Jason Crawford

Welcome, everybody.

Great to see so many folks here.

Great to be here.

Thanks for showing up.

I have been a Slate Star Codex reader for at least five or six years.

So some of you have probably been reading it a lot longer than I have, but it didn't take too long for it to become basically my favorite blog on the Internet.

Going through a little bit of withdrawal now in these last couple of months.

The other night, I was checking out Scott's old posts on LessWrong, just like his all-time greatest hits and catching up on ones I hadn't caught because they were like 10 or 12 years old.

They're still good, by the way.

So if you're feeling some Scott withdrawal, you can give that a try.

Yeah, let me just dive right into the presentation.

Okay, so let's talk about this nonlinear model of innovation.

I just want to start with a simple question.

What is the relationship between science and invention?

Now, on the face of it, you might think this is a pretty easy question.

Obviously, science is the foundation of technology.

By the way, I will use the words invention and technology more or less interchangeably in this talk.

So yeah, duh, of course science is the basis of technology, right?

I mean, you know, everything in our modern world seems to depend on science.

Can't imagine having a smartphone without the science of electromagnetism or the physics of semiconductors.