Is Constant Innovation Dangerous? See Ancient Rome

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/11/18/Sander_van_der_Leeuw_The_Archaeology_of_Innovation

Archaeologist Sander van der Leeuw discusses the dangers of constant innovation. "Every innovation creates a cascade of new challenges," he says, which shifts a society's focus to short-term thinking. He warns China is currently "addicted to innovation," but praises the bustling nation for its focus on long-term thinking.

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Are we the first civilization to try and innovate our way out of climate change? How have past societies engineered sustainable solutions to a shifting world?

Sander van der Leeuw, Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute, has spent his career studying these questions. During his seminar, van der Leeuw explores this research into the past, as well as its application to our current global predicament. - Long Now Foundation

Sander van der Leeuw is an archaeologist and historian by training. After teaching appointments at Leyden, Amsterdam, Cambridge (UK) and Paris he presently holds the Chair of Anthropology at Arizona State University in the USA. He is an External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute, a Correspondent of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Stewart Brand is a co-founder and managing director of Global Business Network, founded and runs the GBN Book Club, and is the president of The Long Now Foundation.

Brand is well known for founding, editing and publishing the Whole Earth Catalog (01968-85), which received a National Book Award for the 01972 issue. In 01984, he founded The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area. It now has 11,000 active users worldwide and is considered a bellwether of the genre.

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[bigsteelguy]

What is dangerous is the suppression of inventions to keep the competition level at an equal level to make huge profits from similer technology.

We don't want to abuse technology but that is what we are doing today.

Technology can Free humanity or destroy humanity. When people in power believe they can hoard all the money and resources and not allow a civilization to flourish and grow then that is the problem we have.

Money is the root of all our problems

[sugarpuddin88]

Bureaucracies & administrators stymie creativity and innovation in an effort to impose order & control

Creativity & innovation is only found in free societies with little bureaucratic interruption

[jsmythib]

@bigsteelguy debt as money is the root of all our problems.

[studentofsmith]

Decentralized decision making systems (i.e. the free market) are very flexible and can adapt rapidly to changes. Centralized, top-down systems (i.e. command and control economies) cannot adapt as quickly and have a harder time coping with change.

I'll lay odds Mr. van der Leeuw favors a high degree of government control over the economy. That's why he see innovation as a threat. It poses problems for his economic ideology.

[noobler9]

@JonnieDarko69 the collective information they relied on wasn't developed by profiteers, so much as a war effort leading to a boost in computation capabilities designed for artillery tracking of trajectories

[noobler9]

@halo3pro45 "TESLA" was motivated not by monetary goals completely, but rather to see his works credited to him among other things* not edison as for what happened, well, tesla was one story, and in fact while not to the same degree, it's happened quite a lot amongst those developers, they get screwed over when it comes time to "pay them their due"

[noobler9]

@OhNoItsGojira agreed, I still say you have to have the right idea to continue on, as with anything built off really bad assumptions, the product will be terrible, and to use them in the name of constant innovation is suicide, that's why "field experiments" in the military aren't done until laboratory ones are typically with military equipment for instance

it's stupid not to, which is a general statement about innovation

but yea, "lol monetary based innovation"

[noobler9]

innovation means building on what already exists, a short period of time to figure out whether or not, and if not where not, you have the right idea, is essential, you can leap after you've looked to keep going just fine 5 year plans a la communism in russia and the great leap forward a la mao, 'nuff said

[asmodeus585]

@halo3pro45: Well, Edison wasn't an A-star student either...

[SpyroOrDie]

@sugarpuddin88 there you will also find slavery and environmental degredation

[oclandestin]

If constant innovation is a problem, then the USA is clearly in a worse position than China.

[OhNoItsGojira]

My point is simply that its foolish to assume the desire for innovation and progress is tied inextricably to a monetary/political system. In a service-based system, or any other social system, technological and scientific innovations would still occur regardless of the absence of monetary compensation.