We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.

When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. If you don’t know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it’s easy to write off some modern energy innovations — like solar panels — because they haven’t hit the big time fast enough.

Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it’s a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years.

That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome.

Maggie Koerth-Baker, 32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow
June 1, 2012 New York Times (via curiositycounts)

95 Notes/ Hide

  1. wowtriggers reblogged this from curiositycounts
  2. a-ribbon-around-a-bomb reblogged this from curiositycounts
  3. koonyen reblogged this from curiositycounts
  4. takemebacktothe60s reblogged this from curiositycounts
  5. bibliofilariidae reblogged this from knightlife
  6. knightlife reblogged this from japonicachan
  7. japonicachan reblogged this from beanseller
  8. mohawkdandy reblogged this from curiositycounts
  9. passion-ade reblogged this from curiositycounts
  10. reelweel reblogged this from curiositycounts
  11. condalmo reblogged this from curiositycounts
  12. aninordinatelyonrnatelylongtitle reblogged this from curiositycounts
  13. rpower reblogged this from doctorscientist
  14. brainclout reblogged this from curiositycounts
  15. pourquoipourquoi reblogged this from curiositycounts
  16. excadrunk reblogged this from beanseller
  17. mostlykiery reblogged this from asmallteapot
  18. asmallteapot reblogged this from ungemmed
  19. brewngames reblogged this from curiositycounts
  20. huntobrien reblogged this from curiositycounts
  21. inappropriateapplause reblogged this from curiositycounts
  22. almightyclark reblogged this from curiositycounts
  23. shinou reblogged this from beanseller
  24. beanseller reblogged this from curiositycounts

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus