Did REAL innovation die in 1960?

[Usonian]

I am enjoying the first season of Mad Men on DVD - a dramatic television series that revolves around a Madison Avenue advertising firm in 1960. The writing and character development are great, but a truely extrodinary thing for this TV series is the attention to the smallest 1960 details. The cars, hair, clothes, architecture, music and cultural attitudes are just right, as you might expect, but even when someone turns off a (black-and-white) TV the picture doesn't just go off, it contracts to a little white dot that lingers on the screen for several seconds. I remember TVs doing that.

The show is set half-a-century ago, and many of life's ordinary details have changed, but then I began to appreciate how familiar every thing was. A modern, 2008 American can easily relate to the environment and issues of America in 1960. The only truely significant "new thing" since 1960 is the personal computer and the internet; but of course, there were computers in 1960 so even the PC is not entirely new. One might add the downfall of the Soviet Union as a second significant "new thing." PCs and Soviet collapse completes the list of truely "new things" since 1960.

I imagined my father at age of 52 (in 1975) watching a TV show set 48 years earlier (in 1927). Could he have related to the broad outline of things (except in his earliest memories)? In 1927 there was essentially no commercial passenger air service, no jets, no space flight or satellites, no interstate highways (autobahn), no television, no electronic computers (however big or small), no trans-oceanic telephone service, no atomic power or bombs, essentially no regulation of stock markets or banks, no antibiotics, no vaccines (except for smallpox), no synthetic fibers (except for rayon) and almost all farms were running on horse power in 1927. A very long list of truely "new things" came into common existance between 1927 and 1960.

Today, the pace of life seems to be ever-increasing. But what has really changed in the last 50 years? We are running faster, but are we getting anywhere? Or are we really just running in place? Is real innovation dead?

EDIT:
Reading my own post and thinking...

The Civil Rights movement for African Americans, "Women's Liberation," and the Gay Rights movement are truely new things since 1960 (although Brown vs, Board of Education pre-dates 1960). There have been real cultural changes. Am I missing something??

 

[Deke]

I love that series Mad Man (I thought it's original title was Made Men, though)?

I too enjoy the 1960s charm to it. Everyone seemed more educated, social drinking didn't turn into wild freak parties at a club, everyone was professional and mature (for the most part).

I do think that we're trying for innovation, but getting nowhere today. And I think the reason why is just so many young people today are just to apathetic to care or do anything, because the media and television, and other major influences are occupying their brain. And it's sad.

 

[Urwumpe]

While computers are not new, the concept of a Internet is a new idea. Especially the everyday Worldwide-Web stuff, which is different to all network systems which existed before 1990.

Electrical thrusters did not exist in 1960, not even in science fiction... Magnet-Resonance Tomography was not invented yet, using lasers for data storage was still not even considered in 1960 and mobile phones had been a part of science fiction - especially: Nobody could have predicted in 1960, that we can now do the office work of the middle of the 1980s with a mobile device which fits into a small handbag. Digital cameras had been thought about, but flash memory units, which really changed the business did not even exist on the paper. And nobody would have expected the implications of the MP3 format.

I think, all whining "We are not as innovative as in the past" is just the same kind of mentality as "The coal was blacker in the past". We did not get less innovative - we had become more innovative. The technological cycles change much faster as before.

 

[Usonian]

While computers are not new, the concept of a Internet is a new idea. Especially the everyday Worldwide-Web stuff, which is different to all network systems which existed before 1990.

Electrical thrusters did not exist in 1960, not even in science fiction... Magnet-Resonance Tomography was not invented yet, using lasers for data storage was still not even considered in 1960 and mobile phones had been a part of science fiction - especially: Nobody could have predicted in 1960, that we can now do the office work of the middle of the 1980s with a mobile device which fits into a small handbag. Digital cameras had been thought about, but flash memory units, which really changed the business did not even exist on the paper. And nobody would have expected the implications of the MP3 format.

I think, all whining "We are not as innovative as in the past" is just the same kind of mentality as "The coal was blacker in the past". We did not get less innovative - we had become more innovative. The technological cycles change much faster as before.

I don't think I was whining so much as observing an interesting fact: The second quarter of the 20th century was packed with genuinely new innovations that altered whole societies. Since then, not so much. I do not think that people are less creative, or more lazy, or have gone stupid. But there have been fairly few "earth shaking" first-ever innovations since mid-20th century. There has been a great deal of polishing, tweaking and improving, but very little that is truely new.

Widespread commercial TV changed the behavoir of whole societies. The subsequent changes from black and white to color, broadcast to cable, analog to digital were all creative leaps, but had nothing like the impact of the first TVs in the 40s and 50s. Same for telepones: Their initial invention and wide distribution was Earth shaking. The change from land lines to wireless was a creative leap, but the every-day impact is little more than enhanced convenience. The light-weight, easy-to-use personal cameras (Brownies and Kodak "Detective Cameras" of the late 19th century) might be considered earth shaking; the Polaroids, Instamatics, and digitals that followed brought increases in speed and quaility, but haven't fundementally changed news reporting or the "family album" full of "snap shots."

I still maintain that the volume of genuine "first" or true innovations decreased in the second half of the 20th century. This may only represent a statistical quirk. Earth shaking innovations are, pretty much by definition, unexpected events, randomly distributed. Random distributions always form "clumps" or "runs" that human brains insist on turning into meaningful patterns. Still, I find it interesting.

 

[Hielor]

Electrical thrusters did not exist in 1960, not even in science fiction...

From http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/fall2005/05.html :

Development of electric propulsion systems has already spanned more than four decades. After the invention of the gridded ion engine in 1960, many inside and outside the space community believed that the benefits of this technology would soon be realized.

 

[Urwumpe]

Hielor: Strange, my knowledge started with the Resistojet, which appeared somewhere around the Apollo Applications Project.

 

[movieman]

While computers are not new, the concept of a Internet is a new idea.

According to Wikipeda's article on ARPANET (the predecessor to the Internet):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

"The earliest ideas of a computer network intended to allow general communication between users of various computers were formulated by J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in August 1962, in a series of memos discussing his "Intergalactic Computer Network" concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today."

I tend to agree: the pace of technological change from 1900 to 1969 seems insane compared to the rate since. That's pretty much going from the first primitive automobiles on Earth to driving an automobile on the Moon, and from the Wright Flyer to the SR-71.

Edit: and I remember something similar to the World Wide Web in Clarke's 'Fountains of Paradise', which was published in the late 70s. I'm not sure of any earlier expressions of a similar idea.

 

[Andy44]

The idea of an internet is not new, but the implementation of it as we know it didn't come until the 1990s. When I went to high school there was no such thing, a "home computer" was somethig for hobbyists to play games on, and we used typewriters to write our term papers. Records were kept on paper, with carbon paper used to make sure everyone who needed a copy got one.

2-4 years later, when I was in college, it was a completely different story. Since then we have come to use the net for everything, and would be lost without it.

Couple the internet with cell phone tech and you have almost instant access to vast amounts of data almost all the time, everywhere. All this tech has enabled whole movements of culture to come into existence, and the consequences of this have yet to be fully revealed.

So while 1960 saw the early stages of much of our modern technology, it's the integration of this technology that has advanced since.

And don't sell the hard tech side short, either, miniaturization has come along way since 1960 and is the reason why all this stuff is here today. Besides, when you think about it, a basic space rocket is not so high tech, rockets have been around for centuries. And a nuclear reactor or bomb is nothing more than a steel or concrete vessel with some exotic metals inside, they aren't particularly complicated. It's nuclear physics and rocket science and metalurgy that enabled people to build reactors and fly to space in 1960. The quality and brains of engineers had been strong since the invention of the steam engine. Go back and look at the technical writings of say, the shop tests run by the Pennsylvania Railroad back around 1900, and be amazed at the level of professionalism.

ETA: Mad Men is a great show. I can't wait to see the next episode tonight.

 

[movieman]

The idea of an internet is not new, but the implementation of it as we know it didn't come until the 1990s.

ARPANET was operational a few weeks after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. TCP/IP took another decade, but the basis of the Internet (email, FTP, etc) existed in the early 70s.

 

[pattersoncr]

The automatic transmission for automobiles, the most complex purely mechanical device ever devised by man (which I say with tongue only slightly in cheek) came into common use during the '60s didn't it?

 

[synonys]

I propose this thread be retitled "Old man romanticizes the past," it's seems like the older generations invariably look at the newer generation as fallen because of their inability to relate. But all objective measures show that society is progressing faster.

 

[adamb193]

The automatic transmission for automobiles, the most complex purely mechanical device ever devised by man (which I say with tongue only slightly in cheek) came into common use during the '60s didn't it?

5-speed is more fun though.

 

[Linguofreak]

I am enjoying the first season of Mad Men on DVD - a dramatic television series that revolves around a Madison Avenue advertising firm in 1960. The writing and character development are great, but a truely extrodinary thing for this TV series is the attention to the smallest 1960 details. The cars, hair, clothes, architecture, music and cultural attitudes are just right, as you might expect, but even when someone turns off a (black-and-white) TV the picture doesn't just go off, it contracts to a little white dot that lingers on the screen for several seconds. I remember TVs doing that.

The show is set half-a-century ago, and many of life's ordinary details have changed, but then I began to appreciate how familiar every thing was. A modern, 2008 American can easily relate to the environment and issues of America in 1960. The only truely significant "new thing" since 1960 is the personal computer and the internet; but of course, there were computers in 1960 so even the PC is not entirely new. One might add the downfall of the Soviet Union as a second significant "new thing." PCs and Soviet collapse completes the list of truely "new things" since 1960.

I think perhaps the reason you think there is so little difference is that you lived through the intervening years. The PC and the internet are differences, but they are *huge* differences. The same with the fall of the USSR. And modern computing technology isn't just one "new thing," it's a set of new things that is rolling on and on. With computing power doubling according to Moore's law, computers can do things now that they couldn't when I was ten, and they could do things then that they couldn't when I was born in 1986. You have the introduction of personal computers. You have the introduction of GUI's. You have the introduction of the internet. You have the introduction of broadband internet, which allowed for places like Youtube to really take off. (I remember once or twice trying to watch videos over dialup. Tedium). And with the end of the Cold War, I'd say that I, at 21, probably can't really relate to the world before 1989.

I imagined my father at age of 52 (in 1975) watching a TV show set 48 years earlier (in 1927). Could he have related to the broad outline of things (except in his earliest memories)? In 1927 there was essentially no commercial passenger air service, no jets, no space flight or satellites, no interstate highways (autobahn), no television, no electronic computers (however big or small), no trans-oceanic telephone service, no atomic power or bombs, essentially no regulation of stock markets or banks, no antibiotics, no vaccines (except for smallpox), no synthetic fibers (except for rayon) and almost all farms were running on horse power in 1927. A very long list of truely "new things" came into common existance between 1927 and 1960.

The laser was invented in 1960. The LED in 1962. The MRI in 1971. The first forays into genetic engineering were made in 1973. Nanotech is starting to take off (in the form of nanoengineered materials, not sci-fi nanobots). So is 3D printing.


I think your father likely could have related. All these new innovations were things added over the course of his life that he had time to get used to. Just like with you. I'll be able to relate to the world of 1990 fairly well when I'm 52, but the world of 1986 isn't quite as imaginable to me.

Today, the pace of life seems to be ever-increasing. But what has really changed in the last 50 years? We are running faster, but are we getting anywhere? Or are we really just running in place? Is real innovation dead?

Well, I don't think real innovation is dead. But is innovation itself just a means of running faster without getting anywhere? Technology allows us to do both more good and more harm. If people are just the same as ever, all the technology in the world just makes life different, not better.

EDIT:
Reading my own post and thinking...

The Civil Rights movement for African Americans, "Women's Liberation," and the Gay Rights movement are truely new things since 1960 (although Brown vs, Board of Education pre-dates 1960). There have been real cultural changes. Am I missing something??

The Civil Rights movement is a big one. A couple semesters ago my US history prof mentioned that he remembers the days of segregated drinking fountains. Having been born in 1986 in the North, I can hardly imagine it.

Though racism isn't dead yet, even in the North. One of my cousins has a friend who adopted a black child, whereupon his family disowned him. My aunt and uncle then "adopted" the father and mother as their son and daughter and the kid as their grandson. Also, when my mom got her US citizenship this 4th of July, it was hosted by a small town south of Fort Worth. At first, as a Christian, I was pleased by the religiousity of the townsfolk. But I quickly became displeased upon seeing various flags of the Confederacy alongside the US flag, and even moreso when they saluted the US flag with a pair of cannons manned by guys in Confederate uniform. At that point their relgiousity was more of an insult, as it associated me with something that I do not wish at all to be associated with. But aside from the Confederate flags and uniforms, there was not a single outward sign of racism. And perhaps the townsfolk weren't really actively and hatefully racist. But the fact that they would conduct such a display shows that racism was more forced out of the South than truly given up and repented of, and that many of the attitudes that surrounded it still remain, even if it is no longer openly there.

 

[JamesG]

Um... As someone who has spent most of my time in the Southern US (but do not consider myself a "Southerner") let me try and make a correction here. While I admit there is some entanglement of racism and prejudice in Southern culture associated with the confederate flag, the people who run around in old uniforms and flags are doing it out of pride for ancestral heritage, not out of hate. Keep in mind that in the South the American Civil War was fought for independence and State's rights, not over slavery.
Old flags and outfits are not what you have to be afraid of, its the evil thoughts and actions of people, and you get as much if not more of that in "Yankees" who would never even think of wearing a gray uniform or waving a confederate flag.

Back on topic-

Human nature being what it is... WW2 was a major motivator for most of the technologies that were created or matured in the early to mid twentieth century.

I think we could all deal with a slower rate of technological advancement to avoid a similar ordeal again.

The "computer revolution" beginning in the 1970s and into today have been relatively quiet and undramatic but still profound. Its been an ancillary, or catalyst to other activities of business and society, making them more efficient, faster, or even possible. For example: MRI and CT-scans compared to X-rays as medical diagnostic tools. Or the fact that you could ask someone in another country a technical question, but you would have to wait weeks for the post to deliver the correspondence or you could look up information, but it required a visit to a library, perhaps one across the country.

 

[Urwumpe]

"The earliest ideas of a computer network intended to allow general communication between users of various computers were formulated by J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in August 1962, in a series of memos discussing his "Intergalactic Computer Network" concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today."

That statement is pretty ignorant, as it strange enough, took the software side alone until 1990, until a protocol (HTTP) and a document description language (HTML) was available, which allowed connecting computers not only physically, but also logically. DNS (Domain Name System) did not exist until the middle of the 1980s - before that, you needed to know the address if the computer. Also, the topology of the Internet is different to both ARPANET and IGN. The internet today uses TCP/IP, a protocol developed mostly from 1973 to 1990 which allows connecting multiple networks together - today, the ARPANET is just a very tiny part of the Internet, it was only a part of the internet already at it's start.

These ideas contained almost everything, that the Internet is today, is missing many points - in fact, the original reference said: In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today.

That is a huge difference.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0366.html?printable=1

In fact, it already addressed many problems of the internet development, if you read this memo properly, but was still very different to the modern internet.

The invention of the world wide web idea based on HTTP and HTML, was the big social revolution. It was even different to the X.25 networks already around at that time and the beginning of the hacking culture. It really made Internet available to all and allowed the access of data worldwide.

Remember: Jule Verne already predicted the moon landing in his fiction - but he did not know what we know today, about how to make it happen.

 

[Usonian]

I am surprised that an idle observation inspired by a TV show generated so many responses. I suppose a provacative title for the thread helps

Most of the responses talk about the impact of computers and the internet, as though that refutes my observation that there were many society-changing innovations in the middle of the 20th century, and fewer of those innovations since 1960.

My initial post clearly lists PCs and the internet as a society-changing innovation taking place since 1960, along with the Soviet collapes and three main civil rights movements. (Which one might lump together as a single innovation, the Human Rights Movement, because those various efforts were interwoven.)

Let's try a side-by-side list of true society-changing innovations -- the kind of innovations that change the way most people think, feel, behave and live. Listed very roughly in chronological order (ignore the dots - just there to trick the Forum into making the lists):

Innovations ..................... Innovations
1930 to 1960 ................... 1960 to 2008
Financial regulation ............. Civil rights (Blacks & Women)
Passenger air service .......... Internet
Autobahn .......................... Personal Computer
Antibiotics ......................... Soviet collapse
Jet propulsion ..................... Civil rights (Sexual orientation)
Atomic bomb
Mechanized farming
Television
Trans-ocean phone
Main-frame computers
Space flight

Besides being longer, the 1927 to 1960 list is much broader than 1960 to 2008. And the first list spans about 30 years, the second nearly 50. This is not to say that PCs don't have a huge impact in how we live, but really no more so than antibiotics or regulation of financial markets.

As for comments about my age, and older generations denigrating younger, two points:
1. It has always been so, and my Baby Boom generation took its knocks from "The Greatest Generation." So, get over it!
2. The 1927 to 1960 list pre-dates my generation (I was only 4 in 1960). If this observation about innovation is an indictment against later generations (and that is not my point) then my generation should be convicted as the original Slackers!

Given the list of their Earth-shaking innovations, no wonder the "Greats" are (very soon to be 'were') so full of themselves.

 

[Urwumpe]

Mechanized Farming was actually already before WW1 - WW1 artillery trucks and early tank design were based on it.
Trans-Ocean telegraph line existed already before 1900, telephone was only the logical extension.
Passenger Air service was created between WW1 and 1930.

You can also add In vitro fertilization and success organ transplantation to past 1960.

Also you lack the integrated circuit, which was created in the early 1960s.

Satellite communication and satellite TV also happened only past 1960 and was a major development.

Also, I don't see the soviet collapse as an important innovation. It was not the end of communism yet, or Stalinism.

More important do I consider the mobile revolution - we are capable of doing more office work while traveling.

And of course: The hybrid car, while originally already build around 1910, finally became economic.

Of course... 1930-1960 than also had nuclear power in general and the diesel-electric submarine.

 

[ar81]

You forgot:

Innovations
1960 to 2008
Orbiter!!!!

 

[Usonian]

You forgot:

Innovations
1960 to 2008
Orbiter!!!!

I surrender! This trumps everything else!

 

[cjp]

Well, all the great inventions already exist for eons, as ideas. Just look at what Leonardo da Vinci "invented": airplanes, helicopters, a simple mechanical calculator, etc.. And in fact many ideas already existed in a primitive form in the ancient Greek culture.

The problem is turning ideas into reality, as a non-realized idea usually doesn't have such a big impact on society. And this is where the scientific and technological work is all about. Science and technology accelerate each-other and themselves. It's like building a tower, where you need to reach a certain level before you can build the next level. And sometimes somebody develops the "last, essential, missing piece" that suddenly opens the road to a wide range of new technology.

When you look at modern electronics, you can really see it has a huge influence on society. Tracing back the technology, I'd say it really started with the development of semiconductor electronics, and then the integrated circuit. I'd place both of them in the '60s, and they are examples of those "essential pieces". But they aren't more important than all the rest that's built on top of it: PC's, the internet, mobile communication devices, embedded electronics, manufacturing robotics etc..

When looking back at the basic ideas behind these applications, there are two fundamental ones:

1. the idea of an algorithm-executing machine
2. the idea of instant long-distance communication

I'd say the first idea is a revolutionary step forward from the mechanical calculator, probably done by somebody like Charles Babbage in the 19th century. Later, people found out how this idea could be useful, and this process still hasn't finished: in fact, it only really started to take off in the '80s.

The second idea was first realized in the telegraph, also in the 19th century. Maybe it was inspired by new electrical technology, but OTOH maybe it already existed for centuries, but simply couldn't be realized without the technology. The rest (telephone, radio, television, internet, WWW) all builds upon the same idea.