What we need is not more innovation, but a change of direction. The question is not whether we become a little richer and have a few more toys, but whether civilization, or indeed life on Earth, can survive. What we need is not just any technological innovation, but innovation in the interest of environmental protection of health and safety and of infrastructures that can secure a civilized existence. We must turn our attention to real social problems and away from the twin illusion that technological innovation can achieve economic growth and that growth can solve all our problems. Let the market cater for technological innovation, and let governments get on with their task of securing the public interest that markets cannot secure. Civilized survival is at stake.
Predictor: Braun, Ernest
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Futures, Ernest Braun, a professor at the Centre for Technology Strategy, The Open University, United Kingdom, writes: ”It is clutching at straws if we believe that the wave of technological innovations related to information and communication technologies (ICT) will herald the beginning of a new economic upswing, a new Kondratiev wave in economic activity. On balance, the view that ICT is a destroyer of jobs is much more plausible. ICT leads to increased capital and decreased labour intensity in manufacture and, infinitely worse, it has the same effect in the service sector. It is unlikely that ordinary economic growth will lead to such demand for goods and services as to compensate for labor-saving effects of ICT and no amount of technological innovation is likely to solve the problem of unemployment. What we need is not more innovation, but a change of direction. The question is not whether we become a little richer and have a few more toys, but whether civilization, or indeed life on Earth, can survive. What we need is not just any technological innovation, but innovation in the interest of environmental protection of health and safety and of infrastructures that can secure a civilized existence. We must turn our attention to real social problems and away from the twin illusion that technological innovation can achieve economic growth and that growth can solve all our problems. Let the market cater for technological innovation, and let governments get on with their task of securing the public interest that markets cannot secure. Civilized survival is at stake.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Employment
Name of publication: Futures
Title, headline, chapter name: Can Technological Innovation Lead Us To Utopia?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Volume 26, Number 8 ISSN: 07462468-02795590
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty