Innovation is doing fine. All these whiny bloggers and investors simply can't see the forest for the trees. The reason there are so many trivial startups is b

Innovation is doing fine. All these whiny bloggers and investors simply can't see the forest for the trees. The reason there are so many trivial startups is because the web is now a mature market and the barriers to entry have fallen to the point that anybody can jump in. Time will show that most of these ideas are worthless and not very many people are getting rich off fart apps, but for now it's a gold rush plain and simple. Fundamental innovation in tech is in hardware and software standards, neither of these things is suffering. The evolution of web standards is moving faster than it ever has. Hardware is making steady progress. Cloud computing is making big strides. Things are moving just as fast as ever, it's just obscured by the mass market noise that is obscuring the big picture. Now obviously a lot of this stuff is incremental, but guess what: computers and networks aren't new anymore. The level of innovation from 1980-2000 was special because it introduced the power of general computing to the majority of the population. It's not a matter of simply working on harder problems to replicate that. It's one of a few evolutionary sea changes like mass production/automation, railroads, wired communications, or space flight. Nothing short of the singularity is going to appear that amazing, especially with the compounding effect of nostalgia.