I agree, but I do tend to think true innovation moves around in ebbs and flows, comes in spurts, and is mostly the product of hard work and necessity. Computin

I agree, but I do tend to think true innovation moves around in ebbs and flows, comes in spurts, and is mostly the product of hard work and necessity. Computing has reached a point where resources have become so cheap we don't know what to expend it all on. There's still a hard compsci core, masses of unsolved problems, but most of us live in this nasty ecosystem of commodity "innovations" where it's not even clear there's an incremental improvement, if there is it can be a matter of opinion, let alone something that's going to indisputably change the way most humans live for the next half a century. I don't suppose it's a bad thing, it's just that once a technology reaches a certain level of awesome we expect the flow of goodness to continue, and blinker up and squint at it long after looking for novelty and ingenuity in really small details. The only way I can get a sense of perspective sometimes is to talk to my grandparents, who washed in a tin bath, witnessed TV, washing machines, microwaves and even modern soaps, shampoos and detergents come in to the home. I swear my gran still revels in modern food processes that I take for granted, and sometimes even despise. Somehow incremental improvements in programming language semantics don't seem to compare to the fact that 2 years ago I had laser eye surgery, or that we have the capability to print chips at unfathomable nanoscopic sizes.