Consider the following comments on innovation.
Every innovation solves one problem by quietly creating three we have not yet named.
We celebrate the inventor and forget the thousand hands that made the invention usable.
The new is not the same as the better, though the market rarely lets us tell them apart.
A society addicted to the next thing will never finish maintaining the last one.
Progress is the art of breaking what works in the hope of building what works better.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
Argue that innovation is not an unalloyed good but a wager, one that society too often treats as a verdict already delivered in its favour. Begin by conceding the obvious gains, that the restless drive to improve has lifted lifespans, fed billions and connected strangers across oceans. Then press the harder claim: novelty and value are not the same, and a culture that worships the new will underinvest in the slow, unglamorous work of maintaining what already serves us. A useful third move distinguishes innovation that widens human capacity from innovation that merely manufactures new wants to sell new cures. Caution: avoid the nostalgic reflex that treats all change as loss, which forgets that yesterday's settled order was once someone's reckless experiment.