The birth of the fire is the death of the log. The planting of crops marks the end of the meadow. The invention of the automobile marked the decline of the horse-drawn carriage. Creativity and innovation not only brings new products, services, and methodologies into the world, it also ushers out the old and outdated, which can have profound psychological impacts on those who are attached to the outdated technology.
In this article by columnist George Will, “Creative Destruction Can Be Exhilarating,” he begins with the rise and fall of Sears Roebuck and company and takes us on a ride into the thrill of creative change.
“Creative destruction continues in the digital age. After 244 years – it began publication five years before the 1773 Boston Tea Party –the Encyclopedia Britannica will henceforth be available only in digital form as it tries to catch up to reference websites such as Google and Wikipedia. Another digital casualty forgot it was selling the preservation of memories, aka “Kodak moments,” not film.
America now is divided between those who find this social churning unnerving and those who find it exhilarating. What Virginia Postrel postulated in 1998 in “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress” – the best book for rescuing the country from a ruinous itch for tidiness –is even more true now. Today’s primary political and cultural conflict is, Postrel says, between people, mislabeled “progressives,” who crave social stasis, and those, paradoxically called conservatives, who welcome the perpetual churning of society by dynamism.”
For George Will’s full article, see “Creative Destruction Can Be Exhilarating.”