This article reminds me of an essay by Neal Stephenson about how the internet stifles the innovation process. The gist of it is that the availability of pre-exi

This article reminds me of an essay by Neal Stephenson about how the internet stifles the innovation process. The gist of it is that the availability of pre-existing solutions provided by the internet leads to much faster solutions, but stifles innovation and experimentation in the process. If a group of engineers in a room have to dream up solutions to a problem, then go research and experiment to learn if they'll work, they will be innovating and learning the problem space in the process. If they dream up these solutions, then search the internet to see if they've been tried and work, they'll just be hill climbing.