Review: A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation
In this provocative, dense, and somewhat academic piece Johnathan Huebner, an independent scholar, proposes to show that the rate of human innovation has been steadily declining since the industrial revolution, and is headed toward an 'economic limit' of very low apparent innovation that will be reached circa 2038. He makes his argument using two different methods: U.S. patent data and 'important innovation' data, subjectively assessed by one account.
