I was delivering a lecture to a group of academics and students out in San Jose recently [see the slideshow here] and someone in the crowd asked me to send them a list of some of the many books I had mentioned during my talk, which was about future policy clashes over various emerging technologies. I cut the list down to the five books that I believe best frame the nature of debates over innovation and technology policy. They are:
- Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies (1998): Contrasts the conflicting worldviews of “dynamism” and “stasis” and shows how the tensions between these two visions influences debates over technological progress. No book has had a greater influence on my own thinking about debates over innovation and progress.
- Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human (2005). Describes how debates about emerging technologies are typically framed in terms of “Heaven” versus “Hell” scenarios. He then offers an alternative “Prevail” paradigm explaining how we “muddle through” and prosper in the face of adversity.
- Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1990): One of the finest histories of technological innovation ever penned. It’s certainly my favorite. It explores how earlier technologies evolved and created social and economic tensions.
- Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010): Makes the case for “rational optimism” in debates about technology and innovation and takes on pessimistic critics of technological change.
- Larry Downes, The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces That Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age (2009): Explains how lawmaking in the information age is inexorably governed by the “law of disruption” or the fact that “technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” That fact, he explains, has profound ramifications for all technology policy debates going forward.
If you haven’t read these amazing books yet, add them to your collection right now! They are worth reading again and again. They will forever change the way you think about debates over technology and innovation.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.