Maynard writes, "If there’s one thing you can say about the challenges of innovating responsibly, it’s surely the over-used phrase “it’s complicated”.
There is at least one fundamental principle of innovation that is not complicated, and that's the relationship between 1) the human condition and 2) the philosophy upon which our science based culture is constructed.
1) HUMAN CONDITION: Human beings are of LIMITED ability, like every other species on the planet.
2) KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY: The modern world is built upon a "more is better" relationship with knowledge, a concept which is UNLIMITED.
What's indeed complicated is knowing when our limited human reality will collide with our unlimited desire for ever more power in a catastrophic manner. What's not complicated is understanding that this is going to happen sooner or later.
A blind faith devotion to a "more is better" relationship with knowledge infuses our society from the bottom to the top, and is perhaps most prominent in our cultural leaders, the scientific community. There really is no convincing evidence that the modern world will transcend this dangerous 19th century philosophy through the processes of reason alone.
Even the concept of "responsible innovation" seems prisoner to an outdated "more is better" relationship with knowledge, given that it seems to assume that we can continue to innovate without limit so long as we do so in a correct manner.
The solution to this conflict between a limited reality and an unlimited knowledge philosophy will come in the form of pain, as is so often true of human learning. If we are lucky that pain will come in a dose large enough to shock us out of the outdated 19th century "more is better" knowledge philosophy, while not being so large as to prevent the necessary learning and course correction.
Another outdated concept afflicting us is a notion left over from the past that, “yes, we will make mistakes, but we will learn from them and carry on to ever greater accomplishments”. What's so rarely truly grasped by even the best educated among us is that that ancient era ended on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m over Hiroshima Japan.
Seventy nine years later, and we still don't really get that, but think we do.
Maynard writes, "If there’s one thing you can say about the challenges of innovating responsibly, it’s surely the over-used phrase “it’s complicated”.
There is at least one fundamental principle of innovation that is not complicated, and that's the relationship between 1) the human condition and 2) the philosophy upon which our science based culture is constructed.
1) HUMAN CONDITION: Human beings are of LIMITED ability, like every other species on the planet.
2) KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY: The modern world is built upon a "more is better" relationship with knowledge, a concept which is UNLIMITED.
What's indeed complicated is knowing when our limited human reality will collide with our unlimited desire for ever more power in a catastrophic manner. What's not complicated is understanding that this is going to happen sooner or later.
A blind faith devotion to a "more is better" relationship with knowledge infuses our society from the bottom to the top, and is perhaps most prominent in our cultural leaders, the scientific community. There really is no convincing evidence that the modern world will transcend this dangerous 19th century philosophy through the processes of reason alone.
Even the concept of "responsible innovation" seems prisoner to an outdated "more is better" relationship with knowledge, given that it seems to assume that we can continue to innovate without limit so long as we do so in a correct manner.
The solution to this conflict between a limited reality and an unlimited knowledge philosophy will come in the form of pain, as is so often true of human learning. If we are lucky that pain will come in a dose large enough to shock us out of the outdated 19th century "more is better" knowledge philosophy, while not being so large as to prevent the necessary learning and course correction.
Another outdated concept afflicting us is a notion left over from the past that, “yes, we will make mistakes, but we will learn from them and carry on to ever greater accomplishments”. What's so rarely truly grasped by even the best educated among us is that that ancient era ended on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m over Hiroshima Japan.
Seventy nine years later, and we still don't really get that, but think we do.
Human limitations.