Mass Innovation and Disruptive Change 194
bart_scriv writes "The new head of MIT's Media lab argues that societal advances, previously the domain of a small group of individuals, will now become the product of millions of people due to changes in education and technology. He also offers advice to would be start-ups and entrepreneurs, including an argument against instrumentalism: 'The successful will look for fundamental disruptive change.'" There sure do seem to be a lot of creative people doing projects on the web today. What do you folks think of this?
That's funny (Score:4, Interesting)
That's funny... because it seems to me that in the last 20 years education has only gotten worse and worse.
The head of MIT's Media lab is himself specifically in that small group of individuals that is traditionally associated with societal change. And moreover he's buried far enough inside that group that I don't think he can see that America's educational infrastructure outside MIT is just plain crumbling to the point where the group of individuals equipped to change the world (or at least America) is if anything shrinking...
True (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the bottleneck right now is much more on the creativity and business side than it is on the hardware/software side. If you want to be a tech entrepreneur than learn business skills, you can always find someone to help you with hardware and software. Of course you need to understand what is possible, be able to tell the difference between a good and bad programmer, etc.
He can't be serious... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, what kind of disruptive innovation has ever come from the MIT Media Lab? Companies have put money in there for years and gotten nothing in return.
By the way, looking for disruptive vs. incremental technology changes is complete and utter nonsense. Entrepreneurs look for where they can make money. There's plenty of money to be made in all kinds of places in our economy, ranging from mom and pop restaurants all the way up to the latest and greatest gizmo. Game changing technology might be interesting or it might not. The road is littered with companies who changed the game and then were crushed by other players.
Money is made with smart market analysis that asks what do people want and how much are they willing to pay. Throw in a way to keep competitors out, and you have the beginnings (but not everything) of a good startup whether you make new fangled ball bearings or web pages. MIT Media Lab not required.
Gosh. Golly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the geeks built the Web, and were the first to know it was there and what it was capable of. As a result, the content of the early Web tended to be content of interest to geeks. That changed, happily, until the geeks developed streamlined means to manage and post new content, giving birth to 'blogs,' which are again dominated by geek topics. This too, is leveling.
Now, an awful lot of creative people like to call themselves "geeks" cuz it's (still) trendy, and an awful lot of geeks like to call themselves "creative" cuz they believe it will get them laid. But the hardcore shakers and shamen in each camp know enough not to dilute their efforts by dabbling; they just count on each other to work their respective money-attracting mojo.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Disruptive technology defined (Score:2, Interesting)
The other thing about change is that it is usually driven from the top or from the bottom. It usually doesn't come from the mushy middle. For example, the things kids wear have been influenced by what is being worn in the poor neighborhoods of the inner city.
So, is there change happening on the web. Of course. There are two ingredients necessary. You need an innovator and you need followers. The one is as necessary as the other. So, to those who think the majority of people on the web aren't creative, I say phooey. The creative process is happening and it is being driven by a huge number of people.
And yes, some organizations are going to have a hard time dealing with it.
You are delusional. (Score:2, Interesting)
If your goal is to have more freedom, you'll want to govern the internet properly yourself, otherwise the internet will be governed the way everything else is governed. There was once a time when television and radio was open like this too, there was a time when technology was like this in many industries, but when a technology is free and people abuse this freedom to "disrupt" and act as activists, the result is that the technology itself becomes the enemy.
I think this is a mistake. I don't think MIT has the ability to create laws which govern the internet, and honestly I don't think any of these will matter. All of this disruptive technology will be worthless, and it will simply piss people off.
View from the coal face... (Score:5, Interesting)
What is essential for a project to spread, other than being useful to the users, it the ability to replicate it on demand. With software, this is pretty easy. With hardware it is currently more difficult, but we're fixing that.
What astounds me is the inability of the commercial world and economists in particular to recognise that there are ways of creating disruptive technologies without being limited by the need to make a profit. I can see a two-teir world developing before my eyes, with the commercial sector deriding anything that is not profitable on the grounds that it'll never spread. Software is so far the only exception to this pseudo-rule, but within 2 years the same will start to apply to hardware as multi-material 3D printers become available for under $1,000.
Vik
Trends say otherwise (Score:3, Interesting)
The Industrial Revolution was characterized by economies of scale. Large steam engines, huge factories, massive capital expenditures, etc. But this is the Information Age, which doesn't need economies of scale. Small is better, and the individual is rising in importance. The two centuries that gave us collectivism, groupthink and the centralization, are giving way to a time of individualism and decentralization.
Software is an example. The old industrialist model of software development is to have rows and rows of programmers sitting in cubicles, each working on one small part of the whole. The model promotes outsourcing to the cheapest possible programmer with the required skillset. But that model is rapidly fading away, to be replaced with small teams and distributed collaboration. In contrast to the article's premise, innovation in software is routinely performed by individuals.
Re:Signal to Noise (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at gizmodo, crooks and liars, harvardgop, or hell even slashdot. All are extremely popular, all started out small.
The 90/10 rule argument I give you, but not the signal out weighing the noise.
But the 90/10 rules has to apply to everything.. including books, movie, etc. Which it did/does.
The thing is I think everybody is scared of is that the noise "will reach a critical mass", the thing is.. if you multiply magnitude of the noise the magnitude will also go up. The only we have seems so far is more information sharing. Also, there are situations where 2-90%-minds==1-10%-mind
So for me it boils down to, in a pre-internet world, how would you find out _anything_ about say, a new chinese product, that solves a hard issue for you simply? Like one did for me.
Medium (Score:2, Interesting)
Once the ideas were spread by word of mouth, very slowly. Methods for transferring ideas faster came out, but they were largely one-way. The result is that certain ideas were able to dominate others simply because they were the sorts of ideas that appealed to publishers or television producers.
Now everyone can pass their ideas back and forth very quickly. You put your idea about people being useless up, I respond by saying that people are raw intellectual material. Millions of these interactions a day allow us to transform culture at a lightning pace. A list of 80s fads and a list of the fads of the past two years would probably be about the same length.
It's hard to say for sure that this increase in thinking and the universality of this communication will have any concrete benefit, but in the past every step in this direction has been significant.
As for jobs, once the computers fully replace people for the purposes of work, we won't have to work anymore at all. This seems obvious, but many people miss it. The major issue is the painful transition when some people still have jobs and others have been replaced.
here's a link (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/business/worldb
There's a lot more out there on this "capacity" deal. And the figures for 'superfields are well known, there just aren't finding them anymore..
The bottom line is they can cut production, or production can get cut due to outside unplanned for forces, but as to adding to production, very few places can do that now,the article claims only saudi arabia has any spare capacity at all. If we are taking the whole supply chain into account, it's even more iffy, given recent geopolitical events and natural disaster events..