Is there a reason we almost never hear of “great inventors” anymore, but rather the companies and the CEOs said inventions were made under?

Question

Is there a reason we almost never hear of “great inventors” anymore, but rather the companies and the CEOs said inventions were made under?

In: 5024

Answer 1

The 19th and to an extent the 20th Century saw an industrial revolution that led to a lot of people inventing cool physical things powered by steam and electricity. Our age is more of a digital revolution. Our big inventions tend to be computer programs and specifically the algorithms that power them. These are often less exciting and harder to understand than physical inventions and thus less romanticized. However, they have a low barrier to monetize compared to physical things because algorithms don’t have to be manufactured, so the inventors can more readily become CEOs. One example is Larry Page, who invented a smarter search engine that found more relevant results on the internet more quickly. He turned it into Google and became crazy wealthy.