Is the world of "Disruption" a good thing?

This article gave me food for thought on the subject of disruption and how it is supposed to be changing the world.

Ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted. There are disruption consultants, disruption conferences, and disruption seminars. This fall, the University of Southern California is opening a new program: “The degree is in disruption,” the university announced. “Disrupt or be disrupted,” the venture capitalist Josh Linkner warns in a new book, “The Road to Reinvention,” in which he argues that “fickle consumer trends, friction-free markets, and political unrest,” along with “dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and mind-numbing technology advances,” mean that the time has come to panic as you’ve never panicked before. Larry Downes and Paul Nunes, who blog for Forbes, insist that we have entered a new and even scarier stage: “big bang disruption.” “This isn’t disruptive innovation,” they warn. “It’s devastating innovation.”

The problem with "disruption" is that it not always creates a better world in its wake. This article goes into it in great detail and I have to agree with Jill Lepore's assessment. She takes apart the Innovators Dilemma point by point and proves that disruption doesn't kill all companies. She also states that disrupting may not be good for some companies.

She does skirt the fact that Blockbuster was killed by Netflix because they didn't catch the digital download wave fast enough. Also Best Buy is slowly being killed off by Amazon because they cannot match their prices and selection because they have to maintain stores. The record store was killed off by iTunes and being able to buy a song at a $1 each. Finally, the book store is slowly being killed by Kindle and the e-book in whatever form. It just seems like the scrappy startup "disrupting" the world is only true for a time until the big boys step in.

However, does this "disruption" make for a better world? I mean you no longer have to drive to the video store to pick out a video to watch on a Friday night. You just have to thumb through page after page of Netflix selections and end up watching reruns of Frazier or something. The bad thing is the tactile sense of things is disappearing. You no longer have a sense of the weight of things. You don't have a DVD or VHS tape in your hands and stored away. You have bytes on the cloud and it creates an ephemeral and disposable thing in your mind. You now have a 1000 movies that you can watch at any time but probably won't come close to watching them. One lucky thing though is Netflix is creating content that is very good. People are enjoying their TV shows and they are critically acclaimed.

This sense of "disruption" especially hard to take when it comes to the book store. I used to spend a solid afternoon reading about all sorts of different topics and thumbing through magazines and books. Now I can just go to Kindle and have 1000s of books at my fingertips but end up not buying any of them. I can't hold them in my hands and thumb through them then I usually don't want to have to buy them. It is especially tough when you know you are paying like $25 for a file that costs Amazon like 1/10th of a penny to make. That whole book store experience is slowly dying for the sake of carrying around a 100 books on your "disruptive" device. It is the cry of the grognard but what can you do?

This is mostly nostalgia talking but some aspects of the "disruptive" world rubs me the wrong way. The idea of dizzying speed and constant "devastating innovation" seems to be making the world a course place. Everyone seems to be rushing around and chasing the newest tech toy or just fleeing obsolescence. People just seem to be more angry and hostile because of it. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before but we also seem more anxious as well.

Part of the reason why the middle class is hurting is because their jobs got "disrupted" away. A solid middle class job like travel agent got taken over by Kayak.com and bank teller got taken over by your Citibank app. Now Uber is coming for the taxi cab driver and Wealthfront goes after your financial adviser. You can talk all you want about the manufacturing sector moving to China and the call center moving to India but Kayak, Amazon, and Android apps are doing their fair share of damage to the middle class. They are "disrupting" some middle class people right out of a job.

Finally there is less control over things and every device seems to be talking to one another while the NSA sits in the dark stealing your data and doing whatever with it. Soon your refrigerator is going to be sending you a Facebook message that you need to throw away your expired Yogurt. Losing your phone is now a terrible thing but soon it is going to be catastrophic. Hell, terrorist groups are Instagraming their mass murders and killers writing YouTube manifestos for everyone to watch. The "disruptive" world brings with it quite a nasty side sometimes. I guess it is the price to pay to have all the worlds knowledge at a click on a device you can fit in your pocket.