Theaters are flooded with sequels to classic films, scientific journals are flooded with hot fields, government agencies are stale and inefficient... Creativity seems to be waning everywhere. How did the United States, once considered the most innovative country in the world, become what it is today?
What happened to American creativity?
I would like to ask a question first: where are all the original Hollywood blockbusters from ?
Over the last century, Hollywood has been sending us a whole new story. Several of the most successful films of 1998 were entirely original scripts: "Titanic," " Saves Private Ryan ," and " I'm Mad for Mary ." But the titles of movies in recent years are full of superheroes and sequel numbers : "Iron Man 2", " Jurassic Park 3", " Toy Story 4". Nine of the ten top-grossing films of 2019 were either sequels or live-action versions of Disney Animation . The only exception, "Joker", is also a prequel set in a superhero world.
"Toy Story 4", Woody and Buzz Lightyear are characters created in 1995.
People have mixed reviews about this trend, but I'm more interested in the change itself: Americans who used to go to theaters to see new characters and new stories have become "Return" to an already familiar story world.
A few years ago I felt that this trend from bold exploration to incrementalism only existed in the realm of pop culture. But last year I read a paper called Stagnation and Scientific Incentives. As you can see from the title, it has nothing to do with Hollywood. But it describes the exact same phenomenon: 's originality is waning in the scientific community. "New ideas are no longer as stimulating as they used to be," write two economists, Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen, authors of the
paper. Over the past few decades, citation counts have become a key metric for evaluating scientific research. This leads researchers to write "popular" papers . As a result, and most of them get together in those hot research directions, and are unwilling to take the risk of returning empty-handed to open up unexplored areas.
Illustration from paper describing how scientists are huddled in the field of "incremental research" rather than doing "exploration" work thing! Driven by the metric of "popularity," scientists and studios alike have become more willing to tinker with established fields rather than risk innovation. So, is not something that is missing from the brains of writers, directors, and scientists compared to a few decades ago, but rather a specter lingering in our institutions and culture that is stifling the development of innovation. The result of is that this conservative incrementalism prevails, whether in scientific journals, in movie theaters, or elsewhere.
In the scientific community , "new ideas are getting harder and harder to find". James Evans of at the University of Chicago found that Although the number of scientific work is rising, progress in the scientific field is slowing down . Perhaps because the knowledge in each field is vast and full of uncertainty, scientific researchers cringe in those "safe" research directions and keep citing the same few classic literatures.
In the corporate world, the entrepreneurship situation in the United States has become increasingly sluggish since 1970. This may be related to the recent tightening of immigration policies. Statistics show that immigrants are an important source of entrepreneurship in the United States, and they are more likely to build successful businesses than native Americans.giant corporation.
US startups are increasingly sluggish
The same is true at the institutional level . A century ago, new first-class universities in the United States sprung up, but has not had a new elite university in recent decades, has appeared . The previous US government would set up new departments to deal with new problems, such as the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Health) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after World War II. Today, the new crown epidemic has stretched the CDC, but does not see the government's intention to create a new agency to deal with the 21st century pandemic .
Scientists are less and less likely to come up with new ideas, less and less companies are entering the market with new ideas, and we are less and less likely to build institutions to implement new ideas... If you believe in the importance of innovation, this is Everything is definitely not a good sign.
One might question this: Aren't we living in a time of rapid change? Take a look at mRNA technology, gene editing technology, artificial intelligence , solar technology, new energy vehicles, cryptocurrency... and the smartphones in our hands at this moment, isn't it the most vivid technology in the rapid progress Prove it?
But in fact, these are just some small ripples in a long period of technological stagnation. Both productivity and average income growth rates have fallen significantly since the middle of the last century. The innovation's promotion of social progress has not been as good as it used to be.
If you were living in New York in 1875, there would be no lights in your house, no cars on the road, phones were just a few people's toys, and the tallest building in the city was a church. You never know what Coca-Cola, sneakers, basketball or aspirin are.
Coca-Cola in 1886
Then you sleep and suddenly travel to 25 years later, the city has become a jungle of reinforced concrete buildings, lit by electric lights invented by Edison , and cars powered by internal combustion engines are shuttled. People ride bicycles, wear rubber-soled sneakers and shorts, try fresh Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, and American burgers, look at photos from Kodak cameras, listen to music from a gramophone, and even Watch a moving movie.
is also in your sleep over the years, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University , Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago have been established. In the 1870s, students from several Ivy League schools invented the American football ; in 1891, a physical education teacher at a Massachusetts mission school invented basketball; four years later, at another mission school not far away, another physical education teacher invented it. volleyball.
It's completely incredible to think that all this happened in just 25 years. If the 25-year crossover happened now, it would be from 1996 to 2021. People in '96 may indeed marvel at the magic of smartphones and the Internet, but the actual physical world outside of the digital space appears largely unchanged. The impact of people ordering takeout from a phone to a mobile phone is still far less than the change from riding a horse to driving a car. So, if you value innovation in the physical world, the golden age of social development is long overdue.
why is this happening?
It's not new to say America's ability to innovate is getting worse. In 2020, venture capitalist Andreessen published a well-received article "It's Time to Build" ("It's Time to Build"), pointing directly to various fields in the United States, from education, medical care to real estate, All urgently need fresh blood for innovation and entrepreneurship. Dorset (Ross Douthat's book "The Decadent Society" (The Decadent Society) makes a similar point. They were probably both influenced by Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation and The Complacent ClassThe Complacent Class, written a few years ago. Cowen analyzed the causes of the slowdown in innovation in the United States, and pointedly pointed out that Americans are more willing to curl up in the comfort zone of the information cocoon than take risks or challenge themselves.
But what is all this for?
There is an argument that this is not our problem, just because we have squeezed all the soft persimmons. We have discovered all the mysteries of nature, invented all the simple and ingenious things, and written all the interesting stories, so it is very difficult to create anything new now.
is not without reason: today's science and technology system is far more complex than it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. But historically, the idea of "all that can be found is found" has been slapped in the face every time. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American physicist Albert Michelson claimed that "the vast majority of the fundamental laws have been established" in the physical sciences. But less than a decade later, Einstein proposed the theory of relativity, completely overturning our understanding of time, space, mass and energy.
Einstein founded his special theory of relativity in 1905
I don't think there is a single factor that fully explains today's creative trough. However, I propose three theories that, combined, may give a rough idea of the origin of this phenomenon.
The first is the influence of the so-called "marketplace of attention" 1. All savvy artists will learn sooner or later that audiences don't like brand new things. They like "familiar surprises," which are small additions and changes to what's already known.
In today's competitive movie market, big studios are increasingly budget-conscious, investing more and more in stories that have already found success. The same is true in the music industry, where records on the radio are more and more repetitive, Top 100 singles 2 more and more the same. Across the entertainment industry, people have fallen out of favor with weird new ideas.
The scientific community is more of a clear "attention market". scientists know exactly what gets published in journals and what projects get national fund funding. To get more citations, they have to write papers that please the peers who review their articles, and reviewers always like to see something in a field they are already familiar with. A study by showed that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (National Science Foundation) favored "low-level innovation" over highly novel papers. All of this encourages researchers to dive into those "fire" fields and avoid too radical research. What they have to do is to mix the familiar and unexpected doses just right.
Panopticon
The whole world is a panopticon like this 3, the reach of the attention market is extending to every corner of the world, Our every move is facing an invisible audience . Our work, opinions, achievements, and all our nuanced preferences are constantly being judged by public opinion online. This may be the culprit behind the growing convergence of cultures. Nowadays, people can easily see what is popular on the Internet, and it is easy to be driven to produce similar things. imitating others is inherent in human nature, but the Internet may have contributed to this characteristic, made it more difficult for people to express opinions that have not been recognized by the world, and reduced creativity in various fields.
Second is that our society is increasingly ruled by the elderly . Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history; the average age of congressmen has been at the highest level in history for ten years; House Speaker Pelosi and other important leaders in Congress are already in their old age. This makes politics filled with concerns of older Americans.
In business, academia and finance, power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the elderly. The average age of Nobel Prize winners, the average age of NIH funders, and the average age of S&P 500 CEOs are all on the rise. In America today, people over the age of 55 make up less than one-third of the population, yet own two-thirds of the nation's wealth. Such a high concentration of wealth is unprecedented.
Old Man Rule: President Biden 79, House Speaker Pelosi 81, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell 79, Senate Majority Leader Schumer 71
Giving young people a voice in tech and culture is Crucially, because young people are the most likely to generate new ideas and gain the most from innovation and the overthrow of rotten old systems.
Philosopher Thomas Kuhn points out that paradigm changes in science and technology are often driven by young people. They are able to come up with revolutionary innovations precisely because their thinking is not shackled by pre-existing theories. One such young man is Planck (Max Planck), he more bluntly said, "Science progresses one funeral at a time" (Science progresses one funeral at a time). For a new scientific theory to become mainstream, it often depends on the death of the older generation who opposed it and the occupation of academia by the new generation who accepted it. A 2016 paper even directly titled "Is science progressing "step by step"? , the conclusion of the paper supports Planck's assertion that when a well-respected scientist dies, an obscure young scientist will be more able to come up with new ideas and promote the progress of scientific research.
Admittedly, older people are more experienced in any field and their contributions should not be dismissed. , but innovation requires precisely the opposite of experience: a valuable "immature" , which is a weapon exclusively for young people. The rule of the elderly in all walks of life in the United States may be hindering the emergence of a new paradigm.
The third is the influence of the "veto system" (vetocracy). The decline in creativity we are seeing may not be a problem of creativity itself, but rather that modern institutions systematically limit and stifle innovation: new ideas can emerge, but they cannot take root.
"It's Time to Build" also mentioned that the United States cannot provide its citizens with sufficient housing and infrastructure, and cannot realize any large-scale projects . Erza Klein pointed out that "the political system makes Americans more inclined to veto rather than support an action ". He continued: "The system became what Fukuyama (Francis Fukuyama) called a 'veto system' (vetocracy) 4, a system in which too many entities have the power to veto proposals to build something, in the federation Governments, state and local governments, and even the private sector.”
Filibusters in the U.S. Congress are getting more frequent
The number of bills passed in Congress last year was lower than in any previous year. The was more than fifty between 1917 and 1970Only 49 times in 2009, the Senate passed a supermajority vote to end the filibuster 5, an average of less than once a year. But in the past ten years, on average, there will be as many as 80 times a year. The Senate used to be called "cooling saucer for democracy"6, which was used to restrain the populist trend of thought; now it has become a refrigerator of democracy, so that all proposals are lost because of failure. Warm and premature death . The
veto system is also hindering new construction, 's never-ending environmental and safety assessments prevent all projects from starting . Historian Marc Dunkelman said: "Since the 1970s, progressives have advocated 'big government' while constantly imposing new limits on government power, ultimately leaving a foundation for the next generation. The era of no progress in building facilities."
What do we need?
has a statement that may refute all of the above. Think of the internet and the software industry , where young people are the absolute protagonists, where big projects aren't stalled by red tape, and where innovation is valued. If you're working on artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or virtual reality, you're probably immersed in a sea of new ideas every day, and you don't feel like you're running out of innovation.
Of course it is undeniable that the communications revolution has indeed brought about a series of innovations in the past half century. But comparing with the depression of other industries , we will find that the innovation system of America has shifted from diversification to specialization of . The United States once efficiently produced patents in many different fields, and today patents are more concentrated in one area of software than ever before. We put all our talent and resources into the digital world, while the world of flesh and steel outside is fading. Over the past fifty years, climate change has gotten worse, nuclear power has all but disappeared, construction has become less efficient, and new drugs have become more expensive to develop.
What I want to appeal is a renewed emphasis on exploration and experimentation in the physical world. I want more startups and entrepreneurs, so I want more immigrants; I want more big infrastructure projects, big projects to "put satellites" in energy and transportation; I hope Reform the way scientific research is funded; I want someone to do some real reforms in the university to reverse the situation where tuition is getting more expensive and school is less and less useful; I want more awards to support those who target cancer, Alzheimer's disease and life extension research. I also hope that the federal government will join the experiment in building more agencies to discover and solve new problems in a world where new problems are constantly emerging, as the CDC did decades ago. Finally, I also hope that Hollywood will pick up the enthusiasm for making blockbusters again, I don't want to see numbers in movie titles anymore.
[term explanation]
1, attention market
The "marketplace of attention" comes from the title of a book written by communication professor James Webster. In it, he describes the media landscape in the digital age, highlighting in particular the near-infinite amount of content on the Internet and the limited attention span of content consumers, and analyzes the impact this has on audiences and media.
2, Top 100 Singles Chart
Billboard Hot 100 (Billboard Hot 100) is a single chart produced by the American music magazine "Billboard" and is considered to be the most authoritative single in the United States Leaderboard. Its ranking is based on record sales within the United States and the number of times the single is played on the radio.
3. Panopticon
Panopticon was first proposed by the British philosopher Bentham (Jeremy Bentham). This kind of prison consists of a circle of cells and a watch tower in the center. In the watch tower, the guards can monitor any cell at any time, and the prisoners have no way of knowing whether they are being watched. Thus, even if guards cannot monitor all prisoners at the same time, prisoners will consciously regulate their behavior. This concept was later used by the French philosopher Foucault (Michel Foucault) as a metaphor for modern disciplined society.
4, veto system
The concept of veto system (vetocracy) was first proposed by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama. It describes a situation in which the political system is dysfunctional. When the power of all political entities is so limited that no one entity can effectively make decisions or hold power, the whole system fails.
5, filibusters
Filibusters are a way for minority parties in parliament to block legislation. By constantly delaying the debate, they keep a bill from making it to the ballot and thus failing to pass. The U.S. Senate ruled that lengthy debates could be forced to end if a three-fifths majority voted in favor. Lengthy debates have become more frequent, indicating that bills are increasingly difficult to pass in Congress.
6, a saucer for cooling democracy
"cooling saucer for democracy" is a metaphor used by the founding father of the United States to describe the Senate. He believes that setting up the Senate to vote on the bill passed by the House can prevent the House from being driven by blind public opinion to pass some populist bills, like putting a cup of hot water on a saucer to dry.
