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  • The Most Powerful Idea in the World

    By Joshua Kim August 3, 2010 9:00 pm EDT

    In William Rosen's masterful new book, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, the most powerful idea is not the invention of the steam engine. Rather, the title refers to the development of the concept that ideas can be property, and that through the availability of patent law and capital, individuals tinkerers can become industrial scale innovators.

    Rosen notes that: "From 1700 to 2000, the world's population has increased twelvefold - but its production of goods and services a hundredfold". (page 316) Will the innovations around digital technology, from cheap and powerful mobile computing devices to robust cloud based applications, bring about a commensurate rise in productivity as the industrial revolution? The steam engine allowed the cost of energy to come down rapidly, through its original use as the power source to pump out coal mines to its subsequent use in locomotives to bring down the costs of transporting coal. Today, it is less clear if digital technologies can bring about similar improvements in the productivity of education (increased access and quality at reduced costs), that the steam engine did for energy productivity in the 18th and 19th centuries.

    It is ironic that the very intellectual property protections that catalyzed the willingness of inventors and entrepreneurs to invest their energy and money into the steam engine that are perhaps retarding innovations in education. Much of our current economic prosperity is built on the concept that ideas are property, yet many of the barriers to extending learning at low cost run up against this principle. Efforts to extend the infrastructure and content of learning outside of the marketplace, through open source and open educational content, have failed to significantly bring costs down or increase access.

    Are we in the midst of an educational revolution powered by technology? Or are we grafting new technologies on old structures, changing education only at the margins?

    What are you reading?

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Comments on The Most Powerful Idea in the World

  • The funny thing is
  • Posted by Peet on August 3, 2010 at 11:00pm EDT

  • participation in the industrial-academic complex embraced in yesterday's blog entry makes most universities complicit in the problem you describe above. As the monetization of ideas becomes a driving force in university strategy, universities embrace the restriction of ideas. Quite the perversion of their role in society if you ask me.

  • Grafting, but ...
  • Posted by Richard Katz on August 5, 2010 at 5:15am EDT

  • don't be too impatient. It took decades for Industrial Age organizers of work to realize they did not have to build vertical mills to exploit the power of falling water. Technology evolves quickly, social (or educational) conventions move slowly. Eventually, the pressure to change becomes so compelling that technology disrupts practice.

    As always, Josh asks the right question. Here's another one: do the incentives (promotion, tenure, ...) reward or confound our propensity to graft old ways onto new technologies? I think that if incentives are not reconsidered, change from within is unlikely to be radical.

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