- Once Again, the Magnitude and Uneven Spread of the Invention Transition
- Reasons for the Invention Transition that Do Not Explicitly Depend on Profit-Seeking...
- Reasons that Do...
Reasons that Don't:
- Population (n)--two heads are better than one
- Education (fi)--standing on the shoulders of giants
- Societal openness (li)--how many people can you talk to before being "shown the instruments"
- Means of communication--language, writing, printing, etc....
- If these four are hobbled, the pace of invention will be slow
- Fortunately, no global technological regress (that we remember, at least)
- Only seven known--and disputed--known examples of "local" technological regress
- Iron Dark Age, Medieval Dark Age, Medieval Greenland Vikings, Mayan Heartland, Mississippi Mound-Builders, Easter Island, Flinders Island...
Reasons that Do:
- Modes of production--status reasons?
- R&D Systems
- Patent and copyright
- Universities and national labs
- Open-source visionaries
- Nikola Tesla
- Bill Joy
- Eric Schmitt
- RMS
- Linus Torvalds
- Optimal innovation
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