By contrast, the more educated a population, the more democracy it seems to demand. With advanced technology spreading, unskilled and poorly educated workers are being squeezed out of their jobs in cutting-edge companies. It means, for one, that intelligent error needs to be tolerated. Multitudes of bad ideas need to be floated and freely discussed, in order to harvest a single good one. And this implies a new, liberating freedom from fear.
Fear is the primary idea-assassin.
Fear of ridicule, punishment, or loss of job destroys innovation. Smokestack management saw as its main task the ruthless elimination of error. Innovation, in contrast, requires experimental failure to achieve success. It has been between admirers of First Wave agrarianism and 'traditionalism' on the one side and the forces of Second Wave industrialism or 'modernism' on the other. . . . They run through family life, gender relations, schools, the professions, the arts, as well as politics.