Molson Hart

1) Change always seems slower when in it, faster in retrospect. 2) I don't buy his premise - no more arable land wat? - how does he explain all the growing KPIs of innovation like startup counts? His points seem cherry-picked. (Above is based on the wiki summary so....)

2) I've heard the opposite. Company formation is down. I mean the basic idea is that if you think about all the innovations that went down between 1850 and 1970, it's crazy. 1970 to now is much more muted. We're still basically just commercializing Xerox Parc stuff.

Company formation is not a measure of innovation nor impact. Somewhat. What about all the random stuff that you don't even consider? Boosted boards, microwaves that are GOOD+cheap, electric lawnmowers, etc. All last 30 years.

Come on. Boosted boards? Those dumb remote control skateboards? Compare that to the steam engine, airplane, car, locomotives, supersonic jets, toilets, crazy amounts of medical innovation, television, internet, etc.

For the century it took to do those, we have a corresponding set of innovations since 2000. Web 2.0/3.0 Blockchain Cloud Javascript* (ok close to 2000!) .. and those are just in tech. They're everywhere beyond that.

Web 2.0 is not bad Jury is out on blockchain's value for the world Cloud is awesome Javascript seems pretty mediocre Mobile internet I think is the biggest one you didn't mention.

As we dig into these, I'd argue now that innovation has INCREASED versus the times you mention. Here's one: We're talking on a global platform where people send one to many text messages. Or we have another where a course on ANYTHING is available for free (Youtube).

I could go on and on. My premise is that we're living in a world of innovation -- but we have a psychological bias that we are in it so we don't realize what's happening. The proverbial "boiling versus scalded frog."