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The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consum

The vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. The basic premise of the article is wrong. NASA specifically, may not play as large a role as it once did, but (most) innovation is still very much a top-down process. Even twitter (which I've seen hailed as innovative again and again) is just a hack on SMS, which of course was not developed by consumers. He also seems to be implying that web 2ish "social engineering" has outpaced electrical engineering as a means of innovation, which is at best a confusion between the application layer and underlying technology stack.

JulianMorrison 18y ago
What's your point, consumer-led development doesn't code protocol stacks? True enough, but how important is that? SMS was "a feature of the environment" that Twitter took advantage of. But without SMS it could have used email or IM or Morse telegraph or whatever was to hand. I don't think that supports your argument.
- ericwaller 18y ago
  If you tried to quantify and sum each of the various innovations which enable twitter, you'd find a relatively small amount of consumer led innovation in the application layer, served by a huge amount of top-down innovation in the technology stack. And regardless of the implementation tech (IM, email, etc), I'd imagine you'd find the same thing to be the case. I don't mean to say that consumer-led innovation can never produce radically new technologies, just that the general direction of innovation is still top-down.
  - netcan 18y ago
    Trying to quantify these things is like trying to quantify the importance of joints in mountain climbing. Knuckles, Wrists, elbows or shoulders?
breck 18y ago
I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. They all are dependent much more on the innovation of others (the cell companies, ISPs, open source software). I haven't heard of many technologies developed at Facebook or Twitter that are being used by NASA or other traditional giants, while I have heard of the converse.
- tsuraan 18y ago
  I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. I don't understand why you don't think that's innovative. The definition of innovative is to introduce something as though it was new (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate), which is a far cry from invention. Innovation isn't about creating new things, it's about taking established things and making them appeal to people in a new way.
  - jonmc12 18y ago
    From wikipedia - "Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation." In that sense, a real innovation is something that is well understood, and tested for its benefit. The thing about craigslist, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, etc is that the real reason that they are so valuable is only a matter of speculation at this point. They are only the beginning of the experiment - not the final output. You can take a circuit level innovation, and re-apply it in several contexts. You can't take the magic of craigslist or facebook and incur the same value in another situation.. all you can do is speculate on why it worked, and be another iteration of a highly distributed experiment. What the author is calling innovation, is really just leveraging off the reduced costs of infrastructure to test new tools on consumers. When someone formalizes why the 'social engineering' approaches work, predictably, against this data set, they will then be able to improve, and re-apply with more certainty in the market. That's innovation. I'm not sure how rigorous 'social engineering' is at present, but maybe 'social experimenters' is a better name.

JulianMorrison 18y ago

What's your point, consumer-led development doesn't code protocol stacks? True enough, but how important is that? SMS was "a feature of the environment" that Twitter took advantage of. But without SMS it could have used email or IM or Morse telegraph or whatever was to hand. I don't think that supports your argument.

ericwaller 18y ago
If you tried to quantify and sum each of the various innovations which enable twitter, you'd find a relatively small amount of consumer led innovation in the application layer, served by a huge amount of top-down innovation in the technology stack. And regardless of the implementation tech (IM, email, etc), I'd imagine you'd find the same thing to be the case. I don't mean to say that consumer-led innovation can never produce radically new technologies, just that the general direction of innovation is still top-down.
- netcan 18y ago
  Trying to quantify these things is like trying to quantify the importance of joints in mountain climbing. Knuckles, Wrists, elbows or shoulders?

breck 18y ago

I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. They all are dependent much more on the innovation of others (the cell companies, ISPs, open source software). I haven't heard of many technologies developed at Facebook or Twitter that are being used by NASA or other traditional giants, while I have heard of the converse.

tsuraan 18y ago
I agree. I wouldn't consider Twitter or Facebook or craigslist innovative. They are really simple technologies (ignoring the software scaling challenges) that have been marketed extremely effectively. I don't understand why you don't think that's innovative. The definition of innovative is to introduce something as though it was new (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovate), which is a far cry from invention. Innovation isn't about creating new things, it's about taking established things and making them appeal to people in a new way.
- jonmc12 18y ago
  From wikipedia - "Invention that gets out in to the world is innovation." In that sense, a real innovation is something that is well understood, and tested for its benefit. The thing about craigslist, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, etc is that the real reason that they are so valuable is only a matter of speculation at this point. They are only the beginning of the experiment - not the final output. You can take a circuit level innovation, and re-apply it in several contexts. You can't take the magic of craigslist or facebook and incur the same value in another situation.. all you can do is speculate on why it worked, and be another iteration of a highly distributed experiment. What the author is calling innovation, is really just leveraging off the reduced costs of infrastructure to test new tools on consumers. When someone formalizes why the 'social engineering' approaches work, predictably, against this data set, they will then be able to improve, and re-apply with more certainty in the market. That's innovation. I'm not sure how rigorous 'social engineering' is at present, but maybe 'social experimenters' is a better name.