A lot has been said already about the role of science as an essential underpinning of innovation. But apart from this perspective of innovation through science, there’s another aspect of the science-innovation relation I’d like to cast some light on: How does innovation in science work?
While we can recount the history of past technological progress, we cannot anticipate is future trajectory. And still we keep making futile attempts at predicting what is un-predeterminable. We have to come to terms with the onway nature of path-dependence.
In the preceding two posts, I missed an important aspect of our unrealistic expectations: the ambiguous attitude towards technology that runs through today's western societies. So here's part 3 of 2.
Earlier on I posted that innovation essentially is change that generates value for society. From that perspective, society should just embrace every bit of innovation it could get hold of, shouldn’t it?
Humanity has proved to be incredibly innovative in adjusting our living conditions to our advantage. It seems as if our collective ingenuity was absolutely superior and capable of mastering any kind of problem. But is this really true??
understanding innovation 