The Oil Drum: Innovation in Hard Times?

When thinking about what happens to society during a difficult time of some kind, one of the sharpest delineators between pessimists and optimists is their belief about the role of innovation. The optimists tend to assume that the can-do creative spirit of humanity will, always and everywhere, solve all problems, and thus the future will be ever brighter and brighter, with the possible exception of some brief and localized problems which will only serve to spur further innovation. The pessimists tend to assume that human innovation either a) doesn’t occur at all, or b) generally makes things worse if it does.
Much more after the jump to The Oil Drum.