PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE
Another innovation vehemently opposed is the fluoridation of drinking
water to prevent tooth decay. Historian Donald R. McNeil has
summed up the situation in an article titled “America’s Longest War:
The Fight over Fluoridation, 1950-19??” 5 He points out that after forty
years, half of the American population does not have fluoridated water.
The opposition was varied and surprising. Even the church was mobilized
against fluoridation. Among the arguments used by opponents has
been that it increases communism, atheism, and mongolism! Water supplies
in the United States are routinely chlorinated today, but that idea
was also fiercely opposed when first proposed.
Opposition to technological innovations reached violent and criminal
levels in England in 1830 when farming machines were introduced. The
increased productivity of threshing machines jeopardized the jobs of
farm laborers, who reacted by trying to stop the diffusion of the innovation
and tried to win public opinion and the sympathy of the Church.
Opposition first manifested itself sporadically by destroying farming
equipment, setting farms ablaze, sabotaging firefighting efforts,and receiving
light sentences for such crimes. But troubles culminated in
November 1830 with a wave of concentrated attacks on threshing machines.
E. J. Hobsbawm and G. Rude have collected detailed data on the
destruction of 250 machines in a period of one month. 6 This violent expression
of discontent displayed the hallmark of a “natural” evolution:
The cumulative number of machines destroyed traces a complete S-
curve in one month (Appendix C, Figure 6.4). Similar pictures would
probably describe other means of resistance that also slowed the diffusion
of this innovation.
The introduction of farming machines capable of increasing productivity
is typical of a new technology disturbing an equilibrium
established around an old technology. The part of the population whose
income is threatened will fight against it for a while, retarding the rate of
diffusion. But sociocultural resistance to change was not always manifested
by violent opposition and criticism. Sometimes its only
manifestation was the introduction of extended delays in what should
normally be rapidly accepted. Innovations of indisputable benefit requiring
no capital investment or economic hardship have taken up to
fifty years to gain popularity in society. One example is the general
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