Technology and Sanity: the Innovation Cycle

Warning:  I am here going to have the unmitigated gall to modify and expand the insights of the great economist Joseph Schumpeter concerning innovation and disruption.
The innovation cycle is necessarily limited by the plasticity of the human brain which is not pronounced in the average person and lessens with age. Therefore the course of successful innovation is generational and the cycle itself is roughly sixty years. The historical record bears this out. The cycle of the railroad and telegraph, a coherent technological set, lasted from approximately 1840 to approximately 1900. The cycle of the automobile, telephone and radio, another coherent set, lasted from approximately 1900 to approximately 1960. We are still in the cycle of the mainframe computer, the jet aircraft and television, once again a coherent set, which should last until 2020 and be superseded by a set of gadgets, cloud computing and robots including drones.
What is noticeable from this type of analysis is that in the railroad cycle there is a clear break in 1872 with the Long Depression. In the automobile cycle there is a clear break in 1929 with the Great Depression. This is the classic innovation cycle. Apparently, armed with Professor Schumpeter's insights about the importance of entrepreneurs, we sidestepped a significant recession in 1990 by implementing new technology like the PC before the natural end of what I am calling Innovation Cycle Phase One of the mainframe cycle.
These clear breaks indicate a bipartite innovation cycle. Phase One is implementation and Phase Two is exploitation. Phase One results in massive disruption that induces what can only be called madness. In the 1860's, Phase One of the railroad cycle drove the fine madness of the American Civil War. In the 1920"s, Phase One of the automobile cycle drove the fine madness of the Jazz Age with its artistic treasures. In the 1960's, in an accelerated manner, Phase One of the mainframe cycle drove the fine madness of the cry for humane behavior of the Age of Aquarius. The nature of disruptive technology is that of a severe information overload which does have psychiatric consequences. The more inhumane the technology, the worse the effect.
Railroads are hostile. There is no evidence that human beings were designed to go fifty miles an hour in an iron horse like a dog in a car. Automobiles are hostile. Travelling seventy or eighty miles an hour while at the limits of control with no control over other vehicles at all may be exciting but it doesn't fall in the comfort zone of human capability. Mach One in a jet cannot help but be a transforming experience with unpleasant consequences.
Fundamental of change hostile to humane values is Phase Two, exploitation. In the railroad cycle not only were the machine tools of the railroad exploited to create new technology but human beings themselves were exploited, a not so fine madness, in the Gilded Age. The same pattern occurred in the 1930's but having witnessed the chaos and irrationality of the 1890's, governments instituted policies to counter Phase Two of the automobile cycle. These policies were as a leaf in a strong wind to the forces of change but they provided temporary relief for a time.
Thus the classic pattern of implementation and exploitation was effectively short-circuited in the 1990's by improved research and accelerated implementation so that both Phases, One and Two, are now occurring simultaneously. As in linguistics, there is a deep structure of the sixty year cycle profoundly obscured by these concurrent processes. It becomes difficult to analyze and address the consequences of this phenomenon.
The result appears to be an improved humane aspect to consumer electronics as the market demands it. Gadgets operating on the cloud like the smart phone and IoT are infinitely friendlier and more humane than an IBM 360 and a card reader. We are apparently on our way, from 2020 to 2050, into a humane age unlike anything that has ever existed. We are finding refuge, in Shakepeare's words, 'a frighted peace to pant', from inhumane technology while still reeling from intense innovation. This may induce a madness finer than anything known. It may induce sanity. It is going to be interesting.