Let’s All Stop Saying ‘Disrupt’ Right This Instant

The problem with this reaction is that it lumps all opposition to new technology into the same category — anti-progress Luddites protecting the status quo at the expense of innovation. In reality, motives differ widely. Maybe a flashy new biotech start-up is being opposed becuse regulators are in the pocket of Big Pharma. Or maybe the FDA is holding it up because the founder is a charlatan selling fake stem-cell treatments to children. When every new innovation is cast as disruptive, there’s no way to distinguish between legitimate opposition and mere protectionism.

Vaclav Smil: The Man Bill Gates Thinks You Absolutely Should Be Reading

Today, as you know, everything is “innovation.” We have problems, and people are looking for fairy-tale solutions—innovation like manna from heaven falling on the Israelites and saving them from the desert. It’s like, “Let’s not reform the education system, the tax system. Let’s not improve our dysfunctional government. Just wait for this innovation manna from a little group of people in Silicon Valley, preferably of Indian origin.”

You people at WIRED—you’re the guilty ones! You support these people, you write about them, you elevate them onto the cover! You really messed it up. I tell you, you pushed this on the American public, right? And people believe it now.