Christopher Coulter says:

Topically relevant, but not sure if permissible to bring your column topics over to this venue — however, you grand-slammed that one in a Cubs-winning World Series. One tends to feel a bit Bob Newhartistic out among the blog “dingbat bromides”, so welcome breath of fresh air to read such. No sense reasoning there either, as if it doesn’t make any sense, obviously I just “don’t understand”. Only by becoming one of them, can I fully “get-it”, then, and only then, will I be able to see all the mysteries of the universe. You cannot understand it, unless you are it; endless loop cultic programming.

But onto the topic at hand…

Disruptive technology is more often an excuse for a Bubble than anything worthwhile. Life-changing inventions do not suddenly and spontenously emerge out of some techie primordial soup, they take time, effort, determination and drive and have a whole raft of political, economic and sociological factors in their makeup. “Disruptive” is mainly used by Venture Captialists and other Valley types, right before they sell you a false bill of goods, or software-companies hoping you will join the 1.0 beta-test-the-public modes.

Things that take decades, that happen mostly by accidents, that require serious effort to make it stick are not very “disruptive”. Indeed, history has never worked like that, even gunpowder, perhaps one of the most likely concepts to fit the mold of “disruptive”, took 500+ years to make it’s way to Europe from China. And even then things didn’t really get rolling until 1886, when Paul Vieille invented smokeless gunpowder; from the early 9th century to near-end crusp of the 20th, man, some disruption.
There are new discoveries, advances and inventions that make it, and then are those that don’t. Those that don’t, greatly outweigh those that do. “Disruptive technologies” is just a fools gold buzzword’ing dressed up in over-hyped three-piece suits, mark it down to the techies insatiable appetite for the “next big thing” and a total lack of historical knowledge.

And I thought the Segway was supposed to be a “disruptive technology”, Ginger required (even demanded) untold cities to totally rebuild to handle such “disruption”. Hahahhaa. “If enough people see the machine, you won’t have to convince them to architect cities around it. It’ll just happen.” – Apple CEO Steve Jobs . It’ll just happen? You mean, in some parallel Marshall McLuhan universe, the such that John Perry Barlow, George Gilder, Nicholas Negroponte and other such inhabit? 🙂

Mike Cannali says:

Is “transformative” another word for disruptive