What Kind of Innovation?

So if you haven’t noticed, capitalism produces a whole lot of stuff.  Capitalists are constantly coming up with new ways to make stuff faster, new ways to make stuff cheaper, with new methods of making stuff, and even new industries to make different stuff.  A famous economist dude named Joseph Schumpeter even came up with a concept called “creative destruction” where new ways of making stuff are so much better than old ways of making stuff, that they totally wipe them out.  It’s a pretty badass name, and it gets to the heart of how we think of “innovation” in our society.

We think of innovation in terms of groundbreaking technological advances or incredible increases in production and efficiency.  Innovation has a distinctly ‘economic’ flavor to it in our society.  Good old ‘American innovation’ is a catalyst to growth, and an expression of our superior entrepreneurship and creativity or something.  And so, when we innovate, we do so in economic fashion.  We encourage this type of innovation because it keeps us competitive with other countries in the global marketplace. We try to push public policy that creates the optimal conditions for innovation.  In fact, right here at OSU, the administration’s move to commercialize technology research can be viewed in these terms: attempting to create a ripe climate for technological innovation.

This is all well and good, and universities should be centers of technological innovation.  But, priority must be given different kinds of innovation more critical to the survival of humanity.  On its own, technology will not feed the millions of hungry people in the world who cannot afford to buy food.  On its own, technology will not reverse the devastating effects of global climate change.  On its own, technology will not abolish patriarchy and white supremacy, or reduce income inequality within and between nations.  We need a different kind of innovation to fix those problems.

The university must be a vast laboratory of innovation, but the majority of the innovation required to make our world a better place must occur within and between students.  Individual, collective, social, and political innovation must be recognized as the most important thing that will ever happen to us in college.  Call it: “education for citizenship,” like the University does in its motto, but any way you spin it, at the moment, humanity is hurtling towards environmental, social, economic, and political destruction.  And tough times call for authoritarian measures (like appointing presidents) which would really fucking suck.

Social and political innovation will come from a critical education.  Students should not leave the university unable to critically assess the world.  As of now our university system spends most of its time integrating students smoothly into status quo, and not enough time challenging them to challenge it.  Let’s face it, humanity’s capacity for empathy and critical thought are criminally underdeveloped compared to our capacity to make stuff, yet it is those two features–what separate us from other life-forms–that must be developed if we want to avoid the collapse of industrial civilization.  We need an education that facilitate this kind of innovation.