Visions. On a plane heading West. California has always been good at that.

Visions.

It got kicked off with visions of gold so vast that it nearly drove the Forty Niners mad as they clawed their way across the land to a paradise at contintent's end. Then the LA pols had their turn with visions of water majesticaly undulating across the high desert plain to quench the thirst of millions in the canyons and valleys below. Its only Chinatown, Jack. The film crowd did vision in Black and White. A little tramp on the silver screen, ushered the world into a vast communal dreamscape of images. With a love you madly, baby, ring a ding ding, Sinatra and Jim Morrison along with an entourage of hippies and hipsters, tripped out on a vision of bliss as spelled out by Nelson Riddle and an electric blues beat. My way will light your fire. Regan took his shot at the vision thing when he turned acting on its head, became President, and changed American politics forever. Recently James Ellroy and O.J. Simpson have tried their hands at the vision game. While Ellroy wrote it, O.J. lived it. LA with a knuckleduster bathed in blood. Altamont or Silicon Valley, your chips are just a shot away. Vision.

So what do we have here? How about Dynamic Visions, a conference, sponsored by Reason Magazine, in Santa Clara, CA (13-15 Feb, 1999) devoted to an electrifying interdiciplinary view of where things need to go, or rather ARE going. The conference emerged from the themes that author Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason Magazine, laid out so elegantly in her new book, The Future and its Enemies.

Viriginia Postrel

Systems Vision. Electric Vision. Connected Vision. Stasist and Technocrat vs the Dynamists, she's got it right and now we do too. For two and a half days Virginia was an intellectual ring master coaxing, cajoling, extracting this interdiciplinary vision out of a diverse crowd of think tankers, academic prima donnas, policy wonks, journos, codeheads, and creatives.

Your intrepid Tech Head participant observers missed out on the first day of the conference due to input from the airlines industry. It became increasingly clear to us that they had retained the services of the lowest bid contractor to help them reconnect the nation's air travel grid into a system that defied all comprehension. Meanwhile on the sidelines, American Airline pilots demonstrated their version of a Maria Callas tantrum. But we made it. Here's what we saw. Here's what we felt. If the policy wonks haven't a clue, Virginia does. Virginia Postrel, looking as good in person as she does on her book jacket, took us into a vision of a dynamic co-evolutionary world far from the static technocratic view that attempts to cloak like a wet policy blanket, the dynamics of technology and the emergent Information Age. The book puts forward an exciting model of how change takes place --- dynamically. In this fascinating book, Postrel argues that conflicting views of progress, dynamic on the one side and static, highly controlled and centralized on the other, now define our political and cultural debate far more than the traditional left and right. Postrel's book is filled with examples of dynamic change from a wide array of domains, including biology, technology, urban planning, and fashion.

Here's the lineup, they all hit home runs.

Virginia Postrel opened the second day of the conference with a discussion of Knowledge in a Dynamic World. What's the difference between information and knowledge? Information is articulated knowledge; the unarticulated elements have been eliminated. Postrel emphasized the importance of unarticulated knowledge. For example, Lenscrafter conducted interviews with customers (in addition to surveys). The interviews uncovered an unarticulated desire for speed and convenience that did not show up in the surveys. Knowledge is not the same thing as data or information. In the case of Lenscrafter's efforts to understand customer motivations and desires, the surveys uncovered data, information, but the interviews probed more deeply, successfully uncovering unarticulated knowledge that was more valuable. Postrel emphasizes that critical local knowledge is out there. It just takes finding it. President Jimmy Carter, a Southerner from an evangelical background had the local knowledge to identify the evangelical voters, who were there all along but whose presence as a potential voting block was previously unarticulated and unrecognized by observers who lacked the necessary local kowledge. Scotch tape was originally developed to seal moisture-proof packages, but it was adapted to new uses.

Paul Young, creative director of Electric Pictures, Inc in Champaign, Illinois, talked about Creativity as a Process. Young specializes in logos and identity graphics.

Young explained that "Creativity is applying the right idea to the right situation at the right time." The creative process consists of four steps. This process is teachable.

1. Research
2. Incubation
3. Conceptualization
4. Execution

 Eric Raymond, the La Passionaria of the Open Source Software movement, techno-evangelist, and author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," spoke about Software as a Process. Raymond focused his talk on the open source Linux operating system.

Raymond laid a framework for his talk by presenting Brooks Law and contrasting the process by which the Linux operating system was --- and continues to be --- developed. Brooks Law (from Fred Brooks of the University of North Carolina) states that "adding more programmers to a late project makes it later."

Software bugs tend to accumulate at the interfaces --- interfaces between people, for example. And bugs are extremely important since the reliability of software is terrible. So, in accordance with Brooks Law, it seems like a good idea to keep the number of software programmers limited in order to minimize the potential for bugs. But the process of software development for Linux is 180 degrees away from Brooks Law --- and, hey, it's extremely successful. Raymond reported that his first encounter with the Linux operating system was shocking because, in contrast to Brooks Law, it was created by an extensive, dispersed group of semi-amateurs.So what's happening? What is this process that's different --- and successful?

Eric Raymond explains that the principles underlying the Linux software development process can be traced to microeconomics, anthropology, and microbiology. "There's a marvelous implicate order. This initiative faces outward, not inward; people must be willing to take feedback." The motto here is "Release early, release often." This speeds the feedback loop. And with Linux, there's a system of peer esteem rewards --- contributors are given recognition.

Linux is a testimony to this approach of giving maximum incentive for peer review by giving people recognition. And most of the core Internet software also exemplifies this strategy, over the span of many years.

Eric Raymond suggests that Linus' Law is: "Given a sufficiently large number of eyeballs, all bugs become shallow." A major advantage of this approach is that it draws upon different minds, different implicit knowledge, to assess bugs. The Internet makes this approach to possible by providing a fast, versatile channel for networking and reporting feedback concerning software bugs. "It's really hard to hold a gun to someone's head over a T1 line, the bandwidth isn't there." So there must be incentives for people to contribute to the Linux software development process: recognition, not coercion, is at the center of the Linux development process --- and other initiatives like it. The development of the core Internet software is one other example. The oldest example of this kind of system based on peer esteem awards is the culture of experimental science which has extended over centuries.

Anthropology recommends that we look at contradictions, for example, the contradictions btween the theory and practice of a community. As we've seen, the software development process for Linux goes against theory --- Brooks Law. And this new process is having an impact beyond Linux. The release of Netscape's Mozilla browser came in response to the Linux open source trend. You can get a freeware licence for Mozilla.

Eric Raymond took on the issue of how to take control of a software system and the implications of "control" in an open source context. To take over control of some software system, there are three approaches: (1) be the software founder; (2) take over from the founder; (3) take on a project that's lain fallow, after trying to seek out and work with the previous developers. Raymond suggests that the Lockean theory of land title is similar to open source software ownership. And he also suggests, whimsically yet seriously, that there's also a similarity to the property conventions of a dog's territoriality. Arf!

A system for controlling territory or property rights is necessary because it provides a system of conflict resolution rules. (In the case of Linux, Linus Torvald, the Finn who originated this operating system, is the final arbitor of which strategy for fixing a particular bug will be adopted.)

Why maintain territory? The traditional reason is the need for survival resources --- you need enough territory to sustain you and your dependents, to provide a yield of food and other respources that will keep body and soul together. You're protecting the yield of something valuable, like the yield of crops or hunting and fishing. In the case of software development, the yield is reputation. So once again we get back to the notion of esteem. Eric Raymond points out that, "People are wired to play social status games really deeply." social games: who's the biggest alpha dog in the pack? In software development and science, reputation can be a proxy, to represent the importance of the problems being solved. Remember, the Nobel Prize isn't just about money, it's mostly about reputation.

With initiatives like Linux, we're seeing that social status games can be linked to one's ability to promote --- and participate in --- coalition-building.

This brings us to another key concept, this time from microeconomics. Eric Raymond reports that there are two tyes of economic systems that we are all very familiar with: (1) a command hierarchy; and (2) an exchange economy. Deja vu all over again. these two systems are based on scarcity. But wait; there's another economic system that's a lot less familiar: a gift culture. This third model is based on abundance, not scarcity. Yahoo! An exchange economy is optimum for organizing in scarcity; a gift culture is better for creativity and dynamism. According to Raymond, the Internet hacker culture is a gift culture.

Returning to the theme of implicit knowledge that Virginia Postrel emphasized, Raymond suggested that in order to elicit implicit knowledge, you have to have the attitude of a generalist. The open system Linux software development process, takes a generalist's view: it draws continuously upon the wealth of diverse local knowledge coming from far-flung contributors, each with a unique store of implicit knowledge that synergistically improves the overall software system.

Lisa Snell, a policy analyst at Reason Public Policy Institute, spoke about Dynamist Education Reform.

Lisa pointed out that Americans list education as their top policy concern. Educational reform has centered around technocratic, highly centralized approaches. the success rate for these traditional policy approaches has not been very good. One example is Title I , which provides support for remedial education, a worthy goal. But Title I has not been successful, because it ignores implicit knowledge within the local context. And, as with many technocratic approaches to policy, it has had unintended consequences, including one that embodies dynamist principles: the emergence of private companies to provide remedial education more effectively than the public schools. In the case of Title I, it has turned out that school teachers don't want to teach the many remedial classes mandated through Title I. So outside contractors and learning centers in the private sector have been tapped to supply some of the remedial classes required by the Title I program. Private remedial education offers a distinct contrast with public education: the private remedial classes offer performance guarantees - there's a money back guarantee if performance goals for student learning are not achieved. Indeed, rigorous, clearly-defined performance goals are targeted. By contrast, the public schools do not offer any performance guarantees. The emergence of private remedial education is an example of how public schools are facing competition from innovative, market-based education programs that use the dynamic principles of choice, competition, and feedback to improve educational results.

Lisa Snell pointed out that increasingly, dynamist approaches are impacting education, often by escaping the umbrella of the public education system or adapting dynamist options within it. This is occurring despite strenuous efforts on the part of various interest groups that prefer the existing static, highly technocratic system of public education.

One dynamist trend is the emergence of charter schools. In fact, there are actually several trends related to charter schools, including:

1. Neighborhood charter schools. In some cases, real estate developers are building charter schools as part of new housing developments so that these housing developments will be a more desirable place to buy a house.
2. Charter schools in the workplace.

Another dynamist trend is the nationwide private scholarship movement. Here, the goal is obtain scholarship money so that less affluent families can send their children to private schools. One scholarship program was founded by the heir to the Wal Mart store chain. The private scholarship movement is drawing resistance from stasist forces. For example, in Englewood, Texas, the National Education Association (NEA) is trying to convince local parents not to go with the scholarship program because it will result in a loss of money to the school district --- with negative consequences for the NEA's constituency, public school teachers.

A third dynamist trend is the home schooling movement. Home schooling is on the rise. In part, the Internet is providing resources that enhance home schooling. this includes access to information resources as well as classes that are taught online and support groups for parents who are home schooling their children.

Lynn Scarlett, the executive director of the Reason Public Policy Institute, spoke about Fantastically Dynamic Places: Cities vs. Planners.

Lynn Scarlett explained, "We spoke about the dynamism of technology. Urban planning is the battlefield of dynamism. There have been three successive stages of stasis."

There have been three successive stages of urban renewal since the 1970s. The riots in some cities --- cities made up largely of poor people ---- during the 1960s set the stage for subsequent technocratic approaches to to improving the cities.

Stage One of static, technocratic approaches to the cities was the urban renewal movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. One example of urban renewal is Rockefeller Center in New York City. Here,12 acres of the cityscape were completely redone to a new vision. But this example is quite small; other urban renewal projects have been much larger, up to 100 acres in size. In many places, the urban renewal movement resulted in dislocation and isolation. This technocratic approach overlooked clues. Unasked clues were ignored; the urban renewal proponents did not seek to examine what the impacts of urban renwal would be for those who lived there. In Boston, urban renewal resulted in the loss of 20% of the housing. And urban renewal everywhere resulted in catastrophic displacement and destruction of minority owned businesses.

Stage Two of static, technocratic approaches to the cities took place during the mid and late 1970s. The trigger was: How do we bring dollars downtown? The solution? Malls. Thirty nine malls were built in different cities by developers in partnership with city fathers who advanced funds and gave subsidies to the developers in deals that were much more advantageous to the developers. One example of this initiative to bring dollars downtown was Faneille Hall in Boston. Faneille Hall was a success. Some of these projects were expensive failures.

Stage Three of static, technocratic approaches to the cities is taking place today: it's called renewed urbanism. The problem that is the focus of renewed urbanism is sprawl. Both the National Historic Trust and Vice President Al Gore are against sprawl. According to stasist planners, we've got to promote densification and strong urban boundaries. However, what they ignore is that 80% of Americans prefer a private lot with a yard and 90% of Americans want to be able to drive cars rather than have to rely on mass transit. Transit has been a big investment but ridership has decreased in fixed rail projects, with the possible exception of Portland, Oregon. In addition, we need to keep in mind that only 4.9% of the continental United States is developed or will be developed in the near future. That's not really very much.

Lynn Scarlett suggests that we need to redefine the problem in terms of conjestion. Jobs are everywhere, therefore traffic is going everywhere. So how can we reduce conjestion? The planners failed to anticipate telecommuting; we don't know where this is going, but clearly it's a trend that will have big impacts and can potentially cut back on conjestion. Telecommuting is expanding rapidly. Just think if public policies encouraged telecommuting rather than trying to work against people's desire for autonomy in their transportation and spacious lots to live in. the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "After all is said and done, the citizen is te city; the city goes where he goes." Planners need to pay more attendtion to what the residents of urban areas really want, and take the city to them, via the Internet and in other ways.

All great cities are built by an iterative process. That dynamic approach is what people want. For example, Paris is a city with some planning, but we flock to the Left Bank, the unplanned part of the city. In the case of malls, many people disapprove of them. However, malls have proven to be dynamic, multi-use spaces that evolve in accordance with people's wishes and needs.

We went away from mixed use planning; now we are moving back to that. Zoning ordinances are seeing the addition of many amendments to accomodate new uses, such as home offices.

Lynn Scarlett explained that the world is a vast grid of interconnected products. We need to create "bounded instability" in order to have urban areas that meet --- and can be adapted to --- human needs. Long ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "All is flux, nothing stays still." That is certainly true of cities!

Daniel Botkin, president and founder of The Center for the Study of the Environment and a professor of biology at George Mason University, spoke about Kinogenesis: The Naturalness of Change. Botkin, who is writing a biography of Henry David Thoreau, explained that people have a simplistic vision of Thoreau. Thoreau's idea of nature --- and natural living --- was not one of isolation. In fact, Thoreau's famous cabin by Walden Pond was not very far out of town; it was hardly off in the woods, far from other human habitation. Botkin also explained that Thoreau, in seeking knowldege --- and wisdom, sought out people who had a rich contextual, experientially-based knowledge of nature. One example of this was the Old Oysterman of Cape Code who is featured in Thoreau's writings. Botkin went on to explain that our misunderstanding of Thoreau parallels our misperceptions of nature as unchanging. Nature is highly dynamic, as research is documenting more and more. Botkin talked about a forest in New Jersey that was turned into a nature preserve. The goal was to keep the existing forest of mature trees unchanged. So nothing was done to disturb them. But the result was unexpected: since the underbrush was left untrimmed, a new dynamic was created and different species of trees started to thrive, disrupting the existing order. Research determined hat the forest had been maintained in its initial state --- seemingly unchanged --- by the Indians lighting periodic fires to get rid of the underbrush. There are many similar examples. Botkin's message is that we have to be aware of the naturalness of change in nature and to understand in great depth and subtlty the dynamics of natural systems so that we can better unerstand how to preserve them and also better prepare to minimize the problematic side effects of changes that humans impose on natural systems.

 Joel Mokyr, a multitalented professor at Northwestern University and Francois Truffaut look a like , spoke about The Political Economy of Innovation, a thoughtful examination of Resistance to Technical innovation.

"It seems then rather obvious why innovation in so many instances runs into political resistance: Luddism represents the vested interests of those losers whose skills have been made obsolete or whose communities are being uprooted by the upheaval caused by new technology."

Ha!

He went on to say that this is a comforting notion because it maintains our preverse assumption that it's a rational world out there and so are the people within it, with every Tom, Dick, and Harry acting out of economic interests. This view also implies that the effeciency of the market process will cull the retro and obsolete leaving the field to shiny, the honking nouveau tech du jour. If only medllers, and Mokyr has a good list including, "regulatory agencies, courtrooms, machine-breaking riots, or tweedy college professors chaining themselves to the fences of nuclear reactors that the resistance is effective."

Yet this doesn't seem to be the entire story regarding resistance. Mokyr points to the 19th Century development of Anesthesia. "Anesthesia seems as good a case as any to argue for a "victimless invention." After all who could be against Anesthesia?

Amazingly enough the good professor found quite a few resisters particularly in obstetrics. There was this thought Meme addling the judgement of the medicos, "something natural about pain and that if the creator had designed it this way he must have known what he was doing." Have we been down this road before?

Mokyr points to "James Young Simpson, the great Edinburgh doctor who pioneered the use of chloroform in deliveries." It seems he got himself in a lot of hot water not about medical technique but about theology.

Theology?

Yes theology.

Mokyr develops the story, "In the Scotland of the 1840s, a valid argument against the use of chloroform was still a citation from the bible "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." Fortunately for thousands of women, Simpson found the correct retort, reminding his opponents that prior to the creation of Eve, "God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam." Ha!

Contraception is another example of the head-on between formal religion and technological progress. Mokyr points to the contempory furor over cloning. Baaaaa. Anybody see rational behavior in any of this?

Mokyr dismisses the notion that this behavior is just some aversion to playing God. No way. Humanity dumped that idea millenia ago when fire and even technology itself was manhandled into making our ancestors the top dog, so to speak, on the planet. As Mokyr puts it, "any sense that 'playing God' is sinful has vanished in Western Thought centuries ago."

Francois, er, I mean Joel points out that merely blowing off the anti-techno crowd as dazed and confused isn't enough. He observes that, "technology should not conflict with the prior notions we have about nature unless it can quickly and efficiently refute these notions." One wonders wether this perscription is even possible. How does one accomplish this?

Then he went on to critique aspects of Virginia Postrel's thesis on the Dynamist society.

An observation. There is a strangely retro style that many academics embrase, most likely because of socialization by mentors that become habits mutually enforced among peers, that seems to state that only through being an academic pit bull and nawing on the ankles of somebody else's concept, maybe they might tip over, can truth be found. It seems a rather problematic view at best. It appears to be a vestage of medieval disputation filtered through Social Darwinism. It is yet another indication of how far out of step the 19th century German research university model is for a society on the brink of the 21st Century. There are other paths to truth than by going mano a mano with another persons ideas.

Back to the presentation.

Professor Mokyr points out that, "it is possible to be a dynamist on many levels and in many areas, and still find yourself opposed to techniques that conflict with certain preconceptions it cannot refute." One wonders why should the dynamist should have to refute anything. Ambiguity informs the very process of dynamic change.

He offers the concept of "tightness of natural knowledge." By that Mokyr means that a lot of knowledge is crisp, with tight boundaries and clear issues. Nothing murky. Either it is or it isn't. He offers the question of heavier than air flight as an example. A lot of people thought that it was impossible. Then the Wright brothers did their thing at Kitty Hawk. Most everybody could change their minds. Nobody had their comfort zones, theological or ideological, violated by heavier than air flight. Maybe they were already thinking about frequent flyer miles. Actually it's pretty easy after you've just been straffed by a Fokker or Sopworth Camel.

However "When the evidence is hard to assess and the theory murky, however, resistance survives." If it's not clear, people aren't going to trust the innovation. Conceptual murk breeds fear --- fear that something awful could go terribly wrong. It's at that point that people reach for a regulatory club. Forget the free market, the attitude becomes one of 'I don't trust these boffins with their murk.' As Mokyr puts it, "For better or for worse, the public is not always willing to rely on the kind of weeding-out selection processes that Postrel's dynamist society calls for." People want 800 pound regulatory gorillias to protect them, hold in check the techno-scam artists, and generally keep an eye on things.

Sit. Nice boy. Good techno.

Can you say Thalidomide? Chlorofluorocarbons? Technological progress means there is some probability that something might go wrong. Gulp. He introduces "the Ice Nine effect" from the Kurt Vonnegut novel 'Cat's Cradle,' "in which a diabolical substance in infinitesimal quantities starts a cascading chain reaction that causes all water on the planet to freeze up." Pucker time. It's the butterfly effect we're talking here, sensitivity to inital conditions. An invention can have unforseen and tragic results just because we didn't know any better.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. FUD, it sounds like Microsoft.

Mokyr observs that people focus on minor improbable events, particularly if they are spectaciular flame outs, taking that event and making it stand for all the probable danger that a technology can produce.

Think nuclear - Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island. Big media buzz. The potential of a white flash always gets everybody's attention. But as Moykr points out, Chernobyl had nothing to do with Western reactors and TMI didn't cause any damage. But they were mind bombs. They scared the hell out of everybody. "Three-mile Island resulted in the immediate closing of seven similar operating reactors in 1979, the imposition of a moratorium on the licensing of all new reactors and a slowing down of the approval process by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Public opposition to nuclear power increased dramatically."

Mokyr poses the question, Is this kind of resistance rational?

He correctly observes that technological advance involves a host of unknowns. As time passes the unknowns get sorted out and things work out. The problems can start with radically new tek that is so complicated, heavy man, that its just beyond segments of the public. They all vote, you know. Those people who think we will be on an expressway to Armmegedden if we start using this stuff are expressing a view that makes sense given what they know and understand. From where one stands determines what they see.

Joel has more good news. There are unforeseen costs involved in a certain technological advances. Often the public end up paying for them, not the guys who made the money. When technology goes bad, really bad, who gets hurt or stuck with the bill? Of course, John Q. Public.

Who pays to remove asbestos from the junior high in your town?

Pressing on, Moykr continues, going after the "underlying assumption of the Postrel thesis is that such events are unlikely to occur in the decentralized, competitive, slightly chaotic environment as the dynamist society." Then lightening up a bit, Joel agreed that "statist societies" aren't safe either.

Mokyr got into talking about Eco-busting, heavy metal Marxist economies. Boy, did they ever gave insensitive bureaucratic regimes a bad name. None of them had to clean up their mess.

He posed an interesting question, "Are free and decentralized markets really immune to disasters?" And an interesting implication, "If they aren't, then admit the rationality of those who fear the future social costs of new knowledge."

Mokyr points out that, "evolution is myopic". Even the dynamist has to hustle to survive. The view becomes, now is happening now and the future can wait. "What has posterity ever done for us?" Who cares about the future if I'm not part of it? Do the sure thing now even if it might cause damage in a few decades. "For the struggling firms on the Postrelian technological frontier, this discount factor could be very high. For society as a whole, which is infinitely-lived, it is far lower."

Then it was on to a Y2K run. Millenial jitters, visions of the planet's computers engaged in a vast cyber-tribal guru meditation. How does one say 'Ohmmmmmm' in binary anyway? The world comes to a halt. No way will Y2K New Years day be this bad says Joel. This all came about because the big iron mainframe programmers a couple of decades ago were out to save a few lines of code by rounded off two digits from the year position in their programs. They were thinking that even if there was some remote chance all this code was still being used and it went bad, it would be somebody else with the problem, and a low probability one at that. Some guys just call it like they see it. Good decision for the original codeheads, not so great for the rest of us on spaceship earth. How bad? It remains to be seen, but the buzz is scaring people. Intangeables are a pretty important part of technology.

His point is that a highly interconnected, co-evolutionary, non-linear dynamist system is vulnerable. He offered as an example a cyber-terrorist virus scenario. True Mokyr admits that it is not likely to happen, but if it is a dire possibility in a networked world, then maybe it isn't such a good idea to blow off the critics as technological reactionaries. Ever on the offensive, Joel went after, "The dynamist processes Postrel is enamored with at times create vulnerability where none was before. The uncoordinated, decentralized adoption of the potato in eighteenth century Ireland prepared the way for the disastrous Famine of the 1840s"

Things do go wrong. Dynamism doesn't have a monopoly on bad news.

Then he states that Postrel's evolutionary analogy is not reassuring. "Evolutionary history teaches us that large and complex systems are vulnerable to outside shocks." You know, things that go boom in the night. "Climatic change, sudden volcanic activity, to say nothing of asteroids can lead to mass extinction. There is nothing kind and gentle about evolutionary competition." Just like academic competition. And what if its us that are getting clipped here, not dunderheads from the planet Bozon? His point seems to be that if the probability of a technological disaster can't be zeroed out, then the claims of the Chicken Littles of the world have some validity.

Mokyr appears to be concerned that disaster is out there. After all, "Technology, unlike nature, is not 'just there;' its purpose is explicitly to serve the material needs of humanity and thus it can and should be assessed by economic welfare criteria. The case for a "dynamist" society thus crucially depends on whether the hustle and bustle of decentralized, uncoordinated trial and error disciplined only by free markets produce on the whole outcomes that enhance human welfare more than centrally coordinated technocratic projects like NASA. The answer to that, I think, is "yes", but it is not a trivial theorem nor a hard and fast rule for which no exceptions can be found."

Of course problems are just as dynamic as solutions and in any case aren't solveable from within the mindset that created them. Hence churn is a strength. Dynamism 101.

Mokyr then builds a case for morality as a catylist for techno-resistance. He observes that if all that is involved with a technology is merely that the doubters facts have been proven wrong or that their assessment of risk has to be revised downward, then no problem. He hones his line of argument towards conflict between morality and technological trespass. The moment evil enters the techno-assessment of the doubter, positions harden to bunker-like levels.

Morality and technolgy run into heavy weather, fog and the loss of certainty when there are multiple uses and multiple outcomes to technological use. He feels that the biological selection mechanism in the Dynamist model is inadequate to this problem. There are levels of misuse and evil within technology. Anything can be adapted into a weapon. His example is a hammer. Nothing to get too worried about here. Other technologies have only one purpose to maim and slaughter. Mokyr speaks of Saturday Night Specials, and Sarin gas among others. That stuff is clear as well. The problem comes with an ambigious middle level technology, those like dynamite, that can be used for evil, but that isn't their intention.

Mokyr raises the issue of assessment of the human, and organizational surround that all technologies are embedded in. It is here where the dynamics of moral or immoral action will occur. If one takes a pessimistic view regarding the frailities of human nature, that in and of itself can be a cause to resist certain techniques of technology.

Mind bending, Moore's Law driven techno-development in fast forward revs up moral resistance to tek. The chains of development where one technology leads to another technology often is a cause of moral concern. Mokyr observes that there is no rewind on knowledge. Once it is out there it can't go back.

Ever try to stuff toothpaste back into the tube?

Joel is winding down now. "It is not my purpose here to justify the technological reaction. To some extent, I have tried to play Devil's advocate here. Yet it is important to add a word of warning to Postrel's view that "sclerosis comes not because dynamism destroys itself but because people abandon it either because they do not understand what is at stake or because they do not care." Rather than hammer techno-resisters, it would be better to understand the source of their arguments. Stasist or Technocrat, along with everyone else they are boogying in the Dynamist dance of ideas.

Dynamist ideas prevail only by aknowledging the risks and costs of technological development and to point out the risks of a static turn-back-the-clock approach has even higher risks. While agreeing with Virginia Postrel "that the quest for stability makes society vulnerable by turning it brittle and rigid," at the same time Mokyr argues against an everything is beautiful, let a thousand flowers bloom and we will change the world, and nobody will get hurt either, as a rather naive position. Legitimate fears must be recognized. Better to recognize the process of constant change that is at the center of a dynamic society, and that there is the presence of risk and the possibility of disaster as a result.

Mokyr ends by stating that if we are going to go with a high speed flux society, then we had better work on systems for early warning of disaster and crisis. "The most scary outcome from which there is no escape is a stagnant and torpid society in which change as such as considered heresy or rebellion. That, I think, is the danger that dwarfs all others."

John Nye, an associate professor of economics and history and a fellow in the Center for Political Economy at Washington University, spoke about Markets, Resistance to Innovation, and the Problem of Order. Nye started with the ironic comment, "Judging from the world's history, most of the countries would prefer to be poor." Of course this is not true, although it appears to be somehow. Nye explained that governments present an overlapping of both good and bad; it's not realistic to wish for a government that's all good. There is always a balance between good and bad so that if we try to increase the good in government, we will also be increasing the bad. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Nye discussed the issue of credible commitment. This means that if you make a commitment to buy something on a credit or exchange basis, the person who is making the transaction with you can have confidence that you will pay up or that he will have legal leverage to get you to pay. In the United States and many other countries, the government and its laws provide a strong basis for credible commitment so that people can make business deals in confidence. In Russia, there is no credible commitment; the legal system provides no mechanisms of enforcement. Many Russians have resorted to making exchanges that are based in another country, such as Germany, which can provide credible commitment. This lack of credible commitment is a serious problem for the Russian economy. Another example of a lack of effective credible commitment comes from spain in the 15th century. Apparently the Spanish monarchy, which of course controlled the financial system, went through many bankruptcies. This is a part of the backdrop to the persecution of Jews at that time; since the Jews acted as bankers and lenders, when the monarchy could not pay its loans, it used religious persecution to distract attention --- and eliminate creditors.

Nye suggested that today's technology pioneers may someday use their influence to protect their interests against a new generation of innovators with the presumption that they are still innovators when in reality they're in decline, surpassed by new innovators.

Nye recommends that we need to take a clear-eyed view of underlying factors and structures in the operation of markets. And we need to understand that there's an inherent trade-off between growth and stability. Also we need to recognize that creative destruction is one pattern that is fundamental.

Chris Peterson, executive director of Foresight Institute, spoke about The New Openness.

Other speakers:

Nathan Rosenberg, The Importance of Economic Experiments.

Grant McCracken, Culture by Commotion.

David Post, Internet Policy and the Boundary Between Chaos and Order.

Jim Glassman, The Politics of Dynamism.

Chuck Freund, Is Culture a Condition, or a Process?.

Gregory Stock, Humans: Objects of Conscious Design.