alt Hacker NewsI highly doubt there's a steering input device so superior to the current wheel shape that it's worth throwing out the existing standard. Yes, at one point how steering should work (or how you should navigate the Web) was uncertain, but eventually everyone settled on something that worked well enough that it was no longer worthwhile to mess with it.
Although, one thought I had is that there's nothing wrong with experimenting with non-standard interfaces as long as you still have the option to still just buy, say, a Toyota with a standard steering wheel instead of 3D Moebius Steering or whatever. The problem is when the biggest manufacturers keep forcing changes by top-down worldwide fiat, forcing customers to either grin and bear it or quit driving (or using the Web) entirely.
I sympathise with the frustration, but I think the issue isn't innovation itself: it's that we've lost the ability to distinguish between solving actual problems and just making things different.
Take mobile interfaces. When touchscreens arrived, we genuinely needed new patterns. A mouse pointer paradigm on a 3.5" screen with fat fingers simply doesn't work. Swipe gestures, pull-down menus, bottom navigation—these emerged because the constraints demanded it, not because someone thought "wouldn't it be novel if..."
The problem now is that innovation has become cargo-culted. Companies innovate because they think they should, not because they've identified a genuine problem. Every app wants its own navigation paradigm, its own gesture language, its own idea of where the back button lives. That's not innovation, that's just noise.
However, I'd have to push back on the car analogy: steering wheels were an innovation over tillers, and a crucial one. Tillers gave you poor mechanical advantage and required constant two-handed attention. The steering wheel solved real problems: better control, one-handed operation, more space for passengers. It succeeded because it was genuinely better, and then it standardised because there was no reason to keep experimenting.
The web needs more of that approach: innovate when there's a genuine problem, then standardise when you've found something that works. The issue isn't innovation, it's the perverse incentive to differentiate for its own sake.