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And all the "unimaginative" folks would be the serfs, paying for the "imaginative". No thanks. If you notice the pattern of innovation, its usually not driven

And all the "unimaginative" folks would be the serfs, paying for the "imaginative". No thanks. If you notice the pattern of innovation, its usually not driven by a bunch of dreamers trying to think of the next big idea. Its driven by people trying to solve a very specific problem and finding a solution that is more generally applicable. The electronic telegraph was created as an electronic method of replacing the old optical telegraph systems. The cathode ray tube was discovered in order to observe the waveform electricity for physicists. The solid-state transistor was discovered at Bell Labs as a replacement for the vacuum tube amplifier. UNIX was created at Bell Labs as a programming environment to create programs to drive the telephone exchange. Follow the chain of innovation and this pattern appears over and over. Solve a specific problem, find a general solution.

abecedarius 13y ago
That's quite wrong about Unix. http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html I can't speak as confidently about the rest, but the impression I get is that people like Gauss were hacking up telegraphs very soon after enough basic components and knowledge were in place; i.e. the gating factor was not the need for better communications but the new knowledge out of left field. Likewise the CRT seems motivated by curiosity more than technological problem-solving: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History The Bell Labs transistor seems to fit your model, though I wonder about the Lilienfield patent 20 years earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor "Invention is the mother of necessity" looks like a better fit for most of these examples.

abecedarius 13y ago

That's quite wrong about Unix. http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html I can't speak as confidently about the rest, but the impression I get is that people like Gauss were hacking up telegraphs very soon after enough basic components and knowledge were in place; i.e. the gating factor was not the need for better communications but the new knowledge out of left field. Likewise the CRT seems motivated by curiosity more than technological problem-solving: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History The Bell Labs transistor seems to fit your model, though I wonder about the Lilienfield patent 20 years earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor "Invention is the mother of necessity" looks like a better fit for most of these examples.