Technology doesn’t disrupt society. Society adopts technology through a process of social re-engineering. This can’t happen without functional institutions.
This article by
was originally published at Palladium Magazine on May 28, 2020.
Common wisdom holds that technology disrupts society. That is, a technology is invented, and then a natural and inexorable process of spontaneous order changes society to use that technology. But the reality is that society is itself an engineered system that changes more by deliberate planning than the common wisdom is willing to admit. If anything, it is society that disrupts technology.
