This is why I think the Internet might actually be stifling innovation and creativity.

I find that more and more often I think of something, then search on the internet, and if I see that someone somewhere has done anything similar, I abandon the project immediately. After all, it's been done, so what's the point?

Net result if we push this to an extreme: instead of pursuing interesting ideas people end up wasting time in useless discussions on Hacker News, thus adding exactly zero value and failing to move humanity forward.

At a first approximation, everything has been tried by someone. It is very, very rare to have a truly groundbreaking idea. But that's not a problem! Humanity advances mostly through incremental improvements, not just by giant leaps.

So stop criticizing and start doing.

> I find that more and more often I think of something, then search on the internet, and if I see that someone somewhere has done anything similar, I abandon the project immediately. After all, it's been done, so what's the point?

Or you learn how much progress has been made on the subject you're researching and, standing on the shoulders of giants, make new independent discoveries based on what has already been found.

It's not the Internet's fault if most people don't have the right mindset for research.

What you describe is not stifled creativity but a hurt self-esteem.

There are lots of people in the world smarter then you (and me). This might be humbling, but this can also be used to your advantage.

Instead of being sad about someone having had already invented what you thought about, build upon it! It's magic: you just thought about it, and it already exists, often ready to be used. Use it and build the next level. Pick the ready-made wheels, steel beams, a motor, and build something new, say, a car.

Sometimes I feel the same: I'm not going to be able to do this better or even as good, so I'll stop working on it.

Sometimes, though it's the other way around. This has been done, but it still sucks so I'm going to do it better. Or sometimes, it's been done and works great for these people but not for me, so I'm going to make it better for my use case.

It goes both ways.

The Internet is stifling innovation and creativity? Which Internet are you on? Mine is -full- of innovation and creativity. There's too much, in fact, to keep up with on a daily basis which is why I have to subscribe to aggregators like Hacker News!

yes, but some of us have higher standards of creativity than the 100th version of 2048 or the front page of reddit.

> the 100th version of 2048

Be fair: the internet also gave us the first version.

If only the author of 2048 had used a thinner font, think of all the electrons that could've been saved

I think you're right. I wonder how productive I'd be cancelling my ISP subscription. No flavors of the month, just me, my bookshelf, my compiler.

What's frustrating is the complete lack of historical context to most things on the internet. There is one version: current, and everything previous is deprecated. Is this kid aware of every similar attempt to alter typography to save ink? Probably not. Should we throw him under the bus for being ignorant? Probably not.

What I see when I close my eyes is a community that assumes the OP might be right. That's all it takes, the presumption that this person, as young/Blubby/naive as they are, can find a better route up the mountain. I think it just takes patience &/ humility.

I don't think we should throw him under the bus but someone should reign in the overly gushing coverage because it benefits no-one - not us, not the kid, not future kids.

Spider Robinson(?) has a classic short story about how infinite copyright terms with perfect archiving) will destroy the human psyche when we discover that there really is nothing new under the sun and all creativity is rehash.

It won't. Most of mass entertainment is an endless rehash of very narrow set of stories and the human psyche is no worse for it than it has ever been.

cf Joseph Campbell's "monomyth" and "The 7 basic plots"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

As others have pointed out: It wasn't the first time the idea had come up, but he came up with it and looked into it independently. That, at the age of 14, is the kind of thinking science fairs should be encouraging. As a Ph.D project? Not so much.

Are you suggesting that every high-school science project should be original, ground-breaking research?

I'm suggesting that science projects which are not original ground-breaking research should not be portrayed in the media as original ground-breaking research.

No but I'm suggesting this isn't nearly as big a deal as people are hyping and that the kid - whilst diligent - ain't a genius.

Nowhere does it suggest that the kid is some kind of genius. Not in the original article, nor in these threads. It's clear that this was a school science project and that he was encouraged by his teachers (and his reviewers) to pursue it.

The fact that it's considered newsworthy enough ("man bites dog" & all that) to merit a CNN story is itself the claim that this is somehow novel or interesting.

It's the same objection you'd have if CNN posted a story about "kid uses physical model to predict lava distribution from volcano using baking soda and vinegar".

Also "of the nearly 200 submissions they have received since 2011, Suvir's project was a real standout"

Fair point - it doesn't actually mention the word "genius".

Not to mention an off-the-shelf tool to actually do the calculation, meaning others have been working on this problem too.

It's not even that people have been thinking about it theoretically - actual places have actually implemented schemes to save money on toner and ink.

What I'm more interested in is: why did this kid get all the press coverage from this suggestion, as opposed to the numerous other people who have suggested it (many if them probably kids too).

This would be an interesting research project in and of itself. Slow news day? Pushy parents pimping him out to the news media?