Innovation Is Overrated by LAURA
BLISS
“New technologies and their inventors are often
celebrated as society’s heroes. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry Page:
These are all contemporary “innovators” whose “visionary ideas” and “creative
leaps” led to “disruptive realities”—that is, if one buys the rhetoric of
certain books and novelty-oriented publications.
But those who’ve questioned whether technology really is
society’s salve aren’t alone. Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of science and
technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology, wrote a dissertation on
innovation and regulation in the early days of the automobile. But lately, he
finds that the word “innovation” is overused to the point of
meaninglessness—and worse, that it can obfuscate the bleak realities of the
status quo. “In a culture where we forget about things like crumbling
infrastructure and wage inequality, those narratives about technological change
can be really dangerous,” Vinsel says.”