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The literature on sustainability and the human future emphasizes the belief that population and/or mass consumption caused resource degradation and collapse in earlier societies. Archaeological literature proposing overshoot and collapse appears in current debates over resource conservation versus continued economic growth. The prominence of this debate, with its national and international dimensions, makes it important to assess whether there is evidence in the archaeological literature for overshoot and collapse brought on by Malthusian overpopulation and/or mass consumption. 59 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006.35:59-74. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org by ARIZONA STATE UNIV. on 09/25/06. For personal use only.

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Innovation underpins the industrial way of life. It is assumed implicitly both that it will continue to do so, and that it will produce solutions to the problems we face involving climate and resources. These assumptions underlie the thinking of many economists and the political leaders whom they influence. Such a view assumes that innovation in the future will be as productive as it has been in the recent past. To test whether this is likely to be so, we investigate the productivity of innovation in the United States using data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The results suggest that the conventional optimistic view may be unwarranted. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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