"T he technology executive suffers from a unique affliction. Call it disruptivitis: he (it's almost always a he) will stumble upon a well-trod idea, give it a new name, and then claim credit for its discovery. Often, this idea will involve privatizing a previously public good, placing an app between a customer and an existing product or service, or solving an intractable social problem in such a way that happens to line said executive's pockets."
"Most importantly, this idea is always a priori innovative, by virtue of its origin in the mind of a self-declared innovator-think Athena springing fully formed from Zeus's forehead. Fortunately for those afflicted, disruptivitis is also the world's only malady that enriches its sufferers, and the boy-kings of Silicon Valley are its patient zeroes. Elon Musk was the first person to think of subways;"
"This plague has now crossed the forty-ninth parallel via something called Build Canada. Its founders insist Build Canada isn't a lobby group and doesn't represent "special interest groups," although it includes a former senior Liberal staffer as co-founder and CEO, several former or current executives and employees at Shopify (one of the country's most valuable companies), and various other tech- and business-adjacent figures. (Apparently, corporate interests aren't "special.")"
The term disruptivitis labels tech executives who repackage established ideas, rename them as innovations, and claim sole credit. These executives often privatize public goods, insert apps between customers and services, or present marketable fixes to social problems that benefit themselves financially. The phenomenon concentrates wealth among Silicon Valley leaders who treat incremental repackaging as genius. Examples include sardonic claims that executives 'invented' subways, buses, or hotel listings. The trend has appeared in Canada through Build Canada, an organization founded by tech- and political-adjacent figures that denies being a lobby while advocating policy memos.
Read at The Walrus
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]