FYI: Edison is Dead.
Here’s a little rant / tangent on my last post regarding the increasing complexity of humanity’s quest for ever-more-powerful understanding and usage of science and technology.
Thomas Edison DIED. In 1931 none the less. Unless anyone here knows a really good Necromancer (or perhaps Miracle Max?) he won’t be coming back. Rest his prolific inventing and patenting soul.
The point here being folks, the Age of Invention has long since passed. The Information Age began to replace it as technologies got more complex. You may ask yourself here: which came first, the proverbial chicken or the egg? Well, I would argue that the reason we don’t see prolific singular personalities who invent amazing new technologies with little outside support is simply because it can’t happen. As a species, we have broken the ice on such amazingly complex principles as Special Relativity, Quantum Physics, and even the basics of Nuclear Fusion. Edison would be shocked… Einstein is still rolling around in his grave over the fact that we may be drawing near to a grand unified theory.
Without the information technologies of expedient data processing, storage, and retrieval, coupled with efficient long-distance telecommunications, we would not be able to explore these more complex inventions. These enablers are going to see themselves emphasized even moreso in the future. Singularly powerful research labs at such monoliths as AT&T (Bell Labs), Oakridge, and MIT have all increasingly seen the need for further collaboration. I need to do some more research on this to pin down hard numbers, but I believe we are seeing an increasing trend (I wonder of what scale and rate of growth? Damn you primary research!!!!) which will eventually lead to entire countries needing to collaborate on solving scientific and technological problems.
RIP Edison, welcome to the future of invention.