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True Innovators Don’t Just Invent, They Retrieve
Success in the future depends on bringing forward the values of previous ages
We might say that reason is to Reason as revolution is to renaissance. A renaissance without the retrieval of lost, essential values is just another revolution.
The first individuals and organizations to capitalize on the digital era ignored the underlying values that their innovations could have retrieved. They childishly assumed they were doing something absolutely new: disrupting existing hierarchies and replacing them with something or someone better — usually themselves. The early founders merely changed the ticker symbols on Wall Street from old tech companies to new tech companies, and the medium used to display them from paper tape to LEDs.
The digital revolution was no more than a superficial changing of the guard. Yet if we dispense with the need to believe our innovations are wholly original, we free ourselves to recognize the tidal patterns of which they are a part.
The original Renaissance, for instance, retrieved the values of ancient Greece and Rome. This was reflected not just in the philosophy, aesthetics, and architecture of the period, but in the social agenda. Central currency favored central authorities, nation-states, and colonialism…
