We are living through the most innovative period known to human kind. Innovation in mobile phones have changed our lives, the Internet has become humanity’s repository of knowledge (and stupidity), we are making advances in artificial intelligence that help with everything from differentiating between muffins and dogs to diagnosing cancer. 3D printing will see us build homes and organs in moments and blockchain will also do things as soon as someone explains to us what it is.
In many ways I agree with the notion that the world is innovating quickly. Things are definitely moving fast, change is the only constant, and in many ways it feels like the handbrake lever snapped off and we’re trying our best to keep the car on the road. And don’t get me wrong, I love being alive in this time. I am awestruck by what my car is able to do, by what I can learn online and that my mobile phone has over a million times more RAM that the Apollo 11 guidance computer.
However, it also feels like all these changes are superficial. Technology isn’t fundamentally improving our quality of life, in fact, we struggle with technology. The more time we spend with tech the more we learn of the negative impacts it has on us. I’ll grant you, smart phones have changed how we live. Our fridges, watches, cars are all smarter, and I can see and speak to my sister, who lives on the other side of the world on any of 7 different screens I have in my house. And yet, it still feels like we’re missing something.
And it is only when I stumbled across the work by economist Robert J. Gordon that I finally had the words to describe why innovation today feels so superficial. Robert, or Bob said the following:
“We moved from the speed of the horse and the sail to the Boeing 707, and we have not gone any faster since. The telegraph in 1844 created instantaneous communication, and we are now elaborating on instantaneous communication.”
And it is true, we haven’t really seen inventions since the 1970’s that will dramatically improve our standard of living. To prove his point, in his public appearances Bob puts up a picture of a toilet next to a picture of a smartphone and asks the question; “Which would you rather give up?” And that is the question that crystallised that feeling of superficiality for me.
Just as an aside, I love the fact that the flush toilet was first described in the 16th Century by John Harington, Queen Elizabeth I’s godson, but it didn’t become widespread until the mid 1800’s. That’s more than 2 centuries during which the street was your loo.
The great inventions between 1870 and 1970 – considered the special century gave us the following list. I like to ask myself, what would we not have today if we didn’t have the below, i.e. Strava needs GPS. And versus the smartphone, which one would you give up?
- Telephone
- Lightbulb
- Seismograph
- Infant incubartors
- Welding machine
- Motorcycle
- Automobile
- Induction Motor
- Calculator (1885 – mind blown)
- Contact lenses
- EKG
- Motion picture camera
- Tesla Coil – used for lighting and radio transmission
- Radio
- Air conditioning (this is a big one as it made it possible for people to live and work in high rise buildings)
- Engine powered airplane
- Neurotransmitters
- Washing machine
- Moving assembly line
- Helicopter
- Liquid Engine Rocket
- Television
- Penicillin
- Jet Engine
- Radar
- Tape Recorder
- Nylon
- Atomic Reactor
- Computer (1944)
- Microwave oven (1946)
- Transistor
- Pacemaker
- Oral contraceptive
- Video Cassette Recorder
- Laser
- GPS (1958)
- Internet
And maybe the truth is that we’ve addressed all the pressing things that made our lives miserable. Perhaps our quality of life needs have been met and now we’re focused on ‘actualisation’ a-la Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Or, perhaps, people like Andrew McAfee are right and computers and other digital technologies will do for mental power what the steam engine did for muscle power.