{"id":29053,"date":"2017-12-21T07:34:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T12:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29053"},"modified":"2017-12-21T07:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T12:34:06","slug":"the-golden-rule-of-technological-progress-innovation-doesnt-solve-problems-it-creates-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29053","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Rule of Technological Progress: Innovation Doesn’t Solve Problems, It Creates Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Golden Rule of Technological Progress: Innovation Doesn’t Solve Problems, It Creates Them<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Image from RealPharmacy<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

See that thing up there? It is an autonomous security robot<\/a>, something that’s becoming fashionable nowadays. Obviously, for every problem, there has to be a technological solution. So, what could go wrong with the idea that the problem of homeless people can be solved by means of security robots?<\/p>\n

There is something badly wrong with the way we approach what we call “problems” and our naive faith in technology becomes more and more pathetic. And now we are deploying security robots all over the world. Surely a “solution” but it is not so clear what the problem is.<\/p>\n

The story of this silly robot made me think of a post that I published a few months ago where I stated what I called “the golden rule of technological innovation<\/i>: “innovation doesn’t solve problems, it creates them”. And the more I think about that, the more I think it is true.<\/p>\n

From “Cassandra’s Legacy”, May 24, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n

The Coming Seneca Cliff of the Automotive Industry: the Converging Effect of Disruptive Technologies and Social Factors<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This graph shows the projected demise of individual car ownership in the US, according\u00a0to\u00a0“RethinkX”<\/a>. That will lead to the demise of the automotive industry as we know it\u00a0since a much smaller number of cars will be needed. If this is not a\u00a0Seneca collapse<\/a>, what is?\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n


\n<\/i>Decades of work in research and development taught me this:<\/p>\n

Innovation does not solve problems, it creates them.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n
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Which I could call “the Golden Rule of Technological Innovation.<\/i>” There are so many cases of this law at work that it is hard for me to decide where I should start from. Just think of nuclear energy; do you understand what I mean?<\/div>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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The Golden Rule of Technological Progress: Innovation Doesn’t Solve Problems, It Creates Them Image from RealPharmacy See that thing up there? It is an autonomous security robot, something that’s becoming fashionable nowadays. Obviously, for every problem, there has to be a technological solution. So, what could go wrong with the idea that the problem of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[10777,17613,1825,13247,786,2692],"class_list":["post-29053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-cassandras-legacy","tag-disruptions","tag-progress","tag-seneca-collapse","tag-technology","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29054,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29053\/revisions\/29054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}