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Modern-day inventors—even those in the league of Steve Jobs—will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past.
That's because big ideas are getting harder and harder to find, and innovations have become increasingly massive and costly endeavors, according to new research from economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As a result, tremendous continual increases in research and development will be needed to sustain even today's low rate of economic growth.Nicholas Bloom, a SIEPR senior fellow and co-author of the forthcoming paper, contends that so many game-changing inventions have appeared since World War II that it's become increasingly difficult to come up with the next big idea.
[...] Turning its focus to publicly traded companies, the study found a fraction of firms where research productivity—as measured by growth in sales, market capitalization, employment and revenue-per-worker productivity—grew decade-over-decade since 1980. But overall, more than 85 percent of the firms showed steady, rapid declines in productivity while their spending in R&D rose. The analysis found research productivity for firms fell, on average, about 10 percent per year, and it would take 15 times more researchers today than it did 30 years ago to produce the same rate of economic growth.
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-big-ideas-harder.html
[Source]: https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/productivity-ideas-hard-to-find
[Paper]: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?
Do you think that innovative ideas are hard to find ??
(Score: 1, Spam) by lcall on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:57PM (9 children)
I humbly suggest my OneModel project, for taking how mankind managed knowledge, to the next level. Due to competing things I haven't got as far as I'd like, but it is a useful product now, and code and concepts are there, as are discussion and (very low-volume) announcements lists. Latest at the moment is on the "wip" github branch where I'm working on the REST api to allow sharing of structured (or not) data between instances as desired.
Many details, FAQs, and download at http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org]
Some quick description:
To organize everything I want to, I wrote and use OneModel (AGPL), creating inside it a calendar with ticklers, lists of gift ideas or other ideas for activities, etc, all sorted by when I want to see them or how I can most easily find them in a hierarchy. I have created a sort of structure for things I might to remember about each person (journal of past interactions, contact info, etc etc) that I also use for my dealings with some businesses so I can revisit who said what when, if needed. And it can auto-provide the structure in for future persons or organizations I add to my contact list, but only when wanted. Same with anything else I want to track.
And it creates a sort of personal journal for me as a side-effect, by exporting everything created (or archived) for date ranges, so my odd random notes fit in also. It lets you optionally mark things as public or private, export things as .txt outlines or an .html mini-web site, and (hopefully) soon exchange info with others if desired. Self- or my-hosted.
Unfortunately, while there is a tutorial, OM still lacks a nice demo video and installation is still manual (some postgres config instructions then "java -jar...") until interest warrants a real installer. I use it for everything (no mobile support yet) and it is extremely efficient for a touch typist, and easy to learn as everything is on the screen in menus generated context-sensitively on the fly.
There was a longer discussion about it previously (https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/04/23/0149257), and I've since done the tutorial and been working on the "sharing" (data exchange) features, but the people had a hard time understanding the "demo" site (which I'll put back up if there is real interest), for reasons that escape me: to me, if you read the screen, it should tell you what you need, then some OM docs can inspire on what all can be done: basically making lists of lists with structural non-textual data added in, with an eye to becoming shareable and computable, as described on the web site. It is perhaps best for people who need to make hierarchical lists more efficiently, with tons of efficiency, flexibility, and future headroom.
Users, discussion, and participation would be great. The latest version is in github but I haven't posted the .jar yet (could).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:17AM (8 children)
Some thoughts:
* Please fix https for your site: http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org] It's pre-Snowden now and no-one can't say they didn't know.
* The site is slightly disorganized. Have a look at some Wikipedia pages on software descriptions for inspiration. A few descriptive screenshots right at the front would be useful to get a intuitive grip on what's about.
* Straightforward download and package requirements + compile and run instructions. Ie test-here-now.. fast.
* Maybe you can run it in a java window right in the browser for quick testing? archive.org manages MS-DOS games so this should be a piece of cake.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:39AM (7 children)
Thanks for the comments. My thoughts; I'd appreciate your pointing out what I am missing:
*To me the site is highly organized so I must not appreciate your point, or am deeply embedded in it. Elaboration welcome. I hoped the tabs at top would give top-level navigation from anywhere, and on every page I tried to say first what I thought the "average" likely customer/user would want to know first, 2nd, etc. Screenshots can be found if you click whichever link says "SCREEN SHOT" (yes it's caps) for about 3 clicks, but I thought it would have been ugly on the front page and distracting from the other high-level links that some people might be more interested in to start out.
*You're right no one can say they didn't know. Still, https would make more sense when there is data that needs securing or obscuring. Right now there is nothing confidential or controversial at the site. Is there still a use case, other than to encrypt the world to make life generally/vaguely harder for snoops?
*It really needs a simpler installation experience, but I was thinking more of a traditional installer, and then also a simple web/mobile-experience, but that will take more time.
*Good suggestion. The demo site is almost that: telnet to an address and you're in the app. I am happy to stand it back up (but tomorrow) if you are interested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:29AM (1 child)
Some ISPs are known to inject data into streams. Comcast, for example, has injected ads into HTML documents delivered through cleartext HTTP. HTTPS makes this sort of tampering trivial for your browser to detect. For this reason, several JavaScript features that are especially sensitive to tampering are available only on either HTTPS or localhost [chromium.org]. Now that Let's Encrypt offers free short-term certificates and SSLs.com offers cheap long-term ones, there's little reason not to run HTTPS for a public site.
But this has caused problems for operators of web servers on a private LAN [pineight.com], which often lack the fully-qualified domain name needed to qualify for a certificate.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:54PM
Good point; thanks. I'll raise the priority of this in my todos.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:24AM (4 children)
organization) When I look at the description I want some 2-3 screenshots to get a quick grip on what it feels like to operate. And a quick description in 2-3 sentences what it does and thus is worthwhile to spend time on. A further description should quickly describe the important features. How they are used can be hidden in under pages.
https) Important because the MITM shall know nothing. Not even that I'm interested in this product nor what aspect. There are just too many bad actors these days.
installation) My focus was a straight forward "install this like this in 5 minutes", usually as a linked document. Almost like a script but with words and command line examples for copy & paste. So one know OS requirements, packages to install, where to download binary or source, compiler option or makefile and which binary to run to get started. A dedicated installer will risk getting stuck and botch the whole installation. So it should not be the only option.
demo) My thinking was, enter URL, test it out like within 5 seconds. If it seems good, then it might be worth to bother with downloads and compiling.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:07PM (2 children)
Thanks again for the comments.
organization) Are you basically saying take some of the text from this page (from top, click: About or "More about", then the first link "Features, limitations, internals", or to go directly):
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854618107.html [onemodel.org]
...and put it on the front page, like around the 4th bullet, or just insert a link to "Features, limitations, internals" directly at the front page? I'll also consider putting the screen shots on the (end of the?) home page, maybe in a couple of days.
https) I'll raise the priority of https in my todos.
install) There is an install doc like that, if one clicks the Download link on the home page (or in the header of any page), then there is an Installation section with links for platforms, where each one is I think as you describe. Though substeps are sometimes a separate links so can be skipped easily if not applicable.
demo) The demo is almost as easy as you describe -- just enter a 1-line short telnet command, type "x" for the password and you're in the app. On Windows one might have to install telnet first. The demo instructions are at:
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854612561.html [onemodel.org]
In all cases of the web site, as in the OM UI itself especially, I assume one will read the screen.... I tried to put everything there, but maybe it was two clicks too many or something.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:00AM (1 child)
People will most likely not do telnet. A graphical user interface is what is desired.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:59PM
Yes. I have much to do.
I guessing there are a few though I think, even in its current state. Some people still use vi and emacs.
I've tried to structure the (AGPL) code so that it won't be very hard to add a GUI when time permits.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:09PM
It would be convenient for me but of course not required, to move the discussion to the OM discussion mailing list. Either way, the announcements list is low-volume if interested in future developments:
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854624132.html [onemodel.org]