For a techie, the word 'innovation' always carries a positive connotation. To innovate is, for her/him simply the karma! But reading up on the global economic meltdown brought to my notice how different that word could sound to some people.
The reason for the mess - 'financial innovation'. Now that forces me to recheck Oxford English Dictionary, which defines innovation as 'an introduction of new ideas, methods or products'. That's it! There is possibly nothing great about innovating. The fruits of innovation could be as destructive or worse than what's unravelling today.
But the techie in me somehow refuses to accept the dictionary definition. How can innovation be bad after all? And how can we group marvellous financial innovations like micro-financing together with Credit Default Swaps and Sub-prime Mortgages? Isn't the fundamental issue rooted in greed? Is that word being masked by a more scientific sounding term? So if the 'greed-is-good' theory fails, let the blame go to 'innovation', huh?
Techies of the world, we need 'innovation' back in all its goodness.
Footnote: Googling for 'greed is good' lands me on the Wikipedia entry for Oliver Stone's Wall Street . A while back I glimpsed a section of this movie on TV, where Charlie Sheen's character was turning informant to nail his boss who was committing financial crimes. A power outage prevented me from watching the end, and a weak memory caused me to forget all about it; though the theme sounded really interesting. And today, out of nowhere, everything about the movie and much more is in front of me. The Oscar winning performance from Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, inspired a herpetologist to name a gecko species. Hmm..and the Palm Pre's wireless charger uses gecko feet science.
So what's knitting together a blog entry, an Oscar winning performance, cute lizards and the global financial crisis for me? Sheer co-incidence or real tecnho-innovations called www, Google and Wikipedia?
