The birth of invention for half a century. San Diego. Tucked in the crook of California's Pacific coast-facing mitt. Stanford University. Squeezed between Sand Hill Road (where the VC’s reside) and Page Hill Road (where lawyers arbitrate) lies the most efficient startup-creating ecosystem ever found. Silicon Valley.
Let's talk about our "impulse to invent” and why it requires oversight. First, inventions.
Culture is fueled by invention. By trends and ideas. Novelty and rearrangement. It happens when coders code, writers write, artists break the rules, and influencers innovate.
Its nature is progressive. Its rhythm, cyclical. Its goal, nothing short of revolution. It's available to anyone, and it awaits the first pioneer.
Invention has brought us from the Stone Age through the Ages of Bronze, Iron, and Steel to the Age of Modernity and Technology as we think of it today.
Despite lacking one, the smartphone is the invention I tend to dwell on. Its case studies are inexhaustible with its generative nature on full display:
From the smartphone, we made countless apps. Created communities that span continents. Harnessed the power of the GPS, television, radio, and computer for miniature use (then expanded them beyond their limitations from previous forms).
The same is true of numerous landmark inventions: language, books, light, plastic. Ex uno plures. Out of one, many.
And through that many, we witnessed the boom of the world's economy. Adam Smith anointed an "economic man" in The Wealth of Nations…We haven't looked back since. This lack of hindsight clarifies our impulse's more disordered quality.
|im·pulse| n. 1 a sudden strong and unreflective urge or desire to act...
We make and make better, but we do not often make right. We omit edits. We see ourselves as infallible. We believe the responsibility to be another's.
Our industrial complex doesn't aid the problem. On the contrary, division of labor allows us to remove ourselves from the problem's source. The smartphone engineer isn't complicit in Facebook's malpractice and outrage-mongering. The app designer isn't to blame for a device's internal notification system (aka distraction system). Lithium miners sell minerals to the best-buying smartphone manufacturer.
Users find themselves holding the bag. We experience the increasing Ledger of Harms from injurious technologies.
This is why it's fundamental that we equip ourselves with knowledge. Knowledge of how to reimagine technology that acts in our interest. That allows us to reconnect to attack large-scale problems. That removes distraction from hampering the pursuit of dreams.
