity at all, was much more breakthrough into new realm, even if room temperature superconductors sounds like crossing a significant threshhold. The article to me is about the feeling of novelty and new discovery missing from post-1971 life, rather than saying no economic growth in useful mature technology is happening. I was absolutely certain the article said "we've forgotten what it feels like to have a breakthrough" in more or less exactly words. And it says nothing like that, at all. This bothers me.

Areading314 7y ago
This is just a no true scotsman fallacy. You have defined away the feeling because you deride all modern technology as derivative, even if in fact it is extremely innovative.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  "In 1834, the first working vapor-compression refrigeration system was built." - that is not a derivative of cooling food by putting it on a block of ice brought from Canada. I'm not doing No True Scotsman because that is a true scotsman. Before it you couldn't chill things on demand below what the weather was doing, for any price. After it, you could. A breakthrough from a world where cooling was down to ice and luck, to a world where control of cooling, pumping heat, is a thing. By saying everything is innovative, you're making no distinctions - if everything is, nothing is.
  - Areading314 7y ago
    That is another widely-held fallacy, that technology moves in sudden leaps and "breakthroughs", when in fact almost all progress in science and technology is painstaking and incremental.