It is not only about "innovation" but about cultural diversity. For good or bad, a globalized world is standardizing culture around the world. Hollywood was a very powerful starting point as allowed everyone to see what the USA produces.
> innovations spread very quickly
That is the point. There are less and less pockets of different approaches. In one side of the world someone invents a new app and people is using it in the other side of the world 3 days later. Innovation may be fast, but it is not diverse but there is a convergence of ideas and ways of thinking. If we get it right it is fantastic, if we get it wrong there are no alternatives.
A good example, hot topic, is cryptocurrencies. If it is something good they are everywhere, if it is a mistake then it is consuming an incredible amount of resources for no use. If you had pockets of innovation the impact would be smaller and it will take more time to copy it if it becomes successful.
I read the argument as being about diversity. There are innovations, but as you point out in the next paragraph, they spread quickly, which could be good, but also destroys a lot of diversity. Look at how different UI design trends spread e.g. I don't consider that a clear win. Having many less connected groups could potentially lead to more, and more diverse innovations, vs. everyone jumping on the same bandwagon
The other thing that spreads more quickly is disease (here I mean metaphorically). If everything is the same, it gets infected the same way, and I believe there is an element of that when you look at online discourse, at dark patterns and other user hostile business practices, etc.
There are some reasons homogeneity is good, especially locally in time, but it presents an evolutionarily disadvantage over longer scales, which is what I took to be the point of the MC quote
Actually, transgenesis happens. E.g. bacteria can share genes horizontally with plasmids. And viruses may bring genes from unrelated species.
Take society as an organism in the abstract and it definitely needs to mutate.
Crichton was a pop science author, right-wing believer in America. His idea small groups get things done was lost on this guy who watched entire corporations publish his books and movies. I’d take his philosophy and science creds with a grain of salt.
The masses were too busy collectively validating his banal artistic efforts, so of course he would balk at collectivism philosophically while ignoring it took a village to lift him up.
Those folks are scared that if everyone can have time to write mediocre sci fi they’d have to get real jobs.
Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than smaller populations.
Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be shared with descendants) This already fundamentally changes how societies can evolve.
Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would have decreased after we became globally connected. This hasn't been the case, as we have continued to innovate and create new things even after we have been globally connected.
While our global society does propagate some homogeneity (McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere), it also lets innovations spread very quickly, which gives more chances for amazing new things to propagate.