回答“为什么新思想会消亡”和“如何应对”这两个问题?

I suspect a lot of the lack of progress is due to the massive influx of capital and entrenched wealth in the industry. Sounds counterintuitive, but I think it's become conventional wisdom that any new idea gets one shot; if it doesn't make it at the first try, it can't come back. It gets bought by someone with entrenched interests, or just FAILs, and the energy is gone. A couple examples are tablet computers, and integrated office software. The Newton and several others had real potential, but ended up (through competitive attrition and bad judgment) squandering their birthrights, killing whole categories. (I was especially fond of Ashton Tate's Framework; but I'm still stuck with Word and Excel).

怎么办呢?首先想到的是Wm。莎士比亚的建议:“让我们杀了所有的律师。”但恐怕他们现在装备太精良了。实际上，我认为最好的选择是找到某种开源计划。它们似乎比其他选择更好地保持可访问性和增量改进。但是这个行业已经变得足够大了，所以某种有机的合作机制是必要的。

I also think that there's a dynamic that says that the entrenched interests (especially platforms) require a substantial amount of change - churn - to justify continuing revenue streams; and this absorbs a lot of creative energy that could have been spent in better ways. Look how much time we spend treading water with the newest iteration from Microsoft or Sun or Linux or Firefox, making changes to systems that for the most part work fine already. It's not because they are evil, it's just built into the industry. There's no such thing as Stable Equilibrium; all the feedback mechanisms are positive, favoring change over stability. (Did you ever see a feature withdrawn, or a change retracted?)

关于SO的另一个讨论线索是臭鼬工厂综合症(参考:Geoffrey Moore):在大型组织中，真正的创新几乎总是(90%以上)出现在自发出现的未经授权的项目中，这些项目完全由个人或小团队的主动性推动(通常会受到正式的管理等级的反对)。所以:质疑权威，反抗体制。

函数式编程研究者对单子的重新发现。单子有助于让一种纯粹的、懒惰的语言(Haskell)成为一种实用的工具;它还影响了组合子库的设计(一元解析器组合子甚至在Python中找到了自己的方式)。

Moggi的“程序模块的范畴理论解释”(1989)通常被认为是将单子引入有效计算的观点;Wadler的作品(例如，“命令式函数式编程”(1993))将单子作为实用工具。

当然，1980年以前是施乐PARC的辉煌时期。在图形用户界面、鼠标、激光打印机、互联网和个人电脑刚刚诞生的时候。(鉴于我太年轻了，不可能活在那个年代，而你几乎在努力发明所有这些东西，关于1980年的事情，我不能告诉你任何你不知道的事情，所以我们继续吧。)

The thing is, though, that the pre-1980 days were a lot more vibrant in terms of truly disruptive new technologies. That's the way it is with any new field -- hwo many game-changing technology advances have you seen in railroads in the past 100 years? How many have you seen in lightbulbs? In the printing press? Once something ignites a hype in the right circles, there is an explosive period of invention, followed by a long period of maturing. After that, you're not going to see the same kind of completely radical changes again UNLESS the basic circumstances change.

幸运的是，这可能会发生在一些领域，而且已经发生在其他一些领域:

Mobility - smart phones bring computing to a truly portable platform, which will soon include location-based services and proximity-based ad-hoc networks. It's a completely new paradigm that's potentially as game-changing as the GUI has been The WWW (HTTP, HTML and DNS) has already been mentioned and is an obvious addition to the list, since it is enabling global, inexpensive, mainstream rich communication across the globe - all thanks to a computing platform On the interface side, both touch, multitouch (Jeff Han comes to mind) and the Wiimote need mentioning. Currently, they are basically curiosities, but so were the early GUIs. OOP design patterns -- higher level solutions as best practices to hard problems. Depending on your definition of 'computing', it may or may not belong on the list, but if you count OOP as a significant advance pre-1980 (I certainly do), I think design patterns and the GoF deserve a mention too Google's PageRank and MapReduce algorithms - I am pleased to notice I wasn't the first to mention them, and seriously --- where would the world be without the principles of both of them? I vividly remember what the world looked like before them, and suffice it to say Google really IS my friend. Non-volatile memory -- it's on the hardware side, but it is going to play a significant role in the future of computing - making bootup times a thing of the past, for example, and enabling us to use computers in entirely new ways Semantic (natural language) search / analysis / classification / translation... We're not quite there yet, but companies like Powerset give the impression that we're on the brink. On that note, intelligent HTMs should be on this list as well. I am yet another believer in Jeff Hawkins' model and approach, and if it works, it will mean a complete redefinition of what computers can do, what it means to be human, and where the world can go from here. Creating a real intelligence in that way (synthetically) would be bigger than anything the human race has accomplished before. GNU + Linux 3D printing / rapid prototyping (and, in time, manufacturing) P2P (which also lead to VoIP etc.) E-ink, once the technologies mature a bit more RFID might belong on the list, but the verdict is still out on that one Quantum Computing is the most obvious element on the list, except we still haven't been able to get enough qubits to play along. However, my friends in the field tell me there's incredible progress going on even as we speak, so I'm holding my breath for that one. And finally, I want to mention a personal favourite: distributed intelligence, or its other name: artificial artificial intelligence. The idea of connecting a huge number of people in a network and allowing them access to the combined minds of everyone else through some form of question answering interface. It's been done a number of times recently, with Yahoo Answers, Askville, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and so on, but in my mind, those are all missing the mark by a LOT... much like the many implementations of distributed hypertext that came before Tim Berners-Lee's HTML, or the many web crawlers before Google. Seriously -- someone needs to build an search interface into 'the hive mind' to blow everyone else out of the water. IMHO - it is only a matter of time.

几乎是现代3D计算机图形学中所有重要的东西。射线追踪(在计算图形意义上)是从Whitted 1980年的论文开始的。行军立方体('87)是从3D数据中提取等值面的标准方法。

The mouse - There have been posts about human interaction. To me, the mouse was the gateway to human interaction. Without it, we'd still be typing and not clicking in dragging, even with our fingers. GUI - Complimented the mouse perfectly. I work in an environment where an as400 is the backend of one of our major apps. Yeah.. Interesting stuff but it just reminds me of the screens 'Bill Gates' is working in in the movie 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' even though that's not what it was. To me, 1 and 2 are the reason anybody, including grandpas and grandmas can use a computer. Excel / spreadsheets - Someone mentioned this before but it's work mentioning again. It's so user friendly and is a great entry point for non-technical users to try their hand at simple programming concepts when performing calculations on cells. Granted it came out before 1980, but the versions post 1980 are when the technology in spreadsheets evolved. Internet (of course) - Not sure how people wrote code without it! Don't flame me for repeating because this belongs on every list. INTELLISENSE - LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!!

我认为我们看待这个问题的方式是错误的，得出的结论也是错误的。如果我做对了，循环就会变成:

理念->首次实施->少数人采用->临界质量->商品产品

从最初的想法到商品，你通常会经历几个世纪，假设这个想法能走到那个阶段。达·芬奇可能在1493年就画出了某种直升机，但他花了大约400年的时间才制造出一架能够自己飞离地面的实际机器。

从1580年威廉·伯恩对潜艇的第一次描述到1800年的第一次实施，你有220年的时间，而目前的潜艇仍处于起步阶段:我们几乎对水下旅行一无所知(地球上三分之二的地方都在海底，想想潜在的房地产;)

而且不可能没有更早，更早的想法，只是我们从未听说过。根据一些传说，亚历山大大帝在公元前332年使用了某种潜水钟(这是潜艇的基本概念:一种在海底运送人员和空气供应的装置)。算上这一点，我们从想法(甚至只有一个基本的原型)到生产产品需要2000年的时间。

我想说的是，在1980年之前，那些甚至都不是想法的实现，更不用说产品了……我敢打赌，“快速排序”算法是由中国古代某个无名档案管理员使用的。那又怎样?

当然，40年前就有了联网的计算机，但那无法与今天的互联网相比。基本的理念/技术是存在的，但不管怎样你都不能在线玩《魔兽》游戏。

我认为我们在大多数计算领域都需要真正的新想法，我想知道最近已经完成的任何重要而有力的想法。如果我们真的找不到他们，那么我们应该问“为什么?”和“我们应该做什么?”

从历史上看，我们从来没有能够如此快速地“找到它们”。我认为这个周期正变得越来越快，但计算技术仍然非常年轻。

目前，我正试图弄清楚如何制作全息图(星球大战那种，没有任何物理支持)。我想我知道该怎么做了。我甚至还没有收集工具、材料和资金，即使我在某种程度上取得了成功，实际的想法也已经有几十年的历史了，至少相关的实现/技术已经被使用了很长时间。

一旦你开始列出实际的产品，你就可以相当肯定概念和最初的实现在一段时间前就已经存在了。没关系。

你可能会以某种理由争辩说，从来没有什么是新的，或者一切都是新的，总是如此。这就是哲学，两种观点都有道理。

从实践的观点来看，真理介于两者之间。真理不是二进制概念，布尔逻辑是该死的。

中国人也许早在很久以前就发明了印刷机，但大多数人能够在家以合理的价格打印出像样的彩色照片也不过10年的时间。

发明无处不在，这取决于你的标准和参照系。