Invent At Leisure

According to http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7616 the rate of innovation - real innovation, not mere pattern pasting - has been dropping steadily since 1873, which was its peak. It's presently down to the same rate as the 17th century - the renaissance, when most minds that could have been inventive were either shackled with dogmatic religion, or functionally illiterate, especially in the sciences. Projection suggests that by 2024 we'll be back to the rote culture and intellectual stagnation of the late Roman era.

Not quite coincidentally, 1873 was when the last generation unaffected by TheBottleneck hit their young adulthood, which is when most invention occurs. So there was a brief spike in the number of people who had leisure time at their disposal. The monied, sure, but there were also a very large number of literate people performing manual labour, which occupied their hands but left their minds unoccupied - at leisure.

Furthermore working hours for the manual labourers were quite short by modern standards. 3 and 4 day weeks were not uncommon, and there was little to do on weekends and evenings but engage in social and artistic activity. Most of it of a poor sort, naturally, but with far more minds having far more opportunity to engage in it.

The IndustrialRevolution swiftly caught up with these idle minds and put them to work. Good, steady, remunerative work, clerical paper shuffling and sales. White collar salaried employment of the intelligent mind. 60 and greater hour weeks punctuated by all too brief rest and recreation. People began to make something of themselves, to enjoy all the labour-saving inventions that had freed them from "mindless" activities and allowed them to enjoy their rest with mass-marketed light amusements.

Leisure time - mental leisure time - inevitably shrank. And with it, the rate of invention. If our culture is to survive TheBottleneck, we need to move back to part time work for the masses pronto so we can all InventAtLeisure.

The electric LightBulb, with its consequent disruption to natural circadian rhythms, was invented in 1879, almost concurrent with the down turn in the rate of innovation. One wonders if ThomasEdison (et al) would have possessed the innovation for such achievement if he had lived in the 24 hour daylight world of his own creation.

The light bulb was also invented at the exact time at which one less device was available to be invented...namely, the light bulb. Multiply that a few million times and you will realize why there is less innovation. There are fewer and fewer (practical) things to invent. Meanwhile, the obvious desirable inventions--robotic housemaids, flying cars, etc, still seem remote, despite their banality.

That's obviously not a very useful argument. People have been saying that since the dawn of time (see TheEndOfMooresLaw?). The number of possible inventions in the universe is truly infinite.