The problem with big innovations

Charles Babbage clearly invented the CPU in 1837, under a different name, &quot;The Analytical Engine&quot;[1], he just didn&#x27;t finish it. The technology of the time was barely up to the task of making a difference engine, but his failure to manage his relationship with his machinist, meant that it didn&#x27;t happen. If he had a competent and aggressive project manager, it could have been done.<p>As for the simultaneous rise of agriculture everywhere, could it simply be that much of the productive farmland got flooded circa 12,000 BCE when the sea levels rose 100 feet? [2]<p><pre><code> [1] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Analytical_Engine [2] - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise</code></pre>

Reminds me of Sheldrake&#x27;s theory of morphic resonance. Unlikely (to my way of thinking), but is an amusing alternative explanation of why breakthroughs happen at the same time (it&#x27;s all those minds resonating through spooky action at a distance, not quite like the clocks on Huygen&#x27;s shelf but loosely analogous).

There are a great many exceptions; too many to list - think just of the inventions that have been lost for centuries or millenia. Forceps were the trade secret of one family of doctors for many generations. The Chinese invented stainless steel, the Romans succumbed to armies equipped with it in the east but never discovered how to make it. Mendel. Etc, etc. Some discoveries, once overlooked, can be overlooked for a very long time. But this may reinforce the author&#x27;s point - new fields don&#x27;t stay new, everyone&#x27;s attention moves on and the chance for easy discovery may be lost. We would be wise to invest heavily in trying to discover what we&#x27;ve overlooked.

This reminds me of how I was described self-driving cars at some point: yes, they are a great invention, but actually… they would not have been possible without many more other inventions happening earlier: GPS, digital maps, route mapping algorithms, computer vision, neural networks, etc.<p>We easily see the flashy invention that combines everything that came before but often fail to recognize those dependent inventions.

The original inventor(s) often doesn&#x27;t make much money, at least not proportional to the power of the idea. It&#x27;s usually somebody who comes along and implements it better who gets rich. Truly innovative things often take tinkering to become practical.<p>Examples: TV, jets, VCR, desktop computer (existed in 60&#x27;s), GUI, personal digital assistant (&quot;smart phone&quot;), neural nets.

It&#x27;s like the technology tree in the game Civilization, each discovery depends on others that came before it

It&#x27;s not a given that Leibniz invented calculus independently. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Leibniz–Newton_calculus_controversy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Leibniz–Newton_calculus_contro...</a>

This reads like a summary of „Where good ideas come from“, a book that I‘d recommend if you want to dig deeper and potentially improve your own having-good-ideas game.

I&#x27;ve talked with someone about this recently and that was their take as well. That eventually, certain discoveries are inevitable. Because everything builds on everything else.<p>If it wasn&#x27;t Newton&#x2F;Leibniz, it would have been someone else. Galileo may have been the first&#x2F;most prominent, but if it weren&#x27;t him, it would have been someone else.

The higgs boson was also theorized by 3 teams independently of each other around the same time

&gt; So what&#x27;s going on here? Magic? Graham Hancock thinks a lost civilization of advanced humans visited the peoples of different continents and shared techniques like agriculture with them. Now, I like science fiction, but I think there&#x27;s a better and simpler explanation for the agricultural multiple as well as all the other examples of simultaneous invention that have puzzled scholars over the decades.<p>Not to detract from the rest of the article but this is probably the least derisive, fair summary of GH’s work I have come across anywhere close to on a “mainstream” tech news site. Hell must be freezing over if people aren’t calling him a charlatan without actually bothering to read his work and listen to him, first hand, articulate his rationale.