Wherefore art thou innovation?

Recently I was thinking when the last really cool really new thing caught my attention and I began to realise it has been nearly a decade. Most of the features of the current internet were old news to me by 1992. Much of the software I use is the same, many of the OSs are the same just with larger footprints, nicer GUIs and more features. Ho Hum. The internet 'revolution' came along and while the number of people using the internet and websites increased the paradigm of using the net today is still much the same as in 1991 with my SE/30 and a SLIP connection.

So where is the innovation in computing these days or is computing doomed to be the like the combustion engine in an age with too much infrastructure and oil lobbies to consider innovation? I am not encouraged by the corporate world where new ideas can be a political minefield yet Jakob Nielson makes a point about open source innovation in The Register;

"On Linux desktops... Will Linux desktops innovate? No. I don't think of that as being the solution: because it's open source.

It doesn't lend itself to coming up with new paradigms. The one thing it's very good thing at is designing software for other hackers, for other nerds, really.

That's their skill and that's their strength - there's a thousand nerds to look at it. If something doesn't work it's going to be a debate on the mailing lists and it's going to be fixed.

But that's a bad method for complex decision management or business professionals or this next generation of home users, because that requires a very different project management approach, a clear vision.

They're great programmers and that's very nice, and it generates good stuff for that environment, but it's a little sandbox.

For example they're so proud once they've ported [sic] PowerPoint. But that doesn't give us a new way of doing presentations.

To do that you 've got to follow business people around all day and study them and ask them what they need.

Microsoft did that and finally got a feature I like out of that: where you get a preview of the next slide while you're giving a presentation. Everyone who's ever given a talk will tell you that: I have to print an extra copy of the presentation off - even with my 1Ghz computer I have no extra benefit, because I can only see what the audience can see.

But why did it take them years?"

I think it's interesting for him to say this as I think, in principle, that he's right. Software, both opensource and non-opensource, seems to be the same-old same-old these days. This is not to say that there aren't good things happening out there but when the internet and computing transformed from a research medium to a commercial smorgasboard of web applets and hype it seems like the focus, the fun and the excitement were replaced by greed and complacency of one form or another.

Whether or not he's just another gassy pompous windbag like so many others in this business today , the truth is that my browser is much the same as 7 years ago, my email application is nearly 15 years old and I surf the web far less than ever these days due to a lack of content and annoying presentation, opensource or not.

The Ford Model-T automobile evolved and we have nice cars like the Porsche 911 but the basic concept, design and engine remain largely the same. I am beginning to suspect the computer and applications are doomed to the same stagnation.

The bubble burst on the internet boom when stupid ideas lost billions of dollars and noone could actually say what they did in the last 5 years sitting at their desk doing but remember a profound sense of boredom and have moved on to a exciting new career in landscape architecture. Well, who really needs middle managers anyway, really.

Maybe the tanking tech economy will clean out the cruft, make people lean and hungry again, and spur some new ideas to change the way we think about the computer finally.