Human flourishing is dependent upon our collective willingness to embrace and defend the creativity, risk-taking, and experimentation that produces the wisdom and growth that propel us forward. By contrast, today’s neo-Luddite tech critics suggest that we should just be content with the tools of the past and slow down the pace of technological innovation to supposedly save us from any number of dystopian futures they predict. Through ongoing trial-and-error tool building, we discover new and better ways of satisfying human needs and wants to better our lives and the lives of those around us. That would be a disaster for humanity because, as I note in concluding that first essay: The problem is that the “technology critics sometimes go much too far and overlook the importance of finding new and better ways of satisfying both basic and complex human needs and wants.” I continue on to highlight the growing “technopanic” rhetoric we sometimes hear today, including various claims that “it’s OK to be a Luddite” and push for a “degrowth movement” that would slow the wheels of progress. “Technology critics have always been with us, and they have sometimes helped temper society’s occasional irrational exuberance about certain innovations,” I note in the opening of the first essay. ![]() The first is on “ The Radicalization of Modern Tech Criticism,” and the second discusses, “ How To Defend a Culture of Innovation During the Technopanic.” Inventory No: 262006.Over at the American Institute for Economic Research blog, I recently posted two new essays discussing increasing threats to innovation and discussing how to counter them. Category: Philosophy Sociology & Culture Sociology. Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other.The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years - to keep on changing. Today there are more than 6 billion, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors.The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories vitamins clean water machines privacy the means to travel faster than we can run, and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. In The Rational Optimist Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age, and proves, however much we like to think to the contrary, that things are getting better.Over 10,000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Matt Ridley, acclaimed author of the classics Genome and Nature via Nurture, turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. About the Author:īook Description Softcover. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair. ![]() The habit of exchange and specialization-which started more than 100,000 years ago-has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. ![]() Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. But they have been saying this for two hundred years. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper population growth is slowing Africa is following Asia out of poverty the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. ![]() Food availability, income, and life span are up disease, child mortality, and violence are down - all across the globe. Life is getting better-and at an accelerating rate.
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