This feels to me like our current-generation’s endorsement of essentially what Schumpeter termed (+/- my usual mistakes in transcription) “gales of creative destruction”.
My more conservative farmer friends in Kentucky and Illinois regard Schumpeter as The Devil, delighting in the hardship of others from which the profiteers can make a living. Many of the complexity economists I know think of this destruction as not only real but in many cases salutary. Best to all, Eric > On Oct 17, 2016, at 2:18 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > > Dear Friammers, > > A close friend of mine has gone to work in marketing for a Startup Incubator > in Another City. I have been perusing the website and I notice frequent use > of the word “disruptors”, as if disruption was a goal in itself. This > puzzles me. I have always thought of technology as “enabling’ and have > thought of its disruptive effects as a kind of collateral damage that needs > to be mitigated. Now I recognize that one of the properties of a really good > technology company is the ability to respond quickly to disruption, and to > provide solutions and open up opportunities for those whose lives are > disrupted. And I realize that if I owned a technology company, I might want > to produce disruption in order that I might supply “enablors” to the > disrupted. But isn’t it a case of industrial narcissism to MARKET oneself as > a disruptor, a kind of “preaching to the choir”, rather than outreach to > potential purchasers of one’s technology? Or is my thinking “oh so 20th > Century.” > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
