Why “Innovation” Was a Crime in the 16th Century

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If you don't innovate, your peers will. If your company doesn't innovate, your competitors will. If your country doesn't innovate, your geopolitical opponents will. One cannot be both a conservative and a technologist at the same time. I saw a video game conference with the title Games for Change. Apparently, games for fun is no longer enough.

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Only God goes from zero to one. The rest of us go always from one to ten. Machiavelli advises rulers to as much as possible not innovate. But why would the Protestants, the innovators, dislike innovation so? There is a country known for being a mere cockpit cat. This country has purposefully lax intellectual property rights and a systematic

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program of forced technology transfer. At best, Its citizens are good technicians. At worst, they are intellectual pirates, copying, stealing, spying. This country, Girard reminds us, is America. For thousands of years, innovation was despised until something flipped in the 18th century and it became glorified.