You don't see the innovation cause you aren't a hammocker, maybe. For those of us who get tired of lugging 20 feet of strapping and rings, it's a darn nice option to have.

Frankly, there's just not a lot of innovation in the backpacking world - just fine tuning what's already there. And maybe them's fighting words, but all we ever do is play out a million variations of a sack on the back with a collection of gear that varies in material composition and size, but it's always more or less the same. The stove geeks want to wave their hands about how the titanium stove is different than the aluminum one, the tent geeks want to show off the difference between the Epic sewn to the bugnetting and the silnylon, the pack geeks want to go on about cuben pack vs sil vs cordura...

I like not needing to detach the #$%^^ ropes from the tree to adjust the position of the hammock under the tarp when it starts raining and it's obvious the head end is an inch too far. That's enough innovation to make me happy. It's all I can really expect - how much are you going to expect the basic formula of fabric between trees to change?

It's all micro-innovation until the antigravity backpack shows up.