I like the idea of comparing s-curves. I think it inherently runs into the same “low hanging-fruit” problem though—If the s-curves on computing are steeper, is it because we have faster communication so can propogate best practices quicker, or is it because there’s more low hanging fruit, so the constraints we run into are easier to break through?
One other way to frame the problem would be to look at the progress along metrics humans care about—happiness, meaning, health, leisure time, etc.
If innovation is A. doing it’s job, and B. increasing, we should be seeing those metrics increase faster than they used to. Of course, this runs into the same low-hanging fruit problem—Maybe industrializiation was a low hanging fruit, and it’s harder to get increases in leisure time after.
It occurs to me that this is a fundamental problem—the rate of innovation depends both on how good you are at innovation, and how hard the innovation is. No matter how you measure the rate, you still need some way to tease apart those two variables.
I like the idea of comparing s-curves. I think it inherently runs into the same “low hanging-fruit” problem though—If the s-curves on computing are steeper, is it because we have faster communication so can propogate best practices quicker, or is it because there’s more low hanging fruit, so the constraints we run into are easier to break through?
One other way to frame the problem would be to look at the progress along metrics humans care about—happiness, meaning, health, leisure time, etc.
If innovation is A. doing it’s job, and B. increasing, we should be seeing those metrics increase faster than they used to. Of course, this runs into the same low-hanging fruit problem—Maybe industrializiation was a low hanging fruit, and it’s harder to get increases in leisure time after.
It occurs to me that this is a fundamental problem—the rate of innovation depends both on how good you are at innovation, and how hard the innovation is. No matter how you measure the rate, you still need some way to tease apart those two variables.