Comment by tkoski-hs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tkoski-hs | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

IMHO this is the point 4. the author is pointing out:

"Posing the question is a large part of the work. If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some."

Sorry @quadrangle, I would go towards an opposite opinion than yours :) I have never in my life been in such a time when inventing would be as easy as now: It's so easy to communicate through internet to find people and skills to fill the ones I'm missing. From crazy idea to proof of concept is pretty straight forward.

For example if you have invented something including electronics:

You have no knowledge of it? PCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board) knowledge -> buy some from freelance.net. Basic component drawing with pen and paper is OK to ask a quota for. And when you want to build the PCBs -> alibaba.

And proof of concepts can be built even with more simple parts, such as Arduino, piece of metal can, etc.

(Edited some typos and bad English.)

This is among the best replies I got.

I agree that there's tons of room and lots of things that enable such novel inventions today in certain spaces.

I was focusing on the bad hindsight that tries to assert that because we see inventions as obvious in hindsight, we should realize how non-obvious they were originally, in the same way that new inventions today are non-obvious.

I think tons of inventions are obvious, both then and now. The hard work to make a good rendition, spread the knowledge to others etc. is just different now than before. People have reinvented most inventions multiple times because the inventions are obvious enough. And still today, there's tons of obvious enough inventions — people imagine Apps that do things no app yet does. Bringing the invention to fruition and to market is harder.

But in the past, it was hard to learn that someone else had also invented the thing you're inventing. That's easier now, and easy enough to stop you from reinventing it in the first place (unless you're one of those self-centered startup people who delusionally believes that whatever your idea is must be novel and just skips doing the research to see what exists already).

That's not inventing. That's innovating.

It's very, very different.

Exactly. To illustrate your point:

The invention of "rope" is the invention of a manmade object that can create a strong and flexible connection between two objects.

Nylon rope is an innovation that progressed from grass rope. It should not be qualified as an "invention" in and of itself, as it is functionally the same as grass rope, it just does the job of rope better.

This distinction seems arbitrary. Couldn't I just say that rope itself wasn't an invention but simply a better kind of vine for climbing?

No, because that’s exactly what rope isn’t.

The crucial step is understanding that you can link objects with a bendable but strong connection.

Then you can start innovating applications, such as multiple people working together to move a single heavy object.

Eventually you end up with previously unimaginable applications like horse bridles and ship rigging.

The point of invention isn’t a new tool, it’s a completely new class of tools with an open-ended set of applications that aren’t immediately obvious.

I'd go further. Nylon as a material was invented and then the current rope tech was improved by it. Innovation stemmed from the fact that we now have a stronger rope and can use it for stuff that was not possible before.

(largely inspired by: http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/16/innoveracy-misunderstanding...)

If I recall correctly, the original impetus for nylon was replacing the natural isoprene rubber in tires, to remove the necessity of rubber plantations as a strategic military asset. This resulted in neoprene. Then DuPont decided to expand the project to explore uses for other novel polymers.

The inventor actually committed suicide, partly because he thought he was a one-hit wonder.

Neoprene was invented in 1930. Nylon 6-6 was invented in 1935. Carothers killed himself in 1937. Nylon was first used in toothbrush bristles in 1938, and rolled out to nylon stockings in 1939. Nylon production was then diverted into war materiel until 1945, which was when people started rioting over shortages of nylon stockings.

Who knows what might have happened to polymers technology if antidepressant medications had been commercially available and known to physicians in the two year window between 1935 and 1937? That seems like an odd dependency, but the inventor of a notable technology failed to invent other notable things because he had severe and suicidal depression. So it isn't just as simple as roads needing chariots and chariots needing roads, like the article mentions. Sometimes the prerequisites are strange and unpredictable--like the inventor had to visit a zoo featuring a particular animal species during their childhood, or they had to drive a car in a climate with cold winters.

The more things we have, and know about, and the more people move around and collaborate, the easier it is to satisfy those prerequisites.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com