On Jun 16, 9:43*pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
A key word in this question is "new", which could be interpreted as
"new new" or "incrementally new". *Incrementally new is best served by
examining state-of-art and making incremental improvement. *New new is
best served by rethinking from a more fundamental perspective. *I
contend that, in any field, there is a large percentage of researchers
who do not bother thinking about "new new", because they regard it as
a fruitless endeavor or too risky. *But sooner or later, "new new"
reveals itself, and the cylce repeats.

I contend that "new new" simply does not exist. *All* advances are
incremental. To the extent that any advance appears to be revolutionary,
it is only because its predecessors are not widely known.

There is no such thing as quantized progress in technology of course.
Anything that looks like a wheel can be traced back 1000's of years.
"New new" is a relative concept. One must assess how new is is the
new new relative to what others consider to be the state-of-the-art at
the time.

A great example of this is the transistor. To the general public, it looks
like this great sudden flash of innovation. Looking at the actual history
of the field, it was the culmination of years of incremental advances.

That brings another point. Conception and perfection of the new
cannot be an instantaneous act. Development of the new occurs over
time. So again, newness must be considered within the context of the
state of the art. For example, if a new PAV were created, in 2008,
that satisfied the challenges put forth by CAFE, one could always
claim that its design builds upon the work of others, even though the
general public might regard it as a technological breakthrough:

http://www.cafefoundation.org/v2/pav_home.php

1. Fully glass cockpit? Not new, the LCD's come from ViewSonic, and
has been done already anyway.
2. Software-controlled autostabilization? Not new. Uses long history
of PID and other control theory. Other aircraft do it.
3. Electric generator? Not new at all, on an airplane, or otherwise.
4. Vertical Take-Off & Landing? Old concept. Other aircraft do it.
5. Side-mounted joystick controls instead of a yoke? Not new. Many
aircraft have them.
6. Elimination of foot-pedals? Done already.
7. New means of lift? (no comment..heheh)
8. Elimination of mechanical controls? Not new.
9. Ultra-quiet? Not new. Other aircraft have been made to be ultra-
quiet.

You get the point. With sufficient argument, everthing new can be seen
as old. Even with transistors, one could argue that sand has been here
since very early days of earth, and to some extent, were conducting
long before scientists discovered semiconduction.

Determining whether something is evolutionary versus revolutionary is
inherently subjective, making the truth thereof vulnerable to the
prejudices of the obvservers. Because we have no omniscient being
willing to serve as impartial judge, another path to objectivity must
be found. Strangely, one of the best places to look is toward those
who have no familiarity at all with the intricacies of the subject.

Then, if the criteria of CAFE for a PAV were satisfied, atomically and
simultaneously, for a total cost of say $50,000, we might not regard
it as a revolutionary step, but the general public would.

So revolutionary design, by definition, has a temporal element. The
designer cannot claim revolution if the features of the new are
disseminated in a diarrhetic mode where the period of presentation is
so long that the observers become bored with progress.

A revolutionary system requires the simultaneous application of many
advanced concepts, across technological disciplines, at once.

If you think I'm wrong, I'd love to see some counterexamples. Especially
if you can give counterexamples which not only were not incremental, but
which were invented by someone who was not already an expert in the field.

Hah..tempting, but as mentioned, no matter what I name, the
contraption could always be regarded as evolutionary.

Nevertheless, the notion that revolutionary ideas exist, even though
they are inextricably evolutionary, still prevails.

Here is an example from NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005..._concepts.html

-Le Chaud Lapin-