# Every human invention from this point on will only be an improvement or innovation of an existing product **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 4, 2026, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783 "2026-05-04T19:10:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/1 "2026-05-04T19:10:49Z")
It’s looking doubtful at this point that there will ever be another true groundbreaking big new invention of the scale of the airplane, submarine, nuclear reactor, printing press, automobile, telephone, engine, radio, computer, antibiotics, anesthesia, robot, etc. By this point, nearly every property of physics and chemistry is mapped out and understood - at least, as far as usefulness to humans is concerned. There will still be countless innovations and improvements of existing tech. For instance, 2-nanometer standard chips now exist today whereas two decades ago we were at 70nm standard, which was much more primitive. And today’s smartphones do things cell phones in the 1990s could never do. But a chip is still a chip, and a smartphone is still just merely a computer and phone combined in a single device, albeit much more advanced. If we discover a new antibiotics today that kills bacteria in the era of antibiotic resistance, that’s still not really a new invention, just a new discovery within an already well-established existing field. And maybe a few inventions of genuinely new small or rare/obscure things. With science being so mapped out now, there isn’t much if any big unknown room remaining for a big new invention. Even something like quantum computing is still just…computing, an advancement of it, like AI is still just computers and software. Anyway, please poke big holes in my argument. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/2 "2026-05-04T19:16:07Z")
Wouldn’t working Fusion be a huge step forward? This is not an incremental improvement on Fission. Nearly instant charge storage devices are being worked on. Another great leap forward. There are some potential space travel propulsion system that would be game changing. There are still new big leaps to be made. That was 3 off the top of my head. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/3 "2026-05-04T19:28:20Z")
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” -Attributed (probably incorrectly) to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, in1902 ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/4 "2026-05-04T19:30:07Z")
Automobiles are just horse-drawn wagons without the horses, still just a way to haul a bunch of stuff around. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/5 "2026-05-04T19:34:53Z")
And a fax machine is just a waffle iron with a phone attached. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/6 "2026-05-04T19:45:36Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > nearly every property of physics and chemistry is mapped out and understood There is an entire field of research which may bring huge, earthshaking inventions: biology and medictne. In another century or two, genetic engineering might be common. Regrow damaged organs. Design your baby. Increase human lifespan to,say, 150 or200 years. And maybe in 500 years, we might figure out how the brain works. We could invent machines that would revolutionize humanity. Imagine a brain scanning machine that reads peoples’ thoughts, or is a foolproof lie detector. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/7 "2026-05-04T19:54:22Z")
The entire field of true AI is still an uncharted territory. However, if and when we develop true AGI with superhuman intelligence, there will be little or no need for humans to invent anything ever again. As I.J Good said in 1965; QUOTE Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. /QUOTE ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/8 "2026-05-04T19:55:50Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Wouldn’t working Fusion be a huge step forward? This is not an incremental improvement on Fission. But we’ve had fusion [since 1952](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike), it just wasn’t especially sustained ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/9 "2026-05-04T20:01:00Z")
That was the point of my inclusion of the word “working”. We do not have working or useful fusion at this time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/10 "2026-05-04T20:09:29Z")
Paraphrasing the great Charles Babbage > I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an OP. Of _course_ there are inventions undreamed of. We have only begun to scrape the barest surface of the complexity of the universe. You can take the extreme reductionist POV that every invention is simply an elaboration of the idea of either a “machine”, a “physics process”, or a “form of life”. And once our understanding of Nature becomes subtle enough, those 3 distinctions fall away as simply the same idea expressed at a different scale of size & complexity. I don’t find that extreme reductionism to be useful for anything. Rather the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/11 "2026-05-04T20:16:30Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > That was the point of my inclusion o the word “working”. It worked entirely as advertised. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/12 "2026-05-04T20:18:56Z")
Please accept for the purpose of this thread that **working fusion** was intended to mean a fusion reactor that sustains and provides far more energy than is used to get it up and running. You know, a power plant like a fission one, but cleaner and better. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/13 "2026-05-04T20:20:32Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Of _course_ there are inventions undreamed of. We have only begun to scrape the barest surface of the complexity of the universe. Exactly this. It reminds me of the experts in Newtonian physics who declared, just prior to Einstein’s first landmark paper on the photoelectric effect, that there was pretty much nothing left for physics to discover! That paper launched the theory of relativity which completely transformed the basic foundation of physics. Independently, quantum physics completely transformed our understanding of matter. And, significantly, relativity and quantum mechanics are in conflict at quantum scales. So there is very much yet to discover, and much of it may be hugely transformational. ---
**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/14 "2026-05-04T20:26:08Z")
Its impossible to answer this correctly, without having some definition of terms. Everything we invent in the future will have some previous invention that it relies on…is that an ‘improvement’ on and existing product? What demarcates ‘improvement’ vs. ‘invention’? At what point can you say something is or is not an improvement on an existing product? Its impossible to answer this with any authority without some definitions and guardrails. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/15 "2026-05-04T20:29:18Z")
Agreed - it’s a formula for moving goalposts - you invented some amazing new widget, but you made it out of _ **metal?** _ Ugh, how _derivative_. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/16 "2026-05-04T20:41:09Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Agreed - it’s a formula for moving goalposts - you invented some amazing new widget, but you made it out of _ **metal?** _ How about, “you made it out of nano-engineered carbon fiber?”. How would that have sat with late 19-century phyicists who claimed to “know all”? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/17 "2026-05-04T21:43:00Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > QUOTE > > Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. > > /QUOTE Yup, and we’ve been living through that explosion for the past 200,000 years or so. Because a collaboration between multiple humans is far smarter than any individual human, and we’ve been doing that since we invented language. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/18 "2026-05-04T22:01:24Z")
Certainly incorrectly: A previous Patent Office head (Henry Ellsworth) wrote: “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” - but that was an irony, because Ellsworth was a big proponent of new technology, and worked to improve the way the Patent Office worked. The actual quote ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/19 "2026-05-04T22:29:02Z")
Designing whole custom lifeforms from the molecules up could eventually be a thing. Beginning with genetic engineering, but also proceeding to genetic design (not just modifying existing organisms but building from a blank canvas) and possibly transcending it to the design of lifeforms that use other biochemistries and encoding other than DNA. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783/20 "2026-05-04T22:31:39Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Anyway, please poke big holes in my argument. What if there are infinite parallel dimensions and parallel universes and we learn how to travel to them or share information with them? Also bioengineering has a long long way to go. Medicine is rudimentary and based on reductionist understandings of biology. We haven’t come close to mastering systems biology or meaningful biological engineering. Computers that calculate using light waves instead of chips. I feel like you’re saying we understand enough about physics and chemistry that nothing new can be built. But thats like saying we have 1000 lego blocks and we can’t create anything new. I don’t personally believe that. There is a lot of room for new engineering. Also AI is advancing the field of chemistry. > **[Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning](https://deepmind.google/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/)** > > We share the discovery of 2.2 million new crystals – equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge. We introduce Graph Networks for Materials Exploration (GNoME), our new deep learning tool that dramatically increases the speed and efficiency... [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-invention-from-this-point-on-will-only-be-an-improvement-or-innovation-of-an-existing-product/1029783.md?page=2)