Tech innovation is both good and bad – but effective policy design like the CP can weed out destructive innovation

Another critique picks up a thread from earlier on: the distinction between material and immaterial forms of technology. If we are strict materialists, then it looks like we have a problem. Material technology, by itself, seems to be insufficient grounds for optimism. There are two reasons for this. First, material technologies do not just ‘pop’ into existence from nothing. They require human labour and ingenuity. Second, material technologies can often be used for good or ill. For example, few people would argue that the invention of the nuclear bomb heralded in a new era of hope and optimism.Footnote12 Given that destructive technologies can be invented, how can we be optimistic about the future solely in virtue of the creation of more such technologies?

The answer is that we can’t. I already noted that a number of the optimistic books cited earlier on — in particular the works of Pinker (2011, 2018), Ridley (2010), McAfee (2019) and Naam (2013) — do not give technology, in and of itself, priority in their narratives. Instead, they focus on certain idea-generation and selection methods that have been adopted in the relatively recent past. Ridley and McAfee focus on market-based mechanisms for incentivising and weeding out certain kinds of innovations, Naam follows a similar train of thought but also gives the modern scientific revolution some bit of credit, Pinker is more ecumenical, mentioning the importance of markets, science, Enlightenment reason and liberal democracy. None of these authors denies that material innovations were crucial to progress, but they think the underlying social-institutional mechanisms for innovation were also important.