Transcript:

Innovation At What Price?

Wisnioski: I think that virtually every element of politics, of society and culture speaks to innovation as a universal good.

But is there a cost a flip side, to innovation? I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Wisnioski: The main way that I seek to look at innovation is to ask how innovation, as an idea, and a concept, and a way of life became really the dominant framing of contemporary society today.

Matt Wisnioski is an associate professor in the department of science, technology and society at Virginia Tech.

Wisnioski: I think if you look at any company, selling anything, they're going to market their product, their idea, their service as the most innovative. If you want to send your children off to school, you're going to want to send them to the university that promises that they're the most innovative. How is that we're all encouraged, from a very young age now to be creative in particular ways, to develop certain kinds of skill sets so that we can apply innovative solutions to our daily lives? When people talk about innovation, the implicit understanding is that to innovate means to make things better.

But is the search for new ideas mean abandoning the old ones?

What we often lose in what sometimes is a mania of talking about innovation, is a sense of alternatives. To talk about innovation is to talk about the new. What about the things that we want to preserve? What about the structures that need to be maintained? What about the ideas and people and values that are not monetized? If innovation doesn't encompass those, but everybody is always talking and creating programs around innovation, then what happens to those projects and programs and people?

We'll hear more about innovation in future programs. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.