Is Technology Going Through An Existential Crisis?
Despite the vast sums of money and resources being pumped into research and development, there are growing concerns that the innovative spirit may be starting to wane as we enter 2023. After analysing 60 years of patents and research papers, Michael Park and Russell Funk of the University of Minnesota and Erin Leahey of the University of Arizona published a study discovering a downfall in ‘disruptive’ science and technological innovation.
The study uses a “CD index” tool to create a disruptiveness score. Then, based on the citation patterns five years after publication, it assesses the degree to which papers and patents push ideas toward new trajectories. The study published in Nature analysed 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents over 60 years and turns the belief that we live in an ever-increasing innovation era on its head.
With a list of tech stocks dropping and mass layoffs throughout 2022, several new technologies failed to meet expectations. For instance, despite predictions that the economic gains from AI would reach $15 trillion by 2030, the market for AI in 2021 was only $51.5 billion and is expected to reach $62 billion in 2022.
While previous research has shown a downturn in individual disciplines, this study is the first to “emphatically, convincingly document the disruptive decline across major science and technology fields,” lead author Michael Park told AFP. The phenomenon would make one wonder as the number of new research papers and patents produced each year is growing exponentially. However, the study found that most research papers and patents were more likely to consolidate or advance work done previously.
Reasons for the downturn
The central argument is that innovations are, on the one hand, becoming more difficult to find and, on the other, those that are emerging will have a different transformative impact on productivity than the past technologies. On the first point, some speculate that much of the “low-hanging fruit” of disruptive innovation has already occurred.
The “great inventions” of the past – ranging from the combustion engine to QR codes – allowed a dramatic shift to an industrialised economy and, after that, led to the development of service-based economies, making today’s innovations appear modest in comparison. Others suggest the growing burden of knowledge that scientists are required to command obliges them to spend more time training than pushing the boundaries of science. The study found researchers have increasingly narrowed down knowledge to develop new work and that this pattern holds across all major fields, including technology.
Author Michael Park said research is more likely to consolidate or build upon previous work, instead of breaking away from existing ideas and pushing the scientific field into new territory.
Room for optimism
The Nature study is similar to ‘The Great Stagnation’, a 15,000-word essay by economist Tyler Cowen that became the book of the year in 2011. In the essay, Cowen argues that we live through the consequences of a dramatic decrease in the rate of innovation. Optimists would argue that big science has already begun producing breakthroughs whose transformative potential across all industry sectors is on par with, or even superior to, previous innovation and productivity spurts.
The rapid adoption and success of technology released in the past two years from the rapid advancements in algorithmic breakthroughs or the sharply declining cost of space exploration.
It takes a tremendously long time – sometimes decades – for new inventions and innovations to combine with other complementary processes and organisational innovations. However, artificial intelligence, quantum computing or advances in new materials or bioinformatics – none inferior to past big inventions – will inevitably translate into higher productivity growth. This future is not yet here, but it is just around the corner.
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