![No One Can Win the Future - Slate has a great article on the fallacy of international technology dominance. Every time I hear someone ranting on about wanting to secure [insert country] technology leadership into the future, it makes we want to f******* puke; this article gives a great summary of the short-sighted idiocy behind that kind of thinking:
Competition rhetoric can be used to incite hysteria—“We are falling behind!”—and to inspire pride—“We’re number one!” Weirdly, the competitiveness crowd often argues both of these at the same time: We are the greatest country on earth even as our schools are failing.This contradiction can only be resolved by realizing that these rankings were meaningless to begin with. We don’t need to run twice as fast, or rise above any storms, or worry if people in Germany or Japan or China live better than they used to. We shouldn’t worry about American technology spreading to our rivals […] this is a good thing. It doesn’t hurt America’s ability to “compete” because, as an empirical fact, the economic importance of cooperation trumps that of competition on a national scale. This is bad news for jingoistic politicians and business leaders, but good news for everyone else.
Image credit to biz02 on DeviantArt](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyqfg6BjUb1qiiz3qo1_500.jpg)
No One Can Win the Future - Slate has a great article on the fallacy of international technology dominance. Every time I hear someone ranting on about wanting to secure [insert country] technology leadership into the future, it makes we want to f******* puke; this article gives a great summary of the short-sighted idiocy behind that kind of thinking:
Competition rhetoric can be used to incite hysteria—“We are falling behind!”—and to inspire pride—“We’re number one!” Weirdly, the competitiveness crowd often argues both of these at the same time: We are the greatest country on earth even as our schools are failing.
This contradiction can only be resolved by realizing that these rankings were meaningless to begin with. We don’t need to run twice as fast, or rise above any storms, or worry if people in Germany or Japan or China live better than they used to. We shouldn’t worry about American technology spreading to our rivals […] this is a good thing. It doesn’t hurt America’s ability to “compete” because, as an empirical fact, the economic importance of cooperation trumps that of competition on a national scale. This is bad news for jingoistic politicians and business leaders, but good news for everyone else.
Image credit to biz02 on DeviantArt
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