Technology and Progress

I just updated my desktop to 10.13.1 for no other reason than that I was prompted to do so.

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Knowing full well that it will gradually make my hardware obsolete. Should I care?

There are a couple of issues that we need to tease out here. One is the infallible drive toward innovation. I innovate because my bottom line depends on it. Failure to innovate makes me a dinosaur. Innovate or risk — no, guarantee — extinction.

The other issue is, I am actually attracted to goods that do more and do more well in less time and with greater accuracy, skill, thoroughness, etc. And, like it or not, I have no interest returning to iPhone 4 or 3; even though I realize that had all of us held still at iPhone 3 — like all of us have held still with human beings 2.o — little would be lost. But that would also mean that everything else held still. We would then find ourselves in John Steward Mills “steady state.” OK. Worse things have happened.

These two issues are, of course, related. The absolute necessity to innovate (or die) has inured all of us to the expectation that our world will constantly change. (If it didn’t, we would worry.) On the other hand, this expectation is itself driven by necessity. We cannot not change. All of us, existentially, have learned to feel the risk we associate with the failure to advance, in careers, in knowledge, in wealth, in social standing. Standing still is death. Moving forward is attractive.

So my challenge is to think about what would have to happen in order for the two to be isolated from one another. What if innovation was driven, for example, by my desire for better health care for all, or safer streets, or better educational opportunity. What if every innovation left us safer, healthier, smarter, more enriched, more friendly?

My point is that narrowing our incentive structure down to cold, hard cash deprives us of a range of enjoyments and pleasures to which we might otherwise feel entitled.

What if, when I upgraded to 10.13.1 I also received a desktop that could handle it elegantly? What if the drive here was not only the bottom line, but the beauty or speed or wonder that Apple features in its advertisements?

What if?

 

 

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