techinov.pdf

Fundamental Factors Underlying

Recent Technological Innovation

Don Lancaster

Synergetics, Box 809, Thatcher, AZ 85552

http://www.tinaja.com don@tinaja.com

(928) 428-4073

W hat are the fundamental underlying "secret" forces that are driving recent

technological developments? How can you apply these fundamental factors to

your own product designs? Or at the very least, allow you to become enough

aware that you can avoid getting done in by them?

Here’s my choices of the biggies. Some are subtle and some obvious…

Factor #1 — Decoupling

Many of the stunning hardware developments of the past few decades can be

directly traced to decoupling , or simply separating inputs from outputs .

Really wonderful things happened to electric typewriters when the keyboard

output was disconnected from the printer input. For you could now store and

intercept keystrokes and do all sorts of wonderful things with them. Not the least

of which were fixing errors, sharing information, keeping copies, and saving

previous work.

On copiers, decoupling the scanning function from the imaging function has

eliminated the outrageous weight and sizes and unreliability of huge precision

optics. Especially if size changing zoom or other features were needed. But copiers

themselves have largely been obsoleted by stand alone scanners and printers. The

ultimate in decoupling is thus to break the problem down into two separate

systems. And allow extensive manipulation and modification between the two.

On monitors, expensive and unreliable front panel controls are now replaced by a

decoupled rotary wheel . Same for washing machines and other appliances. On

prepress, you no longer needed separate paths for text and graphics. Because the

decoupled and captured intermediates were simply data files.

On oscilloscopes and test equipment, going to menu driven buttons eliminated

the need for costly and bandwidth limiting switching in tight front panel spaces.

Decoupling by going digital replaced expensive CRT’s with cheap monitors.

Just about everything electronic benefited from the decoupling of power supplies

no longer doing their conversion at 60 Hertz . By going to DC first and then to a

— 68.1 —

much higher frequency, switch mode power supplies dramatically slashed the size

and weight of most capacitors, inductors, and transformers. And got much

cheaper, much cleaner, and more efficient as well.

Music, of course, used to have these silly acoustical physics rules that everybody

had to comply with that determined the size, volume, tonality, and the skill

complexity needed. Usually combined with ludicrous ergonometrics. But by newly

decoupling the tone generation from any physical embodiment , electronic

music ( and synthesizers in particular ) removed most all of the physical barriers.

Stunning improvements have happened in decoupling content from the physical

media forms that it used to demand. Obvious examples are email over actual

letters, music and video downloads, and replacement of trade journals and

manufacturer’s reps with instant online sales. More on disembodiment shortly.

Google , of course, has totally decoupled information gathering from the

traditional librarian gatekeepers and the now ludicrous demand that the

information provider, the recipient, and the information itself all had to be in the

same place during totally restricted times.

In telephony, we have decoupled the ability to talk remotely from the need for

one fixed monopoly to provide wire-only service to your home or business.

Obvious alternatives are cellphones, VOIP, cable, wireless, satellite, and great

heaping bunches more yet to evolve.

The lowly computer mouse has long decoupled itself from the reliability problems

of direct mechanical rollers and cords. Through optic sensing and wireless comm.

The next generation of vehicles will almost certainly be drive by wire . And again

decoupling the driver inputs from what those inputs are supposed to accomplish.

…with this impact…

One of the more profound consequences of decoupling is that many institutions

and infrastructures are now not only utterly useless , but are clearly a drag on

society. Music producers and record companies are rather obvious examples of

entities that clearly no longer serve any useful purpose whatsoever.

Or, what exactly is it that the first class mail part of the post office does, and why

is it still of any use or need whatsoever? Or is this like the British Sailing Ship naval

bureaucracy whose size and costs peaked many decades after the last sailing ship

was removed from active service?

Similar examples obviously involve book publishers from whom the majority of

their services are no longer either needed or relevant. Same goes for magazines

and, especially, trade journal publishers.

Nobody felt sorry when the litho camera folks or the printed circuit tape and dots

people went out of business.

— 68.2 —

Dozens of other examples come to mind. Which additional decoupling examples

can you think of? What still can be separated?

Factor #2 — Accurate Replication

With accurate replication, the end user gains the ability to make copies of items

or IP that are as good or better than those from traditional sources.

People once went to a commercial printer because they could not produce their

own copies that were as good or as cheap by themselves. Authors once used book

publishers because typesetting and artwork creation were unbearably difficult,

time consuming, and second rate using previously available tools.

Musicians once used music companies because today’s cheap but superb quality

mixing and editing was once impossibly expensive. And that distribution required

a physical media presence.

"Perfect" copies of video or music by either the creator or the end user are now

trivial and clearly eliminate the surface noise, hiss, distortion, flutter, wow, and

most bandwidth limitations of previous music delivery systems. Generation loss is

now completely gone. Digital now trumps Analog. Nearly always.

One obvious consequence of cheap and fast perfect copies is that anyone who is

overcharging for their product will cause new copies to be made instead by the

end user . Thus, the price gougers all loudly scream "piracy". Rather than realizing

that additional copies would likely not be paid for anyway and probably would

increase the product awareness and demand.

Traditional copyright and IP protection has thus largely become totally useless.

Factor #3 — Elimination of the gatekeepers

Also known as disintermediation .

A gatekeeper was a profit stealing and time wasting obstructionist between you

and something you needed or wanted. The internet has not only eliminated

gatekeepers, but also the gate itself and the fence the gate was at one time

supposed to go into.

Obvious examples are used car dealers, manufacturer’s representatives, book

publishers, music companies, scholarly journal houses, and, ( sadly ) librarians.

Anyone reasonably swift can now use the online Blue Book to find exact vehicle

values. And can buy or sell the cars themselves via Craig’s List , eBay , or any of a

number of online Auto Trader publications. To the point of which it is clearly

fundamentally insane to buy off a used car lot.

I consider manufacturer’s representatives to have been the vilest of the vile.

Several evolutionary steps below, say, lawyers. These epsilon minuses made it

— 68.3 —

virtually impossible to find out how much something actually cost. Or to get

hassle free technical info in a timely manner. Replaced, of course, by 24/7 online

stores and totally free instant technical information.

At one time book publishers offered extensive services not available elsewhere.

Such as art departments, type setting, competent editing, or economics of scale.

With the possible exception of promotion and marketing, there is nothing a

modern book publisher does that you cannot do faster, cheaper, and better by

yourself. Or by cash-and-carry targeted web alternatives .

And their competitors .

Similarly, the only purpose I can see for record companies is to steal royalties off

their talent. They accomplish absolutely nothing useful otherwise and clearly no

longer serve any worthwhile societal purpose. Anybody that wants to can now

pick up their own superb quality recording studio for pocket change.

Publishers of scientific journals are a good example of gatekeepers in the process

of self destruction . An individual today has the choice of paying a journal many

hundreds of dollars to publish their paper after a long delay and then making the

issues so expensive that their own school library cannot afford a copy. Or of

instantly and freely web publishing to a worldwide audience. To survive, the

journal publishers must realize that copies of every paper more than three years

out of date should be available free and without ANY restrictions .

Librarians were classic gatekeepers. Many of whom were control freaks. But the

notions that the gatekeeper, the infoseeker, and the infosource had to be in the

same place at the same time, or that the info somehow had to be "returned", or

that access was restricted to anything less than 24/7 are clearly ludicrous today.

As to online access, Burger King ( and similar WiFi locations ) offer better service

and more info access convenience than do most libraries.

With far fewer food and drink restrictions.

Factor #4 — Computing power insanely beyond awesome

Back in the olden days, adding one vacuum tube to a system involved a major

upheaval in size, cost, and power consumption. But these days, adding another

half million transistors to say, an electric can opener, is no big deal at all. Chances

are they are already sitting underused in the microprocessor of choice.

Engineering and other math analysis at one time had to be super efficient because

of the value of the user’s time. But throwing another ten million calculations at

something is now often trivial .

Thus, many brute force solution methods now become eminently practical. And

newly driven by the utterly unbelieveable and unprecedented drop in the cost of

memory and the availability of raw computing power.

— 68.4 —

Two examples of brute force math techniques that have only recently become

feasible include our Magic Sinewaves and our Fun With Fields tutorials.

Factor #5 — Nonlinearizing the tyranny of time

"The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on." ain’t necessarily so any

more. At one time, type was painstakingly set one line at a time. Typewriters

worked with one character at a time. Movies were real time edited by cutting and

splicing with scissors and glue above the cutting room floor. Video similarly was

A-B roll edited only in real time.

In book publishing, it was an absolute no-no for an author to try and tell the

publisher how the text and words were to be arranged. And woe be to the author

who dared try to — gasp — change even one word after typesetting. For it was

outrageously expensive and time consuming to do so.

These days, of course, we routinely typeset first and edit last . With zero cost

penalties and great heaping bunches of benefits. Because we can now easily do

nonlinear editing .

The original breakthrough in this ability happened when word processors became

screen oriented rather than line oriented. You could now edit and change

anything you could see. Such techniques as cut-and-paste and spell checking and

advance outlining became routine.

And a whole new level of capabilities got added when the layout programs

became document oriented rather than screen oriented.

Missed a paragraph? No problem. Just let it ripple on through the whole story.

Regardless of how many pages are impacted. Reposition a figure so its text is

relevant? No biggie. Trivial, even.

The similar breakthrough in video and movies came about with the Video Toaster

and related software. That let you store your entire movie or show in an instantly

accessible form. You could now easily combine old and new material in any order

regardless of its time sequence. And, of course, CGI and sound synchronization

manipulated it in previously undreamt of ways.

Thus shattering the tyranny of time.

Factor #6 — Teeny Nano New Nu

Things are getting smaller.

Many electronic components are now so small you can’t even see them and don’t

dare sneeze. Which is bad for individual experimenters and students, but

otherwise has greatly reduced the size, weight, and cost of new electronics.

While dramatically expanding their capabilities.

— 68.5 —

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