The Idea of the Decade

gplaneWhat is the largest (non-human) animal that’s ever found its way onto an airplane?

Someday Google (or its successor) will be able to answer that question. It will understand what you’re asking, it will perform relevant searches for old newspaper items, it will sift through the results, it will know (or know how to find out) whether a vole is larger than a ferret, and it will give you an answer. We’ll call it the semantic web.

When the Chronicle of Higher Education asked me for a few hundred words on the defining idea of the next decade, this was the first thing that came to mind. Another was the partial conquest of cognitive bias through better understanding of the systematic ways our brains let us down, together with software designed to compensate for our own mental shortcomings.

What I really wanted to do was ask my blog readers to predict the defining idea of the next decade, with the prospect that I might write about the best of them. But the Chronicle editiors asked me not to do that.

In the end, I went with an old favorite — the beginning of the end of intellectual property law, which, thanks to our increasingly information-based economy (see “semantic web”), stands to hinder progress even more in the future than it has in the past. Readers of my book More Sex is Safer Sex will know that I am particularly enamored of Michael Kremer‘s proposed solution to this problem, and that’s what I ended up writing about.

The other two dozen contributors to the forum had some pretty interesting things to say as well.

So now that this exercise is complete, tell me what we all missed. If I’d been able to ask you before I wrote this piece, what would you have told me to write about? What will be the defining idea of the coming decade?

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33 Responses to “The Idea of the Decade”


  1. 1 1 Harold

    What was the defining idea of the last decade? Possibly wireless? The year 2000 we all had spaghetti from our computers, now everything can communicate with anything, anywhere.

    Next decade? I suppose it breaks down to two general areas, a thechnological idea, and a philosophical one. On the technology side, storage and display is getting better, people are happy using screens. Maybe we will see the begining of the end of the paper book.

    Philosophically? Perhaps after yet another bubble, crash and bailout there will be a deep look into why this keeps happening. It will be seen that the financial players are making one-sided bets, reaping the rewards when they win but not paying when things go wrong. This will lead to an end to limited liability.

  2. 2 2 XiXiDu

    What will be the defining idea of the coming decade?

    I’m not sure how to parse that question (i.e. 2010-2020 or 20-30? Idea?), but how about exoplanets and a revival of the fermi paradox? We are discovering so much already, so take all the planned missions geared towards exoplanet observation: New Worlds Mission, Darwin, Space Interferometry Mission, Terrestrial Planet Finder and PEGASE.

    That topic includes so much. Evolution/religion, science-technology, space colonization, human survival. Imagine we’d discover alien life. This would rock not just the religious world. If there is life within 100 ly then there is some chance we’ll detect it in the coming decade. Further, such a discover could imply serious risks (http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf).

    The only idea that might top this would be some real progress in AI. And I doubt there will be much progress, therefore also not much progress regarding the semantic web.

    So yeah, exoplanet detection is an idea that is not just likely but guaranteed and at the same time big enough to cause serious publicity, simple enough to be understood and popular to interest many different people.

    P.S.
    What was the defining idea of the last decade?

  3. 3 3 Ryan

    This might seem a little hammy, but I think freedom i.e. real individual liberty of the kind Hayek wrote about will be the idea of the decade. As China’s and India’s population gains more wealth and more financial independence, they will start to hunger for more democracy. Their rich cultures are already rubbing off on the West, and once they start pushing toward greater individual liberty, we will, too.

    That’s my guess. Perhaps the other option is nanotechnology in biotech.

  4. 4 4 John Faben

    How about “What I really wanted to do was ask my blog readers to predict the defining idea of the next decade, with the prospect that I might write about the best of them” as a candidate for ‘idea of the decade’. How many professional authors could have said something like that a few years ago?

  5. 5 5 Rocky Humbert

    Professor: I read your “Putting Ideas to Work” essay in The Chronicle Review and am puzzled on several points:

    You write: “Lifesaving drugs, performance-enhancing software, and genetically modified seeds are overpriced and hence underused because of the monopoly power conferred by intellectual-property law. Innovation is stifled when artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs are forbidden to riff on others’ themes.”

    1. Your solution ensures that less wealth will accrue to the individual inventors/creators/researcher “monopolists.” But, if there is less profit-incentive for the creators, doesn’t this also ensure that less resources will be devoted to research? If the profit incentive is reduced, there will be less creativity, not more?? How is your proposal different from a high capital gains tax…which disincentivizes private investment? Who would invest in high-stakes long-odds research if the payoff is not proportional?

    2. You criticize the cost of enforcement, yet if half of the patents remain in the private domain, there is still an enforcement cost. And if 100% of the patents go into the public domain, how is this any different from NIH, NSF, DARPA funding? i.e. a socialism of scientific creativity?

    3. Ultimately, why is intellectual property different from other property? Isn’t your proposal an extension of eminent domain — a construct that has been increasingly politicized and abused by the politically well-connected?

  6. 6 6 JCE

    Professor, have you visited Wolfram Alpha? It’s a good first step to the search engine your describe, and it’s also a lot of fun to play with.

  7. 7 7 Nick

    P.S.
    What was the defining idea of the last decade?

    Agreed. We can’t speak meaningfully about the defining idea of the next decade until we can all agree (at least partly) on the previous one.

  8. 8 8 Seth

    The black swan. I really don’t know but it is likely to result from someone spilling something.

    Some areas where I’d love to see progress:
    – Use technology for shareholders to better hold Board of Directors accountable.
    – Understanding that parents are the strongest feedback loop in education and bad school districts result from cutting them out of the loop.
    – Turning the issuance of green cards into a profit center.
    – Better understanding of basic economics.

  9. 9 9 Dave

    I think the Science of Morality will be huge. Or should be anyway.

    Sam Harris’s new book “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values” comes out in October. If it’s anything like his previous works and the TED speech he gave recently, it should be pretty gripping.

  10. 10 10 Alan Wexelblat

    I’m curious where I go to get the free downloadable copy of your book.

  11. 11 11 Alan Wexelblat

    I’m further curious why you think that Kremer’s idea (which I think is a fine one) is a legitimate use of government fund, which you so distinctly object to the government taxing everyone to acquire.

  12. 12 12 Steve Landsburg

    Rocky Humbert:

    Your solution ensures that less wealth will accrue to the individual inventors/creators/researcher “monopolists.”

    On the contrary, the solution as I posted it ensures that the same amount of wealth will accrue to inventors as does today. Kremer’s actual proposal (which I abridged for space reasons) would pay inventors a premium of say 10% over the auction-winning price, to compensate them for the external value of inventions; thus it would actually increase their wealth.

    if 100% of the patents go into the public domain, how is this any different from NIH, NSF, DARPA funding? i.

    Because private markets, rather than bureacrats, are deciding what gets funded.

  13. 13 13 Steve Landsburg

    I’m further curious why you think that Kremer’s idea (which I think is a fine one) is a legitimate use of government fund,

    Alan: I thought I explained quite clearly why I thought this was a legitimate use of government — the benefits exceed the costs, and the benefits are likely to be extremely widespread. Was that not clear?

  14. 14 14 Alan Wexelblat

    Steve: I was mostly snarking at you. I do realize that you think things are OK if you think their benefits exceed their costs. The cost/benefit of this scheme is somewhat hypothetical, since unlike (say) grain production, the supply of useful inventions can’t really be estimated, nor can the value of a given invention be calculated in advance. Even if the auction mechanism – which seems fair – can be a good method for estimating the amount a given patent is thought to be worth at a given time, the government would need to accumulate and hold a large pool of funds so as not to miss out on potentially awesome inventions. I’m personally OK with things like deficit spending and/or taxes to accomplish these goals but I’d gathered you were not.

    Also, you ducked the free book question, which is likewise a tease in that it points to the extremely fuzzy boundaries around “invention” and how it’s nice to have a mental model that an “invention” is a mechanical thing one can put one’s hands around but really most patents these days are issues for other things, and the underlying question is whether you think those other intellectual property things ought to be made available freely. And if you think they ought to be then why are you not following this principle yourself?

    Finally, you said “I know this because once an invention enters the public domain, it gets used more widely and generates more wealth.” I’m curious what your source for that is. If there’s a study or source I’d be interested to see it; if it’s sidewalk math I’d like a little more “show the work” stuff. (I am intuitively in agreement with your assertion, but have no good evidence for my intuition.)

  15. 15 15 Tal F

    Kremer’s idea is one of those neat econo-geek ideas that would never work in practice. For starters, there are huge enforcement issues. You need to prevent bidders from bidding too high and kicking back the payment to the inventor. If the government wins 90% of the time, it will overpay for those patents 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, the patent is sold back to the inventor at the purchase price. Next, how would (honest) private bidders determine their bid? Since there would be considerable uncertainty surrounding the patent’s value, the inventor may get well below the true value, even after a markup. It would also heavily skew inventors towards inventing the kinds of things with relatively certain payoffs, and we would get much fewer “black swan” inventions that truly blow expectations out of the water. How much would you have paid for Larry Page’s PageRank algorithm back in the days of AltaVista? Probably nowhere near the $150B Google is worth today.

    In short, a neat idea, but kind of like Shiller’s neat ideas for 21st century financial products (http://www.amazon.com/New-Financial-Order-Risk-Century/dp/0691120110), it’ll never work in practice.

  16. 16 16 Steve Landsburg

    Alan Wexelblat:

    “I know this because once an invention enters the public domain, it gets used more widely and generates more wealth.” I’m curious what your source for that is.

    This is a logical consequence of three things:

    1) Patents create monopoly power.

    2) Monopoly power raises prices.

    3) High prices deter the use of products.

    For each of these three statements there is evidence so overwhelming that if I were to start quoting it, I wouldn’t know where to begin.

  17. 17 17 Steve Landsburg

    Tal F: Kremer’s paper addresses the kickback problem quite effectively. As for the inventor with a “black swan” idea that he fears the market will undervalue, I’m perfectly fine (and I believe Kremer is too) with letting inventors opt out of the system. Combine this with a 10% premium (so that the govt pays 10% over the winning auction price) and I bet most inventors will opt in.

  18. 18 18 Tal F

    Kremer’s brilliant solution to the kickback problem is 3rd price auctions (it is so much harder to arrange 3 shill bidders vs. 2) and prosecution for violators. Not very convincing, especially considering the potentially very high stakes. Informal collusion (see, e.g., spectrum auctions and bids with lot numbers appended) could be just as dangerous. Keep in mind many patent-holders are corporations with a steady supply of new patents to sell. A bit of I scratch your back and you scratch mine could lead the system to collapse very quickly. Even he admits that “Preventing these side payments might be one of the most difficult aspects of preventing collusion.” So he suggests that the government have a right to turn down purchasing the patent. In that case, why even bother with the auction? Just have the government and the inventor negotiate directly.

    As for allowing inventors to opt out, this could lead to a lemons problem, with the market quickly devolving into only the lowest value and/or most certain value patents changing hands.

    Good luck convincing policy makers on this one. You’ve proposed many great ideas in your book and on your blog, but I don’t feel this one deserves the “idea of the decade” designation by a long shot.

  19. 19 19 Pat

    This would be a great way to truly “bend the cost curve” in health care.

  20. 20 20 Alan Wexelblat

    Steve: your logic applies only if you treat patents as fungible objects of equal value, which is clearly not the case. The vast majority of patents are for things that are never produced. Many others are highly specialized and simple possession of the patent has little or no effect on your ability to enter a marketplace – for example patents on chip fabrication or drug synthesis, both businesses that require start-up costs on the order of a billion dollars. Such patents have value only to a tiny fraction of existing companies, most of which have portfolio cross-licensing agreements already in place.

    Even if we ignore these realities, your logic is incomplete in that it assumes patents describe the only method of performing a process or making a product. If I own a patent that describes a process or a product I don’t have a monopoly on the end result; what I have is a limited monopoly on a particular set of steps or configuration of end result. There’s nothing in my monopoly that prevents you from coming up with a better process or a different arrangement to create a product that does the same thing. This is called “engineering around” a patent and it’s done all the time. Indeed, those who support the monopoly power of patents use this fact to argue that patents spur innovation by encouraging new methods rather than simply copying what has already been done.

    At this point, you have the equivalent of a ‘frictionless surface’ argument that is ignoring important realities, from which you’re making a very broad statement about the real world.

  21. 21 21 nobody.really

    I’m curious about the mechanism for implementing Michael Kremer’s proposal. Ideally, the people who benefit from the proposal would also be the people who would pay for it. I could imagine that everyone in the world might benefit. Is there some mechanism for inducing everyone in the world to pay? Or would Kremer’s proposal create a giant free-rider problem?

  22. 22 22 nobody.really

    Perhaps after yet another bubble, crash and bailout there will be a deep look into why this keeps happening. It will be seen that the financial players are making one-sided bets, reaping the rewards when they win but not paying when things go wrong. This will lead to an end to limited liability.

    A libertarian perspective is often regarded as a pro-corporate perspective. Yet presumably a libertarian would disapprove of limited liability entities such as corporations.

    How do corporations come into existence? Someone proposes to create an entity, asks government go abrogate everyone else’s right to sue the investors in that entity if harm results — and government agrees! In short, a corporate charter is a form of tax imposed for private benefit and assessed against people who have been harmed by the party that is benefiting.

    Both patents and corporate charters arguable promote innovation. If we want to encourage these outcomes, let’s socialize the costs of each. In other words, rather than limit a person’s right to sue investors in a corporation, why not simply grant government-backed indemnification to investors? Sure, that might prove to be an expensive policy. But if so, all the more reason why the costs of creating corporations should be socialized rather than imposed on harmed parties.

  23. 23 23 Ryan Mulligan

    Landsburg: “Alan: I thought I explained quite clearly why I thought this was a legitimate use of government — the benefits exceed the costs, and the benefits are likely to be extremely widespread. Was that not clear?”

    What about not having patents and copyrights at all? Is the Kremer system more efficient than that?

  24. 24 24 Paul Grayson

    This proposal is an interesting idea!

    But like Tal F, after reading the part of Kremer’s paper discussing collusion, I am also very skeptical that there is any way to stop it. It sounds like collusion prevention laws would necessarily end up like the laws against insider trading and anticompetitive behavior by monopolies – impossible to define and arbitrarily enforced. Also, you would apparently not be allowed to license your invention from the person who wins it, which would require a major change in the way companies develop new products.

    A huge issue with the patent system that is not addressed by the proposal is the excessive compensation granted to inventors for patenting things that other people would have invented anyway, like teasing cats with a laser pointer or showing similar pages in a web search result. Seeing patents like those makes it hard for me to get excited about this “torrent of technological innovation”.

    -Paul

  25. 25 25 Benkyou Burito

    “Someday Google (or its successor) will be able to answer that question.”

    45 seconds on Google turned up Keiko, the whale that played in free-willy. Flown in a USAF c-17 cargo plane weighing in at 8200 pounds. Question was “What is largest animal ever in an airplane?”

  26. 26 26 Steve Landsburg

    Benkyou: The question was intended to ask “what is the largest animal that ever found it’s *own way* onto an airplane?”

  27. 27 27 Tal F

    I think Benkyou’s answer is valid. How could the question be regarding which animal found its *own way*??? Why on earth would anyone ever keep track of the various mice and other small rodents that may have found their way onto an airplane? A larger animal would surely be detected.

    Paul: I think you are too optimistic to think Kremer’s system would end up like insider trading. Insider trading laws work relatively well today. Unlike preventing collusion in patent auctions, a market that currently does not exist, stock trading existed for centuries before the government got involved to ban certain practices. Government efforts to police insider trading also took many years to get to the point we are at today. All along, there was no danger that the system would collapse if the government didn’t do enough. Ditto for antitrust laws.

    I find it hard to believe that a patent auction market would ever get off the ground, not least because there are few parties with significant resources that stand to gain from such a system and many that stand to lose. Paul’s point about how so many patents are really just minor tie-ins to existing products or things of trivial value also makes me think that such a market, even if it were to be created, would be very very small.

  28. 28 28 Tal F

    Oh, and my idea of the next decade: energy efficiency. I don’t know whether it will be clean energy from fossil fuels, renewable energy, or just remarkable advances in our energy delivery and storage infrastructure. It may be all of them, who knows? But it seems like this is the place to be for the next decade, much as the internet was the place to be for the last decade and a half.

    I’m also surprised by how many of the other contributors said the defining ideas would be negative. It seems they are succumbing to the wrong-headed philosophy of Thomas Malthus. Do they really think the next decade will be so awful that we will say the defining idea was the “Extinction of the Middle Class” or “a reaction against the overwhelming greed, violence, dishonesty, and petty meanness of the last decades?”

  29. 29 29 Paul Grayson

    Tal F, my point about the current spectrum of patents was that people are making money off of useful but obvious inventions. See Paul Allen’s current lawsuit against Apple, Yahoo, and others. Presumably his patents would have sold quite well at auction!

    To make my analogy to insider trading and anti-monopoly laws more clear, these laws all necessarily relate to your reasons for doing things rather than to the actions themselves, which necessarily makes them impossible to define. So I would strongly disagree that they could even in principle ever “work relatively well”. Your point about the system not collapsing without them is a good one, though.

    -Paul

  30. 30 30 Spyros

    How about the idea of a framework that breaks any task into many little ones, distributes them to millions of people and gives them the proper incentives in order to all collaborate and complete it?

  31. 31 31 Benkyou Burito

    Steven–
    “Found its own way”? You give their capacity to “own” too much credit. Just my personal thoughts. I don’t ascribe that capacity of reason to many things in the animal kingdom.

    But I see. You’re asking “How many animals have decided to enter a plane and then taken deliberate action to that affect?” An answer impossible to find until we learn how to determine what an animal is thinking prior to its actions.

    Or perhaps “How many animals have ended up on a plane purely by chance and without human assistance?” This is not the original question by any interpretation. But it is also impossible to determine with any certainty because we do not know how many animals (or their size) that have entered an airplane in this manner and then left in kind without ever being seen by human eyes. Out of pure chance I chased a chicken out of a UPS jet in Malaysia.

    What I’m wondering about then is if you are proposing that someday soon, the internet will return correct answers to questions for which there is no data?

    Because really… how do you know Keiko hadn’t intended to board that C-17?

  32. 32 32 GregS

    Steven,
    Do we need to wait for the government to institute this awesome plan? I agree that it’s a good idea to put patentable ideas on the public domain. Could a private investor purchase a patent and then declare it free to the public?

    I actually had a similar idea for a firm. Couldn’t you set up a private fund that promises to bid on a particular patent idea, and then collects donations from people who understand the social value of the arrangement? That idea would depend very strongly on people’s willingness to donate money for such things, but it’s worth a shot. Simply set up a few X-prizes and allow anyone to contribute to the purse. The purse could be paid to the inventor for the patent rights, and the patent could immediately go on the public domain. I think that system would also achieve the desired effect of having research resources allocated by the market rather than by bureaucrats. (It would have the undesirable consequence of destructive competition, but so does our current system of publicly financed research.)

  33. 33 33 Steve Landsburg

    GregS: This is a terrific idea. The one reason why I think this might be harder to do privately than through the government is that it’s very important to police (and punish) collusion in the auctions (“I’ll bid up the price of your invention if you’ll bid up the price of mine” or “I’ll bid up the price of your invention in exchange for a secret payment of $10,000”). Conceivably the government is better equpped to do this policing than you and I are, and conceivably they’d be more willing to do it for themselves than for us.

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