Change or Die

Few aphorisms so pithily capture the ethos of contemporary technoscience. "Change or die" evokes the making of new technologies in an environment of rapid disruption. Entrepreneurial, goal-oriented research upends the administrative and financial structures of entire industries. Simultaneous advances in a diverse range of fields intersect to produce research opportunities and new markets. Hybrid teams of experts coalesce and dissolve across disciplinary, institutional, and national boundaries. The result is a chaotic engine of accelerating progress that brings great reward to the survivors. It is an expression of Darwinian logic that applies to economics, to knowledge making, and, most of all, to the knowledge workers charged with living in a state of creative flow.

The Atlantic