This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Ibrahim Ates
I generally write about technical and related topics, but today I would like to discuss a slightly different topic which is about innovation and its evolution from a different perspective. I was having some questions on my mind. In the next paragraphs, I want to express my thoughts about that.
Please be aware of it is not based on any scientific facts or hypotheses. But if you are curious about them please check the references’ links.
Almost every day we see new products, and technological tools, and constantly their transformations. Please think of changes and innovations in just the last 20 years. It is really amazing. Social media, mobile apps, messaging apps, and thousands of other apps.
Some products created other products by their own requirements. For instance, social media created a big-data approach for processing massive data. Requirement of thousands of services created Microservices architecture. 7/24 reachability is pioneering cloud technologies. Relational Databases became inefficient in some cases(of course it is still very important and useful) and it pushed the creation of NoSQL. For better, faster development old programming languages also evolved to meet the new requirements of recent. All of this is transforming at an incredible speed. But what’s the behind idea all of them?
Let’s look at its historical transformation of it.
Human in Cave
If the history of humankind was not based on improvement, then what would be our situation? I’m always wondering about the answer to this question. Most likely, we would still live in caves or we would spend most of our time hunting. We already had regular life and we just need to find the hunt for eating. Then something happened and that drove us to go forward and go out of our cave. What could be that? What was our motivation to find a better place, hunt, or whatever else? Is this a kind of innovation or not? Or if it is innovation, is this idea valid at the moment? Does the idea evolve during history?
I have a lot of questions in my mind. Today I’d like to discuss the evolution of the idea of innovation during history. For understanding the evolution of innovative ideas let’s look into changes in history.
Premature Innovation Idea: How to survive
In my opinion, it is quite clear that our ancestors did not carry innovative ideas to make the world a better planet. They just tried to find a better way to stay alive. The most sensible answer to this question is that it could be a lack of food or harsh living circumstances. But it also could be related to catastrophic events. Then, they started to discover new or better places for hunting and living. I think this is the first innovative idea even if they were not aware of it and it was based on survival. Probably, this lasted over centuries.
Early Innovation Idea: Understanding life's meaning
Ancient Greek Philosophers: The World Shapers
After centuries, the idea of innovation evolved. It was not just about staying alive anymore. It was about understanding life and its meaning and how we can build a better life for ourselves. This torch was burnt by Ancient Greek philosophers. The purpose of life, morality, and ethics were examined by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others.
Socrates declared that “the life which is unexamined is not worth living”.
Aristotle was concerned with the purpose of things and how we could lead a good life. He argued that when we recognize our positive characteristics, we should use them to pursue virtue and achieve our potential.
According to Aristotle, this would bring us happiness and constitute a “good” life.
Plato believed that this contrast between the Ideal Forms and our imperfect copies also applied to concepts such as Goodness and Justice.
We could easily say that they shaped the world and still influence our understanding of the world today. By the way, the first long discussion about the innovation itself was made by the Greek philosopher and historian Xenophon.
The idea of innovation itself continued to evolve from survival to understanding life’s meaning, and how to build a life on moral and ethical rules.
The first step to the Modern Innovation Idea: Renaissance
Beginning of Artistic, Scientific Inventions: carry ancient ideas to the beyond
“Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity …
its influence was felt in art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, science, technology, politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry…
Some view this as a “scientific revolution”, heralding the beginning of the modern age, others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day. Significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. Copernicus, in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), posited that the Earth moved around the Sun. De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, gave new confidence to the role of dissection, observation, and the mechanistic view of anatomy.” Wikipedia says.
One of the most famous ones is the great artist and scientist Leonardo Da Vinci and his great works.
The philosopher and artists of the Renaissance were influenced by Ancient Greek ancestors and they tried to carry ideas to the beyond.
It evolved from how to understand life’s meaning, to how to beautify our life with humanism, science, and art disciplines. Of course, understanding and questioning life did not finish.
Modern Innovation Idea: Industrial Revolution
Economy Era: Produce more
With the industrial revolution, The idea of innovation itself continued to evolve and it involves technological, socioeconomic, and cultural was based on producing better, faster, and more products(massive production).
The idea of innovation evolved from how to beautify our life to how to produce more, better and faster.
Post-modern Innovation Idea: Technological and Digital Revolution
Technology Era: Make life easier; consume more, live fast and long
After the 19s especially after WW2 or 1940s, technology had important progress. It started to evolve consuming more. Moreover, it made significant progress after Millenium.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we are facing new technologies, and innovations in the last 20 years every day. All of these changes are innovations. The evolution of the idea of innovation transformed to live fast and make life easy.
It evolved from how to produce more, better and faster, to how to make life easier with technological progress, and how to increase living standards with medical progress.
Conclusion
Although humans in the cave probably had no idea about innovation when they tried to find a better place or hunt, still their efforts are progress and innovation. Even if it was about survival and a bit of obligation.
Throughout the historical process, the changes and transformations of people’s living conditions and standards have also evolved this idea.
It started with survival and continued to understand life better and then it progressed to produce more and evolved to make life easier.
Now most of us are quite familiar with innovation and its idea thanks to its progress. I wanted to examine the evolution of this idea of innovation in the whole article, which lies behind this rate of evolution, which is now measured in minutes, from a historical perspective. Furthermore, I am wondering about the next evolution of this idea and what it would be about.
What do you think?
I would be glad for your comments.
Hope it is worth your time and effort.
Thanks for reading…
Stay tuned.
References:
- human evolution | History, Stages, Timeline, Tree, Chart, & Facts
- What drives innovation? Evidence from economic history
- 9 Greek Philosophers Who Shaped The World
- Renaissance - Wikipedia
- Industrial Revolution | Definition, History, Dates, Summary, & Facts
- Technological revolution - Wikipedia
The Evolution of Innovation: From Cave to Digital Era was originally published in Level Up Coding on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This content originally appeared on Level Up Coding - Medium and was authored by Ibrahim Ates
Ibrahim Ates | Sciencx (2022-10-04T15:48:29+00:00) The Evolution of Innovation: From Cave to Digital Era. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2022/10/04/the-evolution-of-innovation-from-cave-to-digital-era/
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