I fear the article suffers from the myopia of pre-conceived notions of what constitutes innovation. Every generation imagines the future to be mere extension of

I fear the article suffers from the myopia of pre-conceived notions of what constitutes innovation. Every generation imagines the future to be mere extension of the present. But innovation doesn't happen that way. Technological development is inherently fractal, the obvious directions of progress are not necessarily the most interesting ones. In the 1950s, the perceived future was all about nuclear power, and supersonic flight, turned out that while we didn't get supersonic passenger planes, air travel became affordable to a large fraction of the planet because of amazing advances in power efficiency of jet engines. In the late 60s the future was going to be in space. We didn't get a moon base, but we got a global computer network that changed how people lived and worked. We got containerized transport, that dramatically improved global trade and pulled millions out of poverty. Yes, the world as a whole is wealthier per capita than it was in the 70s. So innovation not just what some government think tank or corporate strategy group think it should be. It may well be that future developments in computation come from breakthroughs in mathematics rather than improvements in semi-conductors. Innovation comes from comes from many places and its a mugs game to predict how it will evolve. The best that any society can do is to encourage as much of it as can be sustained by its level of economic development. Let chaos and lady luck determine what comes next.