Taking a big step back (or OUT you may say), and looking at the current "landscape" or "ecosystem" if you will, we see A LOT OF STUFF. But nothing that's really super innovate. Hundreds of frameworks, new languages sprouting up all the time, more and more apps.
But we still have infinite problems and it's arguable as to whether all of this STUFF has made a huge impact on the grand scheme of quality of life. Perhaps if we zoom back in past the general quality of life and back into the software space at least, there does seem to be an extreme focus on quantity. How many of xyz can get get out in J time? "How much?" is asked a lot more than "How good?" This is one of the things that concerns me about my generation. I'm not sure if any of you have had the experience of using a poor quality piece of software every day for a long time, then suddenly you discover software which does the same thing but it was developed with a lot more time/attention/QUALITY. It's a night-and-day difference, and friends, it's scary.
But in general, this trend can be seen in many areas of humanity. After you get an expensive car, it becomes "how MANY can you get?" "How MUCH money can we earn?" "How MANY matches can you get on Tinder?" Etc... It's like we are being socially conditioned that "More = better" when in reality, that isn't true at all. How many people who have a lot of money or other things actually lead sad, depressing, low quality lives? Many, as we see with celebrities. And again, I myself just did it by asking the quantity of people that we see. I'm seeing thousands more video games, tons more languages, tons more apps, and etc... Sprout up now than in my childhood, but very few actually seem to make a lasting difference. What are your thoughts on this?
Humans have the tendency to always want things that are extraordinary. But sadly, we don't invest a significant amount of time in building the same. And there are reasons as to why we don't(constraints like time, money, family, distractions).
Hence, the entire human race is at this phase where we need a lot of 'X' or we need one excellent form of X. But we are also a race which think nothing can ever be good enough and its my personal opinion that this is what causes us to settle for quantity over quality.
Also, there are super innovations but they are far and few primarily because its not EASY but secondarily because every field gets saturated and we think we have hit the glass ceiling. The irony is that glass ceilings are supposed to be an invisible and unacknowledged barrier, so we are stuck in a world where we subconsciously limit ourselves.
There is a part of me that also feels that creativity is being curbed because our brains are geared for thinking logically. From the point we are born, the urge for logical answers rather than creative answers is what makes us, us. If kids grew up with the idea that the sky is blue because humans decided to paint it that way and the Sun is a giant ball filled with 40watt bulbs, we probably would have some creative solutions for questions we don't have answers to right now. So we either need to promote creativity or logical thinking and its near impossible for someone to develop both of these skills.
p.s - when I say creativity, I mean really eccentric creativity as thats what gets us 'super innovates'