Are we as innovative?

Part of me wants to deny this but look at the article and realise tht there are a few good arguments being made. "One of the points of late capitalism, and a period of consolidation, is that everyone gets to sample the fruits of earlier innovation: cheap flights, cheap phones, designer clothes, the ubiquitous availability of the internet, therapy and sushi.
But the sheer lack of fundamental innovation now may explain the tenacity of traditional religion, and why contemporary art seems so flat, banal and repetitive, why television and movies are obsessed with safe repeats (such as Star Wars) and feel-good endings (Bridget Jones, Love Actually) and why fiction, as John Banville commented recently, is likewise lacking in edge."

Is this another way of talking about the end of history? However, what if like the advent of Punk in the late 70's we are actually in a doldrum period that is about to break out into something really energetic and seriously innovative? Could be that the environmental crisis is a driver of something bigger. I would say that the discovery or invention of systems/eco/holistic/integralist thinking is likely to be huge once we really grasp it culturally -and there are signs that it is beginning to happen. Whether that really is new or is consolidation is an interesting question but I suspect it will be new in its reach and range.

I'm actually working on some writing to try to begin the process [well continue the process really] of recasting Christian theology and faith in a holist mode because it seems to me that it isn't really being done and it needs to be.

However, I would also like to question the thesis about how innovative previous ages have been: the argument of consolidating previous ideas and inventions is unfair, perhaps; I'm not convinced that the industrial revolution was in these terms that innovative and the science of Einstein and following could simply be seen as inevitable developments of the scientific method which itself owes a lot to Aristotle ... so I'm not entirely sure that this thesis isn't a bit of old-fogeyism; you know 'things were better in the old days'

I suspect that we will look back and note the significance of 'drop the debt' and/vs globalisation, cognitive science [in uncovering the somatic basis/media of our consciousness] and the necessity of invention in global warming as truly world changing -in addition to systems thinking.
The Observer | Comment | We've got no idea: [:culture:]