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… is from page 34 of Thomas Cahill’s 2013 volume, Heretics and Heroes [2]:
But it inevitably takes a while for human beings to absorb the changes that each new invention will work in our lives. We are certainly not so good at predicting what these changes will be. This is because, as one observer [Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie] has remarked, “real innovation in technology involves a leap ahead, anticipating needs that no one really knew they had.”
Yes. And because modern capitalism features an orgy of innovation [3], a modern capitalist economy is – contrary to J.M. Keynes’s distorted vision [4] – one that is not helpfully analogized to a fairly simple machine for the performance of a largely given set of routine tasks and needing only competent managers to ensure that its fuel supply remains adequate.