Silicon Valley misappropriates Schumpeter’s creative destruction to justify permissionless innovation
Evidence
The credo of digital innovation quickly turned to the language of disruption and an obsession with speed, its campaigns conducted under the flag of “creative destruction.” That famous, fateful phrase coined by evolutionary economist Joseph Schumpeter was seized upon as a way to legitimate what Silicon Valley euphemistically calls “permissionless innovation.” Destruction rhetoric promoted what I think of as a “boys and their toys” theory of history, as if the winning hand in capitalism is about blowing things up with new technologies. Schumpeter’s analysis was, in fact, far more nuanced and complex than modern destruction rhetoric suggests. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 154
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies ‘permissionless innovation’ and contrasts it against Schumpeter’s actual, more nuanced theory of creative destruction.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s Marxist reading of capitalism and technological development under competition. — connects to: Silicon Valley startups function like cults and clans demanding total identification — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 183; Silicon Valley’s self-image elevates entrepreneurship as society’s universal problem-solving model — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 713; Giersch democratized Schumpeterian creative destruction into teamwork within firms — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 305 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Creative destruction, not peace, causes capitalism’s endemic crises
#corroborates(0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 428 - Schumpeter predicted capitalism’s end from entrepreneurial decline.
#expands(0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 263 - Silicon Valley escape fantasies abandon politics while hiding their own power.
#expands(0.72) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 191