Of late, a contentious issue is being debated vociferously. Human innovations, the very foundation of which our civilization rest upon, are dwindling in numbers. This is substantiated by the statistics of patent applications submitted in the past decade, which show dismal innovations.
Recalling the mid 19th century, it was indeed a progressive era of innovations and inventions. Combustion engines, telegram, telephone, radio, camera, vinyl records, video recorder, cathode ray tubes, synchrotron, particle accelerator, wireless transmitter and countless number of other devices were just some of the creative inventions that our forefathers had created. Advancement in medicine and surgery had also been helped by such life-saving inventions as vaccines and heart defibrillators. This diverse array of inventions that were so radically different from each other, with each one representing one of its kind in terms of creativity and breakthrough, signified an unprecedented milestone in the history of sciences and mankind. It reminds us of the distinctive characteristic that set us apart from other species, that is the ability to create and utilize tools with our bare hands.
When we have progressed so far and arrive at the dawn of 21st century, despite the rapid advancements we had gone through for the past centuries, it is rather disheartening to see how dismal and abject the human’s innovation has come to. One cardinal instance that exemplifies this would be the ‘One Click Purchase System’ patented by the biggest online book retailer, Amazon Inc. It entails no sophistication nor complexity. To put it simply, it is nothing state of the art, apart from the rather dubious notion of “You can buy anything by merely tapping your finger on the mouse instead of driving your car all the way to the bookstore” that Amazon is trying to tell its customers. Clicking the mouse is just a generic method of accomplishing something, and it’s certainly no genius in this ever-connected computing era. Impractical solutions are also being patented without control. Some good (or bad, depending on your personal viewpoint) examples are a swing that swings sideways (patented by a lawyer under his child’s name and a burglar capturing device that entails massive modification to a yard (that it becomes impractical, not to mention that it is also too conspicuous for the burglars).
Ironically, the incompetence in innovation is a result of competence in this dog-eat-dog commercialism macro-sphere. In order to stay ahead of the rest, companies must have a list of patents under their belt, just to give them an extra edge over the others. In a world where time is more precious than gold, companies have a predisposition to turn out both incomprehensible and impractical innovations, sometimes just to shun out their rivals. Conspicuously, they are taking advantage of ignorant consumers. They will be easily impressed by long list of abstruse features that makes no sense to them. This is evident in the ‘One Click Purchase System’ patent by Amazon Inc. aforementioned (so the others have to resort to two or three clicks Purchase System). If this trend continues on into the distant future, we will reach a point of zero innovation.
It is argued that the present world advances evolutionally and not revolutionarily, as the mid 19th century world did. Nevertheless, the statistics manifest such lack of innovation and are alarming enough. We must continuously produce practical innovations with out-of-the-box thinking as these were the very thing that fuels mankind’s progress.