“Present research,” he observed,

is overwhelmingly concentrated in two directions: research and development for breakthroughs to the better production of better wares and general systems analysis concerned with protecting man for further consumption. Future research ought to lead in the opposite direction; let us call it counterfoil research.

Solving a crisis by escalation seems not to have gone out of fashion. It signals, of course, a failure of imagination, but also an institutional imperative. What can an institution possibly offer you except more of itself? For example, the one remedy for the problems it has unleashed that Facebook cannot contemplate is suspending operations. What