"Human Nature" And The Response To Innovation

How Human Nature Is Holding Back Technology

[mygaming.co.za] | July 23, 2016

Innovation has been resisted for centuries. From refrigeration to margarine, recorded music and, more recently, robotics and artificial intelligence, new technologies face opposition by people. In a newly released book, Professor Calestous Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs chronicles the history of this opposition to change over 600 years. The Conversation Africa’s Samantha Spooner asked Juma about his main findings.
Q. Your study tracks resistance to new technologies and innovations. What were the main drivers of this resistance?
A. The main driving force behind the cases of resistance to new technologies that I address in the book is the perception of loss. People do not oppose technologies simply because they are new or because they are ignorant. They resist loss. The loss can be in the form of income, identity, worldview or power.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Its-Enemies-People-Technologies-ebook/dp/B01GI5F0XW/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=#nav-subnav

Source: http://alternativeeconomics.co

<more at http://mygaming.co.za/news/gadgets/99530-how-human-nature-is-holding-back-technology.html; related articles and links: https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Its-Enemies-People-Technologies-ebook/dp/B01GI5F0XW/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=#nav-subnav (Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies. Calestous Juma. Oxford University Press. June 6, 2016. [Notes: The rise of artificial intelligence has rekindled a long-standing debate regarding the impact of technology on employment. This is just one of many areas where exponential advances in technology signal both hope and fear, leading to public controversy. This book shows that many debates over new technologies are framed in the context of risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. But it argues that behind these legitimate concerns often lie deeper, but unacknowledged, socioeconomic considerations. Technological tensions are often heightened by perceptions that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society while the risks will be more widely distributed. Similarly, innovations that threaten to alter cultural identities tend to generate intense social concern. As such, societies that exhibit great economic and political inequities are likely to experience heightened technological controversies.]) and https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/why-do-people-resist-new-technologies-history-has-answer/ (Why do people resist new technologies? History might provide the answer. July 6, 2016)>