Modern widespread drives for invention and research

Sometimes it is a wonder that we have so many new ideas all the time.  I just heard today about a man who took a trip a decade or more ago.  Recently, he was able to use internet tools to construct a map of the trip, complete with photos.  He was able to re-locate many of his classmates on the trip and is now in contact with them.  So, that map and those re-established contacts are recent but they relate to the past.

When I think about what I know, what I have experienced and what I have heard about, I realize there are three or four forces that make the world today more alive to new ideas and inventions.  There are many more universities now than there were, say, 150 years ago.  Those advanced schools are places of study and they have more possibilities of what to study than ever before.  For instance, over the past 5 to 10 years, several colleges and universities have created major areas of study or departments or curricula about games.  We have more types of games and simulations than ever before.  

A common pathway into university or college teaching is to get a doctorate in some subject.  The hallmarks of the study of that degree are satisfactory completion of many courses and completing research that might add to knowledge in the field of study. Once you have such a degree, you try to get hired as a lecturer or assistant professor.  Typically, you then have 6 or 7 years to teach students at the institution satisfactorily and simultaneously complete further research or writing that gets published in recognized journals or discussed by you at professional conferences.  If, at the end of that time, you have accomplished some work that has been recognized, the tenure committee may be impressed enough to grant you a promotion to the next of the 3 ranks, associate professor.   Your work will likely be more impressive if its components seem to relate to each other, that is, if you seem to have a research program or agenda.  In some fields, you are expected to win financial support for your work in the form of grants that pay for any needed equipment and other items that you can justify.

This path is pursued by highly motivated and intelligent people.  It requires trying to find new ideas or criticisms of current work that are reasonably original and/or valuable and are seen as such by others, usually older than you, and often competing with you for fame and fortune.  This mass of thinkers are prompted by strong forces to be innovators and researchers.  These types of encouraged thinking-out-of-the-box are not limited to universities and colleges.  Increasingly, both younger people in high schools and lower grades as well as fully employed, older people in all sorts of companies and industries are urged or even required to examine practices and procedures, inventions and principles for possible modifications and improvements.  Even when no one can think of a truly valuable change, new names for products or new ads featuring different approaches can be invented.