TheMarketForIdeas

I remember about two years ago, some viral videos from China presenting what was described as a major breakthrough in public transport: the trackless tram. However, it did not take long for terminally online to point out that these “smart trams” were essentially just trolleybuses. Since then, I started to notice this pattern more often, innovations that are in reality just repackaged ideas.

So, I had to ask myself: why do so many “innovations” so often end up looking like the things they were meant to replace? I would like to start by first providing more examples of this phenomenon I like to call “techno-reversion”.

Old is the new new

Streaming services, particularly Netflix, were initially perceived as a superior alternative to cable television. One service providing on-demand access to an extensive library of films and television series, without advertisements and at a reasonable cost. Currently, streaming has become so fragmented that consumers must purchase subscriptions to up to ten or more major streaming platforms and still lack access to all their preferred content. Furthermore, most of these services have introduced unskippable ads that break up content viewing, which were another annoyance of traditional cable services. The “on-demand” aspect has also been diminished, with many movies being available in a streaming service’s library for only limited periods.

Uber, also previously regarded as the evolution of taxi services, has introduced fixed-route shuttles, which has been ridiculed as Uber reinventing the bus (at a higher price compared to public transportation). Also, in transport there is a trend of entrepreneurs marketing transportation modes that are net inferior to existing ones but seem new – for instance, the replacement of denser public transport with pods (personal rapid transit), which are being tested in Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and soon in Uttar Pradesh and are a staple of science fiction aesthetics. They are neither new (beyond their automated nature), nor efficient or congestion reducing. Another example is the Vegas Loop, an underground transportation system designed by Elon Musk’s Boring Company, primarily utilizing Tesla vehicles to transport passengers, currently serving the Las Vegas Convention Center and expanding to connect other points in Las Vegas like Resorts World, which aims to reduce travel times in congested areas by moving people underground. This is essentially a subway with Teslas instead of subway cars and with much lower capacity because of it. Several companies promise to revolutionize cargo transport on rail through moving individual containers, even though container trains kilometers long are both more energy efficient and a better use of the train tracks.

Another example, perhaps more controversial, are crypto currencies, originally marketed as a radical alternative to traditional banking by being decentralized and peer-to-peer. The vision was that users would control their private keys and trade directly with one another, without intermediaries. However, currently most users purchase, sell, or store cryptocurrency through centralized regulated entities like Coinbase and Binance, which can freeze assets or limit withdrawals (much like regular banks).

Additionally, if we look at online dating apps, which were once again introduced as a concept that would revolutionize dating (and they did for a period) they are now declining, with increasing numbers of people actively rejecting them in favor of meeting individuals in real life. People have become exhausted from endless swiping with little meaningful connections. Perhaps surprisingly, the demographic group most opposed to online dating applications is Gen-Z youth, who were born in the digital era and have no lived experience of how dating was conducted previously.

Futures in the past

Is innovation dead? Is there nothing truly new? Well, honestly speaking, most innovations, if not all, throughout history have been based on pre-existing concepts. From the invention of the wheel, to carriages, to steam automobiles, petrol cars, and now electric vehicles, you can clearly see the connection. What is different today is the push for innovation for innovation’s sake. It has become a cultural norm to promote and expect innovation in everything and everywhere. You hear about it so often to the extent that it is almost a buzzword. We are obsessed with innovation and novelty for its own sake. Smart refrigerators connected to the internet are useless and a gimmick, for instance, but they are perceived as a sign of progress. Start-ups are highly fashionable and attract venture funding backed by low interest rates and expansionary monetary policy. Our society puts a greater emphasis on the innovative component than on the quality or the usefulness of the product. There is also a lack of acknowledgement that, in the context of constraints imposed by reality, certain forms and solutions come up time and time again as the natural answer to a particular issue, which is why entrepreneurs who promise revolutions end up delivering something very similar to what they were displacing. Nature is the same, since convergent evolution independently evolves wings for birds, insects and bats, streamlined bodies for aquatic animals, and even spines on plants in drought areas. The same is true in business, where resource constraints, including capital utilization problems, push solution providers to similar models arrived at independently.

What does this mean for the average person? I would argue that “techno-reversion” is not necessarily a bad phenomenon. Yes, it can feel rather like re-inventing the wheel, but we can also see it as a way of correcting errors in terms of how the technology is progressing. For example, with the growing consumer backlash against the continuous push from companies for Software-as-a-Service (Saas), I would not be surprised to see a return to something akin to having the software on an optical memory device or other personal storage and having some sort of digital property right over the software. Techno-reversion serves as a natural brake on unnecessary “innovation”, meaning the obsession with innovation for innovation’s sake that I mentioned earlier. However, it is important to distinguish between beneficial reversion and genuine regression. Sometimes it might indicate a failure to properly implement genuinely useful technological advances (see 3D movies). If we are to borrow from the jargon of economists, I would compare this to a market correction.

Perhaps the lesson here is that what appears to be “going backward” is sometimes actually finding the appropriate balance. For early adopters, this phenomenon is more challenging. They are more likely to invest time and money in technologies that may revert to older solutions or fail entirely. Rather than dismissing individuals who prefer “outdated” solutions as being afraid of change, we might recognize that such preferences can be rational responses to over-engineered solutions.

But what is much more interesting to me is looking at this through the lens of human nature. Because it seems to go against many ideas that have been studied in marketing, psychology, and behavioral economics regarding how prolonged exposure leads people to adopt things that are not necessarily superior, just more familiar, visible, or marketed effectively. It appears that people eventually recognize when “innovations” do not actually improve their lives. Even digital natives like Gen-Z can reject digital solutions in favor of practices they had minimal exposure to or maybe are even reinventing.

Photo source: PxHere.com.