Innovation has become the unquestionable god of modern civilization. Question its value, and you’re immediately labeled a Luddite, a conservative, someone who “doesn’t understand progress.” But this worship of innovation is not neutral. It’s a systematic destruction machine disguised as creation.
The Innovation Imperative
Every organization, every industry, every individual must now “innovate or die.” This isn’t advice—it’s a threat. The innovation imperative has become so embedded in our value systems that we’ve stopped asking the most basic question: does this innovation actually create more value than it destroys?
We’ve constructed a cult where the act of changing something is inherently virtuous, regardless of whether that change improves anything meaningful. Innovation for innovation’s sake has become the prime directive, overriding considerations of stability, sustainability, or human wellbeing.
Functional Systems as Sacrificial Offerings
Consider how many perfectly functional systems have been destroyed in the name of innovation. Local banking relationships replaced by algorithmic lending. Neighborhood businesses eliminated by platform monopolies. Institutional knowledge wiped out by “digital transformation.”
Each destruction is celebrated as progress. The banking algorithm is “more efficient.” The platform has “greater reach.” The digital system is “more scalable.” But efficiency, reach, and scalability are not values in themselves—they’re metrics that serve specific interests, usually those who profit from centralization and control.
The old systems weren’t destroyed because they failed. They were destroyed because they couldn’t be monetized, surveilled, or controlled as effectively as their replacements.
The Rhetoric of Revolution
Innovation worship relies on revolutionary rhetoric to justify systematic destruction. Every product launch is a “revolution.” Every software update “transforms” something. Every new feature “disrupts” an industry.
This language isn’t accidental. Revolutionary rhetoric pre-empts criticism by framing opposition as defending the old against the new, the past against the future. It creates a false binary where you must choose between innovation and stagnation, progress and decline.
But most innovation isn’t revolutionary. It’s incremental optimization presented as transformation. The smartphone didn’t revolutionize communication—it consolidated existing technologies into a surveillance device that happens to be convenient. Social media didn’t revolutionize human connection—it commodified social relationships while making them more superficial.
The Destruction Catalog
What has innovation worship actually destroyed?
Attention spans were sacrificed for engagement metrics. We can no longer read books, have long conversations, or think deeply without digital interruption. This isn’t a side effect—it’s the intended outcome of systems designed to capture and monetize attention.
Skill diversity was eliminated for platform dependency. We traded knowing how to do things for knowing which app does things for us. The innovation was marketed as empowerment but delivered dependence.
Regional economies were gutted for “efficient” global supply chains. Local production became “inefficient,” local knowledge became “outdated,” local relationships became “unnecessary.” The innovation created wealth for platform owners while destroying the economic foundation of communities.
Privacy was sacrificed for “personalization.” Every innovation in digital convenience came with expanded surveillance. We traded autonomy for algorithm optimization.
Time itself was financialized. Innovation turned every moment into a productivity opportunity, every relationship into a networking chance, every experience into content. Rest became “unproductive,” leisure became “waste,” being became less valuable than doing.
The Measurement Problem
Innovation worship persists because we measure creation while ignoring destruction. When a new app eliminates 10,000 taxi drivers but creates 100 programmer jobs, we celebrate the “job creation” and ignore the net destruction. When a new platform consolidates 1,000 local businesses into one monopoly, we measure the “efficiency gains” and ignore the economic devastation.
This measurement bias isn’t accidental. Those who profit from innovation control how innovation is measured. They highlight their benefits while externalizing their costs. The destroyed jobs become “market adjustment.” The eliminated businesses become “creative destruction.” The gutted communities become “economic transition.”
Innovation as Value Extraction
Most contemporary innovation doesn’t create new value—it extracts existing value more efficiently. Platform companies didn’t create new economic activity; they inserted themselves as intermediaries in existing transactions, taking a percentage while adding minimal value.
The sharing economy didn’t create new resources; it monetized underutilized assets while transferring ownership costs to individual users. Social media didn’t create new social connections; it digitized existing relationships while harvesting the data for advertising.
This extraction is presented as creation through accounting tricks and rhetoric manipulation. But value extraction isn’t value creation, no matter how innovative the extraction mechanism.
The Orthodoxy of Disruption
Innovation worship has become orthodox thinking, which means questioning it is heretical. Academic careers, business strategies, political platforms, and personal identities now depend on demonstrating innovation credentials.
This orthodoxy makes it nearly impossible to have honest conversations about innovation’s actual effects. Criticism is dismissed as “resistance to change,” analysis is reframed as “negativity,” and alternative approaches are ignored as “backward thinking.”
The orthodoxy is self-reinforcing because innovation has become the metric by which everything else is measured. Education systems must innovate to be relevant. Healthcare systems must innovate to be effective. Government systems must innovate to be legitimate.
But some things work better when they’re stable, predictable, and slowly evolving. Some relationships benefit from consistency rather than constant change. Some institutions create value precisely because they resist innovation pressure.
The Real Innovation
The most radical innovation would be learning to distinguish between changes that create genuine value and changes that simply extract value more efficiently. This requires asking different questions:
Does this innovation strengthen or weaken human agency? Does it distribute power or concentrate it? Does it enhance human capability or create dependency? Does it solve actual problems or create artificial needs?
These questions are rarely asked because the answers would undermine most contemporary innovation. The surveillance economy depends on not questioning whether constant connectivity actually improves life. Platform monopolies depend on not measuring their full economic impact. The attention economy depends on not acknowledging what we’ve sacrificed for convenience.
Beyond Innovation Worship
Innovation worship isn’t serving human interests—it’s serving the interests of those who profit from constant change and disruption. Recognizing this doesn’t mean opposing all change or defending all tradition. It means developing more sophisticated criteria for evaluating change.
Some things should change rapidly. Some things should change slowly. Some things shouldn’t change at all. The wisdom lies in distinguishing between them based on actual human needs rather than abstract innovation metrics.
The most valuable innovation might be learning when not to innovate. But that would require abandoning innovation worship, which those who profit from it will never allow voluntarily.
That’s why this analysis itself is already obsolete—not because it’s wrong, but because the innovation machine has moved on to new forms of value extraction that we haven’t yet learned to recognize or resist.
This analysis focuses on structural patterns rather than individual innovations. The goal isn’t to oppose all technological development but to examine how innovation worship functions as a value system that often serves elite interests while claiming to serve human progress.