Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

Description

Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? A provocative look at what happens next at the frontiers of human knowledge. The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers—from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory. And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally—recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative book, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future. Bhaskar argues that the challenge at the frontiers of knowledge has arisen not because we are unimaginative and bad at realizing big ideas but because we have already pushed so far. If we compare the world of our great-great-great-grandparents to ours today, we can see how a series of transformative ideas revolutionized almost everything in just a century and a half. But recently, because of short-termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making, we have built a cautious, unimaginative world. Bhaskar shows how we can start to expand the frontier again by thinking big—embarking on the next Universal Declaration of Human Rightsor Apollo mission—and embracing change. Contents Prologue Introduction: Life at the Human Frontier Part I: BIG IDEAS TODAY 1: How Big Ideas Work A Better Idea Caveat Ideator 2: The Breakthrough Problem Matters of Life and Death From A to B: Our Surprisingly Stationary Transport 3: The Diminishing Revolution 1873 and All That What price a breakthrough? 4: The Art and Science of Everything 1913 and All That The Science of Science Rational Pessimism Interlude: Enlightenment Then – A Big Idea in Practice Part II: BIG IDEAS TOMORROW 5: The Idea Paradox The Other Nuclear Winter Eating the LowHanging Fruit The Burden of Knowledge Saturation at the Limit 6: The Stagnant Society Inventing the Twentyfirst Century Mammon’s Empire Please Tick All the Boxes The Blind Planet 7: The World’s New Toolkit Artificial Ideas Instruments of the Third Millennium 8: The Great Convergence Scaling Up A World at Work The Institution Revolution 9: The Uncertain Horizon Three Trajectories Five Suggestions Epilogue: Paradigm Unstuck Type I Ideas (near termish) Type II Ideas (mediumterm ish) Type III Ideas (longterm) Notes Acknowledgements Bibliography Index