technology and "innovation" can be described under the more "neutral" heading of "differentiation."

as differentiation occurs and accelerates not only do people have additional trouble understanding each other and themselves (a fact that I've highlighted earlier), but economic output is driven to extreme poles.

i sometimes think of two farmers, equal in all respects, but with one inheriting some piece of agricultural machinery and the other with nothing but bare hands. of course the farmer working with bare hands must work much harder to match the level of production of the farmer with the piece of machinery. now consider that in a more realistic setting, these two farmers are only two people amidst a world of people. the farmers depend on a common market to supply anything that they need or want that they cannot produce themselves. in this setting, not only do they compete for food and goods, but even for the land itself. Introducing yet more realism, arable land close to urban markets is where farmers can actually make an income, that is becoming ever more scarce because of climate change and urban sprawl (try not to think of walmart for a moment and try to imagine the sprawling slums of the developing world). the situation quickly moves from being one of romatic competition in the face of hardship to being a dire struggle against impoverishment and landlessness.

yet this example is even too generous, for that market must satisfy the needs and desires of the entire world -- a world filled with people -- some filty rich and others wretchedly poor. one might object to the usurpation of resources, land in particular, given the marginal benefit to the poor being so much greater than to the rich. furthermore land is a contested resource within the framework of orthodox economics (or at least it should be), for it is not a commodity and cannot be re/produced. land is the original thing -- the original space -- before humans made tools or languages there was land -- before humans there was land. on the other hand, hernando de soto, on of the more popular proponents of property rights in the developing world, points out that there are benefits to accrued through property rights in poor countries. the productivity of land can change drastically upon the improvements made to it.

i agree with de soto that in the "urban" world strict and widespread property rights should be sought after and inforced. yet in the "rural" world, property rights can be just another differentiation used by urban folks or those in power to exclude the poorest from a decent life. this fact was widely seen in brazil in the early eighties when huge tracts of land were all but forgotten by absentee landholders, while the landless workers suffered from unstable food prices).

what i mean to say is that rural places can provide a buffer to differentiation, such buffers are needed in a world where the farmer with bare hands (in my simple analogy) is more likely to be a farmer with no land! these are maybe not the rural places that you know, though those places might give you some sense for what a "real" rural place might be like.