This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the possibilities keep increasing.
There are plenty of inventions yet to make, from complex AI enabled devices down to the simple mundane items that make daily life slightly easier. I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely.
By saying that it is harder to invent things now shows you have fallen into one of the traps that the author highlights:
> If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some.
You have never seen the thing you need to invent so it takes either a leap of inspiration or a concerted effort to sit down and think of something new to solve a problem you have, chances are you will get their iteratively over a long time and not really see what you have made as "an invention".
Ideation isn't some spark that hits you, ideas need to be thought about and created with effort.
There are plenty of inventions yet to make, from complex AI enabled devices down to the simple mundane items that make daily life slightly easier. I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely.
By saying that it is harder to invent things now shows you have fallen into one of the traps that the author highlights:
> If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some.
You have never seen the thing you need to invent so it takes either a leap of inspiration or a concerted effort to sit down and think of something new to solve a problem you have, chances are you will get their iteratively over a long time and not really see what you have made as "an invention".
Ideation isn't some spark that hits you, ideas need to be thought about and created with effort.