Contents

Technology and Science Religion and Values Property Rights and Institutions Resistance to Innovation Politics, The State, and War So What's the Point?

Resistance to Innovation.

Although technology often involves a net improvement to the welfare of the people in a given society, it's almost always the case that there are groups whose welfare is reduced as a direct result of the technological innovation, and will therefore be opposed to it. Technological change shakes the labor market, alters (sometimes drastically) the environment, and inherently damages the lives of the innovator's competition. A situation is almost always created where those who stand to lose the most from a new technological innovation will do their best to suppress it.

One of the best examples of this, though there are many, is the late 14th Century German pin industry. As early as 1397, tailors in Cologne were prohibited from using machines that pressed pinheads. On the surface this seems silly. Why would anyone be opposed to a machine that pressed pinheads? Well, look at it this way, during the 14th, 15th, and 16th Centuries there was a thriving hand manufactured pin industry. The guild of the red metal turners, the organization that included those who manufactured pins, was intent on suppressing any machine that would damage the livelihood of their members.

In 1561, the city council of Nuremberg, influenced by the very powerful and influential red metal turners' guild, launched an attack on a local coppersmith for his invention of a vastly improved slide rest lathe. This unfortunate smith, one Hans Spaichl by name, had originally been rewarded for an invention that, among other things, would have made the production of pins a far easier process. The council quickly changed its tune when they began to harass Spaichl and forced him to agree not to sell his lathe outside his own trade. They then offered to buy the lathe from him if he agreed to stop using it completely and never sell another machine. To add insult to injury, in a final attempt to thoroughly destroy Spaichl and his new machine, the council finally threatened to imprison anyone who sold the lathe.

Like in the case of many of the other variables discussed in this article, resistance to innovation is almost totally ignored in God Games. In all honesty, its inclusion in the fabric of any given title wouldn't be all that difficult, and would ultimately lead to a far more interesting gaming experience fo the player. The first thing that would need to be done would be to look at the path of any given technological progression to determine whether the development of a new innovation would threaten the livelihood of a preceding innovation. The most obvious example would be automated production of any given manufactured good. Automation has been one of the largest causes of unrest in the industrial workplace since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In order to model the obvious resentment that a workforce would feel towards a new technology, the player would have to wait a longer period of time for the innovation to be built.

In order to shorten the time, the player could invest in the creation of institutions that would lessen the workforce's resistance. These could include social safety nets (especially those which retrain workers). Throughout the process, the player would constantly be threatened by the possibility that the endangered workforce would destroy the new innovation. The player might also want to take more heavy-handed action, such as union busting, to compel their workforce to submit to the implementation of the new innovation.

________________________________________________________

Politics, The State, and War