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| Replica of the first transistor |
Because there have been no fundamental technology breakthrough – something new – in more than a half-century, that’s why.
All the millions of words and billions of dollars lavished on what marketing types insist is “breakthrough technology” makes clear our fascination with the new, the small, the cool.
But “breakthrough?” Those nifty communicators that William Shatner and George Takei wore on their Star Trek uniforms now cost about 20 bucks at Fry’s and are called Bluetooth devices. Smart phones and other handhelds are just shrunken computers. The GPS device that keeps you from getting lost on the way to the corner grocery is a consumer version of something the military has used for decades.
All of today’s gee-whiz gear, regardless how sophisticated or how it’s used, is nothing more than an evolutionary step in the development of technologies created before push-button phones became common and consumers had to decide whether watching TV in color was worth the extra money.
While the benefits of tech innovation makes our lives better is clear. But the fact remains that there hasn’t been a basic, fundamental technology breakthrough since about 1947 when the first point contact transistor (read that semiconductor) was created. Once transistors replaced vacuum tubes, momentum accelerated in the development of computers. And that was that.
Let’s argue about it.
Yes, there is the Internet, which I believe created the most fundamental shift in human communication in history. But what is it other than a vast collaboration among computers? The first Internet connection was created in 1969 between the Stanford Research Institute and UCLA so scientists could more easily work together on U.S. Defense Department projects. It came into public use in 1992. Even today, the information that surges through the Internet still travels over old-fashioned copper telephone cables. Nothing new there.
The Web allows vast populations to easily access the power of the Internet and, therefore, drives its impact; fully 79 percent of Americans go online, according to Pew Internet, a project of the Pew Research Center. But under the hood, the Web consists of nothing more than a virtually limitless library of documents accessed using Hypertext, a computer language.
Hypertext is an offshoot of Memex, which was first described in a 1945 Atlantic Monthly article, according to the World Wide Web Consortium founded by Web pioneer Tim Berners Lee. In fact, the institute says legendary inventor Doug Engelbart created the computer mouse in the 1960s to help him work in his "oNLine Systems," which performed hypertext browisng, edited email and other duties.
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| From IBM |
What about solar energy, that “clean tech” that we’re all so fascinated with today? Russell Ohr patented the first silicon solar cell in 1946. Enough about that.
The closest anyone has come to a basic tech breakthrough since the research of Ohr and others right after World War II is nanotechnology. That’s the ability to manipulate individual atoms to create – well, to create. Exciting, certainly. New, nope. The concept was first discussed publicly in an after-dinner talk on Dec. 29, 1959 by the renowned physicist Richard Feynman. Scientists have been moving and positioning individual atoms for more than a decade. By now, millions of people have seen the iconic photo of the IBM logo spelled out in single Xenon atoms.
The simple fact is, the whole tech world hasn’t had a really bright idea since before many of the people running it were born.
And that is why I don’t get all worked up when techies start lobbing adjectives about their companies and products. I think it’s also a good reason why VCs are scared witless about having too much money and too few legitimate companies on which to dump it.
