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New technologies may be heralded as life-changing innovations or feared as risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. Anxieties surrounding technology are often heightened by perceptions that their benefits will accrue to small sections of society while the risks are more widely distributed.
Innovation and Its Enemies identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. It looks at a number of historical examples, including coffee, electricity, margarine, farm mechanization, recorded music, transgenic crops and transgenic animals, to show how new technologies emerge, take root and create new institutional ecologies that favor their dominance in the marketplace.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Gales of Creative Destruction
- 2. Brewing Trouble: Coffee
- 3. Stop the Presses: Printing the Koran
- 4. Smear Campaigns: Margarine
- 5. Gaining Traction: Farm Mechanization
- 6. Charged Arguments: Electricity
- 7. Cool Reception: Mechanical Refrigeration
- 8. Facing the Music: Recorded Sound
- 9. Taking Root: Transgenic Crops
- 10. Swimming against the Current: AquAdvantage Salmon
- 11. Oiling the Wheels of Novelty
- Notes
- References
- Index
About the author
Calestous Juma was Professor of the Practice of International Development and Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. A national of Kenya, he was an internationally-recognized authority on the role of science, technology, and innovation in economic development.
Summary
It is a curious situation that technologies we now take for granted have, when first introduced, so often stoked public controversy and concern for public welfare. At the root of this tension is the perception that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society, while the risks will be more widely distributed.
Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology history, Calestous Juma identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. He reveals the extent to which modern technological controversies grow out of distrust in public and private institutions and shows how new technologies emerge, take root, and create new institutional ecologies that favor their establishment in the marketplace. Innovation and Its Enemies calls upon public leaders to work with scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to manage technological change and expand public engagement on scientific and technological matters.
Additional text
14/01/2019
