# Through the Lens of Power Cultures (Part 2 of 2)
Date: 2022-06-27
Previous Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/through-the-lens-of-power-cultures.part1.md

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We cannot reasonably take back the printing press but we can get much more serious about supporting the technologies we have. How can we be still selling cars that run on gas? Why isn’t [better birth control](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03532-6) already common? Why are pseudo-scientific tests still allowed in college admissions? Where are the guide lines for genetic research? Why isn’t displacement of workers a consideration when launching new automation technology?

The answer is that we are still very much following Bacon’s “the noise of new works and further advances is heard on every side” vision for progress. Progress as a power culture must continually supply new power and perfecting existing technologies or regulating new ones doesn’t do that.

At a minimum we could stop worshiping the scientists and businessmen that bring the new. On the business side it’s incomprehensible why we are ascribing great virtue to people who didn’t invent anything. On the science side our reward systems have not evolved to the modern reality of very, very large groups being responsible for breakthroughs. Nor do we demand that new science be accompanied by frameworks for surviving discovery fallout.

At a maximum we can all withdraw from our power cultures. The tricky part is who goes first.