Larry Bassett’s Reviews > Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology > Status Update

My hope in the rest of the book is to show how heart, mind, and will–not just in individuals, but in societies–are the essence of social change for purely practical reasons that transcend creed, culture, and politics. To do so, I need vocabulary without baggage.

What the US education system needs above all isn’t more technology, but a deliberate allocation of high-quality adult supervision focused on those who need it most. The specifics are daunting and complex, but this isn’t a problem that technology can fix. 27

Balance is utmost, but balance is difficult even to talk about in a world of polarized sound bites. 67 Novel, measurable, large-scale, turbo-charged, value-free, market-oriented packaged interventions for freedom-drunk, goal-driven, meritocratic individualists dominate our notions of social change. This creed has been terrific so far for those of us who have benefited.

In scholarship, the Enlightenment ushered in the reign of science and reason over superstition and dogma. In culture, it exalted meritocracy and pluralism. In economics, it gave backing to property rights and national growth. And in government, it brought down dictatorships and gave birth to democracy.

Of course, technologies can enrich lives; voting can empower citizens; and microcredit can lead to better livelihoods. But “can” is not always “will.” Modern society fetishizes technocratic devices, but it’s a human finger on the on-switch and a human hand at the controls. Why are we so enamored of shrink-wrapped quick fixes?

(YOAA is Rossi’s own coinage; it stands for “your ordinary American agency.”) In other words, pilots often succeed because of the immense talent and motivation brought to bear on a new program. Once the program is handed off to an indifferent bureaucracy, though, it fails. The secret sauce is not in the program specs, but in the implementers.

For now, something of a truce prevails. Both sides agree that microcredit can be helpful, that the more extreme claims are overblown, and that more research is needed.

Low-cost technology is just not an effective way to fight inequality, because the digital divide is much more a symptom than a cause of other divides. 24 Under the Law of Amplification, technology–even when it’s equally distributed–isn’t a bridge, but a jack. It widens existing disparities. 25