The Disruption Gospel: A Bill of Goods

Every age has a theory of rising and falling, of growth and decay, of bloom and wilt: a theory of nature. Every age also has a theory about the past and the present, of what was and what is, a notion of time: a theory of history...Our era has disruption, which, despite its futurism, is atavistic. It’s a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation, and shaky evidence.

Jill Lepore has a good piece in the New Yorker on the problematic assumption that innovation or ‘disruption’ is necessary and virtuous.  Her point that the evidence on which the problematic assumption lies is flimsy should confirm any thinking person’s suspicions that the intellectual drivel coming out of Silicon Valley is self-interested, demonstrably wrong, and socially dangerous.  In this regard, Lepore’s observation that the innovation ‘gospel’ is in a fact a secularized (or material) faith is apt.  Disruption for disruption’s sake makes no more rational sense than conservatism for conservatism’s sake.  The ideas of disruption or conservatism only make sense or are supportable when they are instrumentalities that increase or safeguard human flourishing.

Our experience in the world is just that:  experience.  Hence, any school of thought, ideology, philosophy, etc. that purports to have answers to the human condition must be judged pragmatically:  does the proposed action or rule increase or protect human flourishing?  If it does, then the action or rule should be adopted, regardless of whether the action or rule is intellectually consistent with an overarching school of thought, ideology, or philosophy, etc.  Belief is not betterment no matter how strong the belief.  Lepore succinctly and delightfully points out what the innovation gospel conflates, “[T]he world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer.”  Just because someone in Silicon Valley says newer is better, does not make it so.

Lepore most discerning argument against disruption is the most damning:  disruption is a self-fulfilling and inherently circular prophecy.

When the financial-services industry disruptively innovated, it led to a global financial crisis.  Like the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the meltdown didn’t dim the fervor for disruption; instead, it fueled it, because these products of disruption contributed to the panic on which the theory of disruption lies...

It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.

Why would we accept a school of thought or an ideology that led to a crippling recession and continues to produce billionaires who claim to know the solutions to all of our problems so long as the solutions involve less regulation, less worker protection, less corporate taxation, less income redistribution, and more privatization of public goods?  For example, Facebook is entertaining, but hardly necessary.  If that is the case, why would anyone think the code writer behind the company would have anything particularly useful to say about public education?  Mark Zuckerberg has no education bona fides.  He is just a citizen and his voice should only count as much as any non-expert citizen.  And yet, his voice counts much more than the average citizen and his gospel is clear:  disrupt everything so long as the disruption is consistent with my vision of how the world works which is based the serendipitous conditions that led to me founding a successful multibillion dollar diversion.

This isn’t to say Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to improve public education is disingenuous, simply that it is dangerous, based as it is on the gospel of disruption, to which he subscribes.

Once more Lepore:

Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business.  People aren’t disk drives.  Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subject to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren’t industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or trucks or drygoods are industries.

The disruption gospel celebrates failure, but is this appropriate for public education?  Do we continue to disrupt the education of our students in the hopes of finding a silver bullet that doesn’t exist?  And what do we do with the fodder of disruption, with the millions of students subject to the whims of billionaires and their policy-making lackeys?  What do we do with the students who fail?  How shall they wear this badge of honor  (“When a startup fails, that’s a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation”)?  

Read Lepore and don’t drink the self-interested, disruption-flavored Kool Aid coming from Silicon Valley.  It is bad for jobs, schools, and the economy.