I wholeheartedly agree with the article’s opinion, but with a slight personal adjustment. As the article mentioned, “People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.” True, the era we are in right now is occupied with tons of new technologies and political economy but old styles and innovation. We are like full-charged iPhone - maxed out, both in outside world style changing and inside world self-exploration.
People are surrounding by an extremely colorful outside world right now. More than any of the era in the past. This “colorful” doesn’t mean our new changes but the noisy disturbance. On technology side, for instance, students google their homework instead of looking for reference in library. Technology shortcut replaces our mind processing. On Political economy side, for example, changeable economy market makes innovation looks risky, people tend to play safe in the business world. Therefore, it is not surprising that humanity innovation is in stagnation.
On the equal side of outside world, humanity in this era also stays the same in their inside world. Increasing number of people feel lonely and empty, short-temper and dishonest are everywhere in the air. The lack of inside security causes the lack of outside innovation. For instance, more people feel insecure today than any of the era in the past. They start to rely their emotion and hope on social medias, which can temporarily release their stress. Innovation and success require a huge amount of independence and self-control. Therefore, less real innovation can be generated today.
On the other hand, any phenomenon has its double sides. From my personal perspective, I believe that we, humanity will make it through in a totally different way compared with the past eras. As the article mentioned “tens of millions of Americans, the uncool as well as the supercool, have become amateur stylists”, coolness is discussed on the table again. It means people still care about the style, the feather of culture, but having a hard time to find it. It reminds me one of my professor’s funny words in class one time. He said, “If you are not cool, buying an iPhone 7 won’t make you cooler.” True, people especially young people rush into this “fashion culture” movement to discover the definition of coolness which being used by business industry. Maybe it is the perfect time for people to self-explore theirselves. Without the chaos, it is harder for people to know who they really are, what they can really do. For instance, gay (lesbian&bisexual) movement in this era rescues more than 8 million adults in the US. Who can really deny this era did actually contribute its new culture in its own way?
From a historical growth perspective, the stagnation of American innovation culture today may not be a negative thing. Any country goes through the similar history step, they might look totally different but share the same philosophy. America has always been the strongest country globally, it is hard to always create innovation every step. For example, it is like a talent student always get A+ in class, once in a while, A- or even B+ is a normal situation. Same thing, America is going through the bottleneck right now, it might look like a total stagnation but actually a preparation. For other countries, they have been through the same steps but just slower than the US. For instance, China is making a significant process in its history, only because it starts catching up late. People may have a surface image that China is growing fast but America slows its steps. However, they are just in different process. So, stagnation doesn’t always mean that we are doing nothing new here but sometimes a solid preparation rest time.
There is an old saying in China, “Haste makes waste.” Sometimes, the surface picture covers the opposite intrinsic factor.
gdbot