How a Group of Bureaucrats, Standards Engineers, and Introverts Made Digital Infrastructures That Kind of Work Most of the Time
20 december 2015 | Ingen har kommenterat än
Man kan bli rätt trött på hajpen kring innovation. Begreppet har blivit ”the dominant ideology of the day, beloved of Silicon Valley-headed libertarians, TED Talkers, Wall Street business hustlers, and Republican and Democrat presidents alike”, konstaterar teknikprofessorn Lee Vinsel. (Här hemma har vi Digitaliseringskommissionen som i hög grad framstår som en oreflekterad månglare i teknikoptimismens tjänst.)
När Walter Isaacsons bok The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolutionkom ut 2014 föreslog teknikhistorikern Andrew Russell att man snarare borde ge ut en bok med titeln som ovan. Nu organiserar Vinsel en konferens kring maintenance kontra innovation i stället. ”Our society overvalues novelty and neglects taking care of what we have. We can build a thing – say, a road or a bridge – but once built, do we have the will to service and repair it?”
Vinsel är en rätt artikulerad kritiker av innovationsmantrat. Hans 95 teser om innovation är underhållande men bister läsning (länkarna i texten är mina):
”The overemphasis on revolutionary technological change has led to a series of false prophets and empty promises. From gene therapy to biotechnology to nanotechnology – waves of jargon and technobabble have washed over us with little payoff. (…)
We have corrupted ourselves … [when] we have reshaped our society in the name of innovation.
Sober analysts of innovation, like William J. Abernathy, Nathan Rosenberg, and David Mowery, tell us that incremental innovation has always been the primary generator of economic growth. But our society has, unwisely, become obsessed with revolutionary, or ’disruptive’, technological change.
The epitome of this focus on radical technical change is Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School who has written a series of works on ’disruptive innovation’. Disruptive innovation occurs when a new technology or service massively undermines an existing industry, sometimes leading to complete collapse. Christensen’s works and those of his imitators emphasized the importance of disruptive innovation for the economic and technological history.
But recent studies have found that Christensen’s theory is profoundly flawed. Of 77 cases that he used to ’prove’ his point, only 9 cases actually fit the criteria of his own theory. Disruptive innovation is neither as frequent, nor as important as Christensen led people to believe in the many books he sold and the many talks he gave around the world.
Christensen and his disciples dealt in snake oil for the innovation age. By drawing our attention to falsehoods and things that rarely actually matter, they damaged our culture.”
Tipstack till Gustav Holmberg på Det perfekta tomrummet.
Kategori: Ekonomi, media och samhälle, Prylar och teknologi, Webb och IT
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