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Are you kidding? There is more original thought now every day than occurred in any given *year* before 1600.
I cite four basic pieces of support:
1) creativity is currently a highly prized facet of humanity. This has not always been the case, as a matter of fact in the history of civilization this is a pretty damed rare thing. Normally the rule of thumb for the population is "don't be different, don't stir things up" now, we value cleverness and originality more highly than anything else. Rather than fighting to get something new embraced, It is almost necessary to beat the neophiles off with sticks. This leads people to actively try to be original. On top of this the world population has more leisure time, and more free resources than ever before. This leads to art, and pondering both of which are great generators of originality.
2) The current world population is greater than the *sum total* of everyone who has previously lived. even though our history is long, we currently have more man hours to think of stuff than history provided. This is particularly important in conjunction with point 3
3) We are in an unprecedented technological, social and cultural growth phase. There are more "things" now than there ever have been in history, and every day there are even more (as a matter of fact, every day there is a greater increase than there ever have been) This point was explained quite well by Jonsgirl. Because there are more things, more nouns if you will, all of the ideas about the new things are open to be thought of for the first time. This applies obviously to technology, but if you give it some thought it also applies to art, religion, and most other aspects of culture.
4) The last point is related to #3, but is a bit complicated. It is basically that simple fact that you *can't* run out of original ideas. The pool of ideas is in fact infinite. This was actually proved by the mathematician Godel. The basis of his proof was that no system of rules could be constructed so that it could assert every true statement about the system. The whole thing is a bit complicated, but explained quite well in the book "Godel, Escher, Bach... Eternal Golden Brade" But for those who don't feel like digging into it, rest assured that it is a sound proof, and that there are truly an unlimited number of relevant and interesting ideas.
I don't know about other fields, but I know that in math and the hard sciences originality is running rampant. Completely new ideas appear daily, and new discoveries prompt never before imagined discussions constantly. Simply because Hollywood can't seem to come up with too many new ideas doesn't mean humanity as a whole is having the same problem
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Use the star one and you'll be fighting off the old ones with your bare hands
-A Shoggoth on the Roof
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