I recently read Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. From Wikipedia, Klein and Thompson argue that the regulatory environment in many liberal cities, while well intentioned, stymies development. They write that American liberals have been more concerned with blocking bad economic development than promoting good development since the 1970s. They say that Democrats have focused on the process rather than results and favored stasis over growth by backing zoning regulations, developing strict environmental laws, and tying expensive requirements to public infrastructure spending.
But what struck me was their point that in past decades, the model of innovation was relatively straightforward: a small number of breakthroughs, often in government-funded labs, would lead to a cascade of applications. Innovation was followed by deployment, often quite rapidly. We were comfortable with long horizons, big leaps and uncertain outcomes. I think of this every time I go to NASA and see the Saturn V rocket, in some cases held together by zip-ties and wires running everywhere rather than in conduit.
Often invention was quite separate from deployment or application. There was a high tolerance for risk and longer time-frames with fewer requirements. This is not so true today – certainly not in areas requiring governmental involvement.
This is not to say we don’t innovation or deployment. The rapid development of AI is a clear contradiction to this; rather, that there is not a public will for risk and experimentation. If it is publicly funded, it has to work, or else the funding is gone. Everything has projected outcomes, which means public innovation moves much more slowly. We take small steps which we know are achievable because everyone is watching. Rather than accelerate to scale, we regulate it. The science of making science has lost its love with Eureka! moments in favor of systematic process improvements.
Of course improvements will be necessary, but we must begin so that we may learn. We start with what we know and we worry about the exceptions later. They are not to be ignored, but if we begin by trying to include everyone, social innovation will be paralyzed.
So let us begin – or begin again with the science of making science.