Jonathan Huebner is a physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center

Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

- About : is part of under Commander, Navy Installation Command and is located in the Western Mojave Desert region of California, approximately north of Los Angeles. Occupying three counties – Kern, San Bernardino and Inyo – the installation’s closest neighbors are the cities of Ridgecrest,...

, in China Lake, California.

Views on innovation

He argues on the basis of both U.S. patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

s and world technological breakthroughs, per population, that the rate of human technological innovation peaked in 1873 and has been slowing ever since. According to his projections we are heading towards a "new Dark Age" of very low innovation rates by sometime around 2024.

There have been several different responses to his claim:

• Because his calculations are based on "innovations per person", population growth could offset the decline in per capita innovation, preventing such a collapse. Some argue that even the current global population is not sustainable.
• He does not take into account the innovation happening in the combining and refining of technologies already discovered. A slowing of innovation rates by 2024, if it happens, will offer us the ability to explore the full range of the incremental applications and combinations of our technological innovations to give us greater capabilities, which Huebner's definition excludes.
• Ray Kurzweil criticizes Huebner's methodology
  Methodology
  Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...
  
  , pointing to the arbitrary selection of innovations.
• Kurzweil also claims that the phrase "new Dark Age" is misleading, since Huebner has not ruled out such a technologically-stalled "Dark Age" being also a "New Renaissance
  Renaissance
  The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
  
  " in which creativity flourishes as people move their skills to other areas of human culture such as the arts and cultural creativity.
• Joel Mokyr
  Joel Mokyr
  Joel Mokyr is an American economic historian. He is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University....
  
   argues that the relatively free market
  Free market
  A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
  
   in knowledge assures that humanity will still be able to quickly develop new innovations for new problems, even if Huebner's 2024 prediction comes true.
• Mokyr also points to the reform of large institutions and organisational approaches as being just as much a contribution to human progress as technological innovation.
• Even if human-powered innovation declines, it may be sufficient to reach the Singularity
  Technological singularity
  Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
  
   threshold, after which models based on human behavior by definition do not apply.

External links

• "A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation" Jonathan Huebner's paper
• Review of "A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation" John Smart
  John Smart
  John Smart , was an English painters of portrait miniatures. He was a contemporary of Richard Cosway, George Engleheart, William Wood and Richard Crosse.-Biography:He was born in Norfolk, but not much is known of his early life...
  
  's critique of Huebner's paper