Reversing Technological Innovation

The present rush of automation and technological change has resulted in a cultural adjustment that resists the “tech-fixers.” It tends to preserve older values and the incorrigibility of human nature. For a contrary trend accompanies the “tech-fixing” syndrome, a kind of human defense mechanism against efficiency, speedup, and convenience that undermines both positive and negative effects of innovation. This trend toward the reversal principle is most clearly apparent in the recent pursuits of technology: every new offensive weapon begets a defensive system or forces another, new competitive system into being—erasing, in either case, incremental advantages and sometimes rendering whole systems obsolete. The tech-fixers’ common response to this process is to accelerate the innovation process as though to outdistance the reversal principle.

Such a reversal principle is apparent in the nuclear stalemate. Today’s great powers must arm themsel...