Discussion of Huebner article

alike hoping that the unimportant ones average out with the important ones But this increases the bias

in the data set Unimportant innovations populate preferentially recent times (how many unimportant

inventions can be accounted for in the middle ages)

Huebner may argue that ignoring recent unimportant innovations would enhance his bsignalQ of

declining innovations per population And this brings us to the second difficulty I have with this article

namely linking the number of innovations to the number of world population For decades now world

population increases dramatically but this increase comes from the third world and that is not where most

of the innovations are being born

There is no evidence that the number of innovations correlates to the number of world population On

the contrary it can be seen that Menschrsquos bunching of innovations does not correlate with any bunching

in population number nor does the discovery of the stable elements Scientific and technological

breakthroughs generally abound in societies of high income and elevated standard of living In such

societies the populations not only do not grow along exponential patterns but often shrink

This is perhaps what Huebnerrsquos result is telling us That the number of innovation-producing

individuals is declining as percentage of the world population In this case it becomes a question of time

Developing countries will eventually reach high standards of living with high income They should then

become producers of innovations They would probably also decrease by then their reproduction rates

I hope Huebnerrsquos paper stimulates some specialist in demographics to pick up the subject and carry it

to more meaningful and probably less alarming conclusions

References

[1] J Brockman The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years Simon amp Schuster New York 2000

[2] G Mensch Stalemate in Technology Innovations Overcome the Depression Ballinger Cambridge MA 1979

[3] T Modis PredictionsmdashSocietyrsquos Telltale Signature Reveals the Past and Forecasts the Future Simon amp Schuster

New York 1992

T Modis Predictionsmdash10 Years Later Growth Dynamics Geneva Switzerland 2002

Theodore Modis is the founder of Growth Dynamics an organization specializing in strategic forecasting and management

consulting httpwwwgrowth-dynamicscom

Theodore Modis

Via Selva 8 6900 Massagno

Switzerland

E-mail address tmodiscompuservecom

Comments by John Smart

Jonathan Huebner an independent scholar proposes to show that the rate of human innovation has

been steadily declining since the industrial revolution and is headed toward an beconomic limitQ of very

doi101016jtechfore200505003

Discussion of Huebner Article988

low apparent innovation that will be reached circa 2038 He makes his argument using two different

methods US patent data and bimportant innovationQ data subjectively assessed by one account

Though I believe Huebnerrsquos paper contains some analytical and methodological shortcomings I find it a

helpful early effort at understanding the interplay between technological innovation and human

psychology and suggestive of future developments in innovation studies

Letrsquos deal first with his patent data which I believe are less valid and then move on to the other

method of his argument which is potentially more interesting Huebner provides US patent data which

show that when normalized to total US population there was a patenting peak in 1914 a significant

drop from 1914ndash1985 to 50 of the 1914 value and a recent rise between 1985 and 1999 back to 75

of the 1914 value He suggests this distribution looks bmostQ like a bell curve that the 1985ndash1999 spike

is only a temporary anomaly and that the per capita binnovation rateQ of the US has been declining

since 1914 Looking for more recent data I went to the same general sources ([1] US PTO data for

patents but using different official US PTO tables at the site and [2] US Census data for population)

and found that patents today per capita are back up to 95 of the 1914 peak (see [3] for my

calculations) I do not know why Huebnerrsquos patents graph didnrsquot have data more recent than an average

from 1990ndash1999 as its most recent point From my perspective if 2003 data were included they would

have refuted his argument that US patents per capita fit a bell curve and are now in a declining trend

And when we take a longer view as Ray Kurzweil has noted issued utility patents increase 14 fold from

1870 to 2003 while US population increased only 7 fold over the same period

Huebner proposes that patents can be considered a bbasic unit of technologyQ but I find them to be

mostly a measure of the kind of technology innovation that humans consider defensible in particular

socioeconomic and legal contexts which is a crude abstraction of what technology is Our judgments of

importance are as much a measure of social custom as they are of assessed originality and value The

US doesnrsquot allow lots of basic process patents for example while Japan does which makes for

different patent climates in these two countries The demographics of patenting in the US have also

changed dramatically as well In 1901 four out of five US patents were issued to individuals but in

1999 more than four out of five were issued to corporations Today patenting frequency may be more a

function of their perceived litigation value to US corporations which varies by industry and judicial

context rather than of perceived business utility to individual inventors as may have occurred in the age

of greater individual invention in the 19th and early 20th centuries Recently for example we have seen

a corporate-driven patent frenzy in the US that may be attributable more to shortcomings in intellectual

property law than to any genuine surge in innovation In summary patents seem to be a poor and

problematic metric of accelerating technological innovation and this is valuable to realize

For his second set of data Huebner plots subjective bimportant innovationQ data from the survey work

of Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans [4] The History of Science and Technology 2004 involving

7198 subjectively bsignificant innovationsQ they note from the end of the bDark AgesQ in 1453 AD to

the present time When normalized to total world population these fit on a modified Gaussian (bell-

shaped) curve with an innovation peak around 1873 early in the industrial revolution and a roughly

66 drop (from 16 to 7) in bsignificantQ eventsyear1000000000 people

We know therersquos something odd about a measure of innovation that doesnrsquot show a dramatic spike for

all the advances that occurred for example between 1940 and 1945 during the feverishly innovative era

of World War II Recall the great strides made in computing aviation warfare organizational methods

large scale engineering and manufacturing projects new political structures and so many other areas

during this time yet Huebnerrsquos curve drawn from the data of Bunch and Hellemans [4] shows a

Discussion of Huebner Article 989

downtrend in global innovation per capita during this period So we have a problem in definition or

methodology here We already know Bunch and Hellemans are not independently counting the ability to

make and deliver more of something at an affordable cost (eg innovation diffusion) which always

involves additional and separate innovations beyond those culminating in the first prototype In other

words they may be reporting some subset of innovation (the perception of mass utility) rather than

innovation in general Are they also biasing against innovations that emerge during an era where 55

million human beings die as a consequence of their use

With regard to Huebnerrsquos treatment of the Bunch and Helleman data normalizing an innovation rate

to total world population also has its problems We might expect the global rate of perceived innovation

to be overwhelmed at least temporarily by an exploding third world population But Huebner argues

that world GDP growth university and student growth and possibly education expenditure growth have

all outstripped general population growth over the time period studied So if he had normalized to more

education-specific measures for example the innovation decline he reports would have been even

worse In other words the worldrsquos economic and educationalndashtechnologic development infrastructure are

already outstripping human population growth yet the apparent pattern still persists This makes his

argument particularly interesting If we assume for the sake of argument that Bunch and Hellemans

perceptions have some replicability whatever it is they are classifying what then might Huebner be

striving to clarify

As one potential explanation we must consider the possibility that human-initiated innovation like

energy consumption and population growth is a process that naturally saturates with rising global

income levels and technological intelligence Shell Internationalrsquos 2001 report [5] Energy Needs

Choices and Possibilities Scenarios to 2050 summarizes IMF and British Petroleum data which note

that in every economy where per capita GDP goes above $15000year (eg the US Europe Japan

Australia) growth in energy use per capita after rapidly increasing at lower income levels begins to

slow dramatically and then effectively stops This saturation may be due to several factors the

increasingly service intensive information intensive and bvirtualQ nature of developed economies the

sharply fixed basic needs (transportation housing etc) of human beings the increasing sustainability

politics of affluent nations and perhaps most importantly the incredibly rapidly advancing energy

efficiencies of all our replicating machines (unlike the replicating bodies of their human users) At a

GDP per capita of $25000year energy growth per capita becomes so slow that it is effectively

saturated Europeans like to say that Americans are much less interested in energy conservation than they

are but the Shell report (see the graph on page 7 of this report) clearly shows that the US has saturated

in our energy consumption as well The only difference is that our culture saturates at 350 GJcapita

while Europeans saturate at 150 This 2 difference seems almost trivial by comparison to the

exponentiating capacities of our technological infrastructure

Population follows a similar saturation with global economic and technological development It is

now well known that total population sizes after immigration is factored out are on the decline in every

first world country irrespective of culture Furthermore the second derivative of world population

growth went negative for the planet in the 1970rsquos (this was the inflection point in the S-curve for global

population) and even for India and Africa in the 1990rsquos Several independent estimates now project our

total world population to hit a maximum circa 2050 followed by an accelerating decline thereafter a

time when even emerging nations will exhibit the btechnological contraceptiveQ effect we now see in the

first world where non-immigrant birth rates (13 15 17 etc for every two adults) are always

consistently below replacement level There always seems to come a point in every nationrsquos evolutionary

development where the human interest in reproduction begins to conflict with our rapidly improving

social economic and technological choices for personal and child advancement

Furthermore considering the rapid pace of globalization today it seems plausible that the world as a

whole will reach the lower echelons of the first worldrsquos current level of technological development

within this century Emerging nations increasingly employ bleapfrogging technologiesQ in information

processing communication energy transportation agriculture health etc which allow them to make

GDP and technology advances using a fraction of the time and resources required by their first world

predecessors Who would have anticipated for example that Chile would already have 428 mobile

phones per 1000 people today while the US has 488 per 1000 [6]

Such trends make it seem obvious to me though it might not be so to others that as technological

progress increasingly satisfies current human needs individuals become less concerned with

technological development and turn more toward personal growth unique experiences and other

activities which while equally creative on an individual level are less obvious examples of innovation in

a technological sense The sociologist Ronald Inglehart [7] (The Silent Revolution 1977 Culture Shift in

Advanced Industrial Society 1989 Modernization and Postmodernization 1997) has extensively

documented this predictable value shift in industrializing countries As I interpret Inglehartrsquos work in

addition to more tolerant ideologies and other predictable developments the more industrialization we

experience the more we become ready to take a long-deserved break from generations of toiling

including much of the traditional work of innovation and the more we become willing to let our

machines take over the task of supplying our very finite human needs

The longstanding progressive improvement in and individualization of leisure in developed societies

has been long identified by such forecasters as Herman Kahn [8] (with Anthony Wiener The Year 2000

1967) and recently Virginia Postrel [9] in The Substance of Style 2003 Fortunately new surveys like

the BLS America Time-Use Survey will carefully track trends in the way we spend our leisure time a

poorly studied subject to date both nationally and globally The 2003 ATUS [10] found that on an

baverage dayQ persons in the US age 15 and over slept 86 h spent 51 h doing leisure and sports

activities worked for 37 h spent 18 h doing household activities and divided the remaining

48 h among a variety of other activities including eating and drinking attending school and shopping I

would expect that even the recent disruptions of globalization would be unlikely to significantly affect

these numbers and such disruptions always disproportionately affect the developing world

One measure of total environmental innovation both human and machine-initiated may be the

number of choices available to the richest members of society and the time and dollar value they place

on those choices One proxy for this may be the leisure our richest societies experience collectively or

perhaps the total number of hours in a day divided by the average hours worked by self assessment By

this measure we are living in an age of tremendous environmental innovation But as the structure of my

proposed metric would argue increasingly less of this can be human-initiated if we only bworkQ 37 h a

day averaged across all our adult citizens (retirees included)

On one hand we have more and smarter people on our planet living longer than ever before so we

might expect more total human innovation than ever before At the same time it also seems plausible

that human-generated innovation per capita may be trending down in recent generations as technology-

generated innovation rapidly increases In other words while it is reasonable to expect more innovation

going forward from those who wish to innovate and more total environmental innovation per capita

there may actually have been less human-initiated innovation per capita in recent generations if we were

to carefully measure all the work being done by our increasingly clever and subtle machines If it is also

true that many classes of technological innovation are even harder to see than human innovation this

may be the main driver of the downturn Huebner is charting

In the long run I would expect this to be a moot point if humans are also becoming increasingly

intimately integrated with our machines as several technology scholars (eg Ray Kurzweil myself)

propose At some point technology seems very likely to become an indistinguishable extension of our

humanity But it is possible that wersquoll see less human-initiated innovation per capita for a few more

generations to come and perhaps this is the trend Huebner is attempting to characterize At the same

time as our leisure individualism increases (not bsovereign individualismQ but a milder and more

consumerist form) the kind of innovation that humans generate may also be changing becoming

increasingly higher-order and abstract (eg more psychosocial health and stylistic innovation) and

perhaps also harder to perceive This adds to the measurement problem

Another critique of the Huebner article is that the innovations Bunch and Hellemans chose to include

in their introductory book were entirely subjective One could argue their particular data may have been

more a function of their research sources procedures assumptions and biases than anything else

Furthermore many systems scholars have put together alternative canonical innovation sets (Ray

Kurzweil uses a compilation from 14 different thinkers and reference works) and shown a clear trend

of acceleration not deceleration Nevertheless if several different subjective assessments all

suggest innovation is decreasing even if they differ substantially in the specifics of their analysis

therersquos something here worth better understanding Increasingly Huebnerrsquos argument has company

which I believe makes his perspective worthy at least of careful consideration

As one example Ted Modis [11] in Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change in the same

journal TFampSC V69 No 4 2002 using a different set of subjective data also made the claim that

important innovations have reached a past peak for human civilization and are presently declining

Modisrsquo innovation peak was 1990 which might make his proposed downturn less plausible as a system

change than as a recent fluctuation but again we should look beyond the analytic particulars to ask

whether therersquos something that is causing Modis to see saturation that deserves better understanding In

another example systems theorists Tessaleno Devezas and George Modelski [12] in TFampSC V70 No

9 2003 argue that world system change while still upsloped has been slowing for 1000 years with the

inflection point at roughly 1000 AD Their model proposes that human social development is in a

decelerating phase and is about b80 completeQ and thus that the major features of human social

organization are now in place Francis Fukuyama [13] makes a similar point with regard to liberal

democratic capitalism as a stable developmental attractor in The End of History and the Last Man 1993

and John Horgan [14] also touches on these ideas in his thought-provoking The End of Science Facing

the Limits of (Human) Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age 1997

Such arguments seem plausible when we consider the fixed capacities of human biological systems

relative to the accelerating technological systems rising all around us Irsquove written briefly about the

DvezasndashModelski paper in a previous issue [15] of the ASF newsletter Accelerating Times Both

systems theorist Kenneth Boulding and internet archivist Brewster Kahle have made a related point

They have independently suggested the era around the end of the 19th century with the invention of the

internal combustion engine and the commercialization of electricity the era of Edison and Tesla was a

far more innovative age than the one we live in today as well as a time with significantly greater social

impacts of accelerating technological change

I think there are important psychological perceptual and developmental dynamics involved in

these assessments of innovation saturation Like the irrepressible anomaly in the orbital precession of

the planet Mercury that aided the development of Einsteinrsquos new understanding of space and time

these anomalous models of change should they persist may help us develop a new paradigm for

understanding technological change In the process we may also learn how to build better inno-

vation metrics so we can observe and predict the real accelerating changes occurring all around us

It is my intuition supported by todayrsquos crude exponential technology capacity growth metrics such as

Moorersquos law (processing) Gilderrsquos law (bandwidth) Poorrsquos law (network node density) Cooperrsquos law

(wireless bandwidth) Kurzweilrsquos law ([16] price performance of computation over 120 years) and many

others that technological capacity and technological innovation have always accelerated since the birth

of human civilization and that their growth remains exponential or gently superexponential today

Furthermore there are a number of books such as Carl Saganrsquos [17] The Dragons of Eden 1977

Richard Corenrsquos [18] The Evolutionary Trajectory 1998 and an interdisciplinary book [19] by Laurent

Nottale (an astrophysicist) Jean Chaline (a paleontologist) and Pierre Grou (an economist) Trees of

Evolution 2000 that have shown a developmental pattern of continuous acceleration on cosmic as well

as biological cultural and technological scales Nevertheless we now have Huebner and companyrsquos

saturation perspective conflicting with these more numerous acceleration models I think we will learn

something in their reconciliation

As another potential explanation of the perspective of Huebner et al consider the observation that

modern examples of innovation occur increasingly bunder the hoodQ of the engine of change below our

threshold of easy perception Irsquove made this argument previously on my Acceleration Watch website [20]

with regard to the bDark AgesQ after the fall of the Roman Empire While many easily observable forms of

innovation slowed in those politically repressive times (city sizes shrank mega-projects fell into disrepair

etc) scholars as Anne-R-J Turgot [21] Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth 1766

noted the binevitableQ march of technological progress that occurred even during this period but on more

local and smaller scales appropriate to the shrinking social structures in theWest (not the East) at that time

So while human social innovation may follow political and generational cycles of advance and

regrouping technological innovation may be becoming both smoother and subtler in its exponential

growth the closer we get to the modern era Perhaps this is because since the industrial revolution

innovation is being done increasingly by our machines not by human brains I believe it is increasingly

going on below the perception of humans who are catalysts not controllers of our ever more autonomous

technological world system

Ask yourself how many innovations were required to make a gasolinendashelectric hybrid automobile

like the Toyota Prius for example This is just one of many systems that look the same babove the hoodQas their predecessors yet are radically more complex than previous versions How many of the Prius

innovations were a direct result of the computations done by the technological systems involved (CADndash

CAM programs infrastructures supply chains etc) and how many are instead attributable to the

computations of individual human minds How many computations today have become so incremental

and abstract that we no longer see them as innovations

To his credit Huebner speculates that the declining innovation he sees may be due to the blimits of the

human brainQ But I am not sure whether he would also agree that our brains are not only increasingly

unable to engage in truly different classes of innovation they seem to be increasingly unable to perceive

the technology driven innovation occurring all around us I believe that creates an opportunity for us to

develop substantially better models of our accelerating future

As yet another interesting possible explanation certain types of innovation saturation might now

appear to be occurring because our accelerating technological productivity is beginning to intersect with

an effectively fixed number of human needs Humans have a very finite set of physical needs and even

when considering psychological needs and desires our biocomputing systems operate on scales that are

multi-millionfold slower than those of our emerging technological successors For a good analogy I

suggest you think of the entire human species on earth like a large collection of plants slowly extending

ourselves over the planetrsquos surface and then think of our emerging computer infrastructures like human

beings able to learn think and move so fast (using electricity rather than chemical diffusion as their rate-

limiting computational process) that human cognitive systems are effectively rooted in space and time

like a plant by comparison How many physical needs does a plant have in comparison to those of a

human How rapidly can a human saturate a plantrsquos needs as long as it remains a plant

As a final proposed explanation of the articlersquos findings we may observe that as the world develops and

we all climb higher on Maslowrsquos hierarchy of relatively fixed needs those who already have sufficient

housing transportation etc are now pursuing innovations on the most abstract virtual and difficult-to-

quantify levels like social interaction status entertainment and self-esteem All this may be a direct result

of the leisure individualism discussed earlier Would Bunch and Hellemansrsquo innovation metric treat

psychological profiling internet dating websites like eHarmonycom [22] as an bimportantQ innovation fortheir list Or new network-enabled modes of innovation such as the open source software movement [23]

or the graphical and socioeconomic constructs now emerging in persistent virtual worlds like Second Life

[24] If such emergences arenrsquot counted we will have difficulty seeing the accelerating innovations

occurring in our environment going forward because they are increasingly higher-order virtual and

abstract

In short there are a number of opportunities for us to improve our innovation measures in coming years

to reflect possible saturations in human-initiated vs technology-initiated innovation in human awareness

of innovation and in human physical and psychological needs as well as the increasingly abstract higher-

order and incremental nature of innovation in todayrsquos ever more virtual and human-surpassing digital

environment

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Robert Adler Jef Allbright Patricia Bacon Iveta Brigis Troy Gardner Norman Gilmore

Alex Jacobson Ray Kurzweil Hal Linstone and Vernor Vinge for helpful feedback

References

[1] US Patent Statistics Chart Calendar Years 1963ndash2003 httpwwwusptogovwebofficesacidooeiptafus_stathtm

[2] US National Population Estimates httpwwwcensusgovpopestarchives1990spopclockesttxt and httpwww

censusgovpopeststatestablesNST-EST2004-08pdf

[3] Total US patents in 1995 were 113834 with 057 of US origin US population was 263 million giving 247 US patents

yearmillion population Total US patents in 2003 were 187017 with 053 of US origin US population was 291 million

giving 340 US patentsyearmillion population Huebnerrsquos data show 355 US patentsyearmillion population in 1914

[4] B Bunch A Hellemans The History of Science and Technology Houghton Mifflin Co New York 2004

[5] Energy Needs Choices and Possibilities Scenarios to 2050 Shell International 2001

[6] World changing ideas Technology Review (2005 (April)) 46

[7] R Inglehart The Silent Revolution Princeton University Press 1977

Culture Shift in Advance Industrial Society Princeton University Press 1989

Modernization and Postmodernization Princeton University Press 1997

[8] H Kahn A Wiener The Year 2000 Macmillan 1967

[9] V Postrel The Substance of Style HarperCollins 2003

[10] BLS America Time-Use Survey httpwwwblsgovnewsreleaseatusnr0htm 2003

[11] T Modis Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change Technological Forecasting and Social Change vol 69 No

4 Elsevier 2000

[12] T Dvezas G Modelski Technological Forecasting and Social Change vol 70 No 9 Elsevier 2003

[13] F Fukuyama The End of History and the Last Man Perennial 1993

[14] J Horgan The End of Science Broadway 1997

[15] J Smart Ed Accelerating Times 1182005 httpacceleratingorgtech_tidbits200518jan05htmlsocialsaturation

[16] R Kurzweil The Law of Accelerating Returns httpwwwkurzweilainetarticlesart0134htmlprintable=1 2001

[17] C Sagan The Dragons of Eden Ballantine 197786

[18] R Coren The Evolutionary Trajectory CRC Press 1998

[19] L Nottale J Chaline P Grou Trees of Evolution Hachette 2000

[20] AccelerationWatchcom

[21] A Turgot Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth Othila Press 17661999

[22] eHarmonycom

[23] Opensourceorg

[24] SecondLifecom

John Smart is developmental systems theorist who studies accelerating change computational autonomy evolutionary

development and the technological singularity hypothesis (the possibility of progressively human-surpassing technological

intelligence) He is president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (httpwwwacceleratingorg) a 501c3 pending nonprofit

engaged in research education and selective advocacy of communities and technologies of accelerating change His personal

website is Acceleration Watch (httpaccelerationwatchcom) Permalink for this article httpacceleratingorgarticles

huebnerinnovationhtml

John Smart

Acceleration Studies Foundation

2227 Amirante Drive

San Pedro CA 90732 USA

E-mail address johnsmartacceleratingorg

Response by Jonathan Huebner

First of all I would like to thank Theodore Modis and John Smart for taking the time to review

my paper on bA Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide InnovationQ and providing comments It

is difficult to find people who will really scrutinize a paper and make suggestions for

improvements and this service is quite valuable and much appreciated My response below details

some of the differences between our points of view in the interest of advancing the discussion on

this topic