Topic
progress
- We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It
Charles Mann on the unseen, unappreciated wonders of modern infrastructure: The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grā¦
- The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Annotated
Whether intentional or not, Marc Andreessen's latest piece is the canon of the e/acc (effective accelerationist) movement. The visual that comes to mind for me is "the world if" meme made real. The desire to build, toā¦
- Outcomes Don't Look Like We Predict
Just because we set an objective doesn't mean we'll reach it. At least not in the specific form we imagine. When we do finally reach a destination that's descriptively similar to the objective we thought we were afterā¦
- Protopia
Kevin Kelly argues that utopias and dystopias are each popular in cultural imagination, but both are unlikely to play out. In the case of utopia, literally unattainable. Dystopia is possible, but the Mad Max or Escapeā¦
- BigThink's Progress Issue
Online magazine BigThink has just published a full issue dedicated to progress studies. Lots of great stuff here from noteworthy folks like Tyler Cowen, Hannah Ritchie, Kevin Kelly, and many more.
- The Lure of Technocracy
Jason Crawford lays out a theory for why technocracy (the idea that a technical elite can lead a nation to technological progress if given the top-down control of economic and scientific policy) fizzled out around theā¦
- Weekend Reading: Non-Experts, Non-Linear Innovation, and We Were Builders
šØāš» The Rise of the Non-Expert Expert Vicki Boykis on the impossibility of true breadth and depth of technical expertise: What used to distinguish senior people from junior people was the depth of knowledge they hadā¦
- Science: The Endless Frontier
Vannevar Bush's seminal report to President Truman, making the case for government support for foundational scientific research (and pushing to create the NSF). Previously: Process Not Products ā on Bush's work with tā¦
- Why Did It Take So Long to Invent X?
Jason Crawford is maintaining this list on Roots of Progress, an archive of inventions that seemingly could've been uncovered earlier than they were, based on what precursor knowledge would've been required. This oneā¦
- Progress is Not Automatic
One of the key insights coming out of the progress studies movement seems like a simple idea on the surface, but it's an important core thesis: that progress is not an inevitability. We don't see new inventions, innovā¦
- Building a State
Historian Anton Howes on the push/pull dynamics between monarchs and parliaments, and the gradual building of state capacity in 16th century Britain. Itās easy to imagine that governments were always as bureaucratic aā¦
- The Rise and Fall of the R&D Lab
Corporate research was a big deal in the mid-20th century. In this piece, Ben Southwood inspects why we no longer have modern equivalents to research centers like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs. An interesting point here onā¦
- Science, Innovation, and Longevity
This conversation with JosĆ© Luis RicĆ³n FernĆ”ndez de la Puente on Erik Torenberg's podcast was an expansive cover of more topics than I think I've ever heard discussed on a single podcast. A brief sampling of the subjeā¦
- Weekend Reading: Looking Glass Politics, Enrichment, and OSM Datasets
š Looking-Glass Politics On private emotions being thrown into the public sphere: People escape the Dunbar world for obvious reasons: life there appears prosaic and uninspiring. They find a digital interface and, likā¦
- Cultures That Build
Mark Andreessen's piece from a couple months back drove a flood of response, both in support and disagreement. This piece from Tanner Greer agrees with Andreessen's sentiments in general, but more interestingly divesā¦
- The Torch of Progress with Tyler Cowen
This is the second episode of the "Torch of Progress" series that the Progress Studies for Young Scholars program is putting on, hosted by Jason Crawford. Tyler Cowen is unbelievably prolific in projects he's got goinā¦
- Progress Studies for Young Scholars
Jason Crawford on Roots of Progress's new program for high school students: Progress Studies for Young Scholars launches in June as a summer program, with daily online learning activities for 6 weeks. Weāll be coverinā¦
- Innovation and Human Nature
In this piece from a few years ago, historian Anton Howes wrote about about what drives innovation. Is it part of human nature to pursue innovation? Or is it not a naturally occurring phenomenon? He makes the case thaā¦
- Weekend Reading: American Production, On Bikeshedding, and Glyphfinder
šļø Why America Can Make Semiconductors But Not Swabs Dan Wang on American industrial production: Learning to build again will take more than a resurgence of will, as Andreessen would have it. And the U.S. should thinā¦
- The Distribution of Scientific Discoveries
I really enjoyed this post from Jerry Neumann exploring the structure of how technological and scientific progress happens. Referencing the well known work of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, he demonstrates how technologā¦
- The Great Reset
Martin Gurri in response to Marc Andreessen's "It's Time to Build" essay: So how do we get from here to build? To demand that our current institutions make that leap would be like asking the Great Pyramid to win the Iā¦
- Funding Models for Science
The topic of funding has been kicking around with the coronavirus. Fastgrants launched a few weeks ago and has already awarded grants to 97 different research proposals. Roots of Progress breaks down various funding mā¦
- Building in World 2.0
Daniel Gross has a good list of things that will change post-coronavirus lockdown ā patterns of lifesytle, businesses, real estate, and others: A few notable ones: The (temporary) end of cities. We might see a temporaā¦
- Why Don't We Know More About the Subway Cost Disease?
Alex Tabarrok linked to this detailed deck from Alon Levy picking apart the possible reasoning for why NYC subway construction is so much more than other urban centers around the world. Levy is to be lauded for his piā¦
- Beautiful News
An interesting idea for looking at data. Rather than the typical negative, dour news you read daily, this site presents data demonstrating positive progress. Examples: US Cancer Survival Rates are Rising African Countā¦
- Microgravity Will Change How We Make Everything
Bloomberg has been publishing this video series on future technologies called "Giant Leap." It's well-done and a nice use of YouTube as a medium. This one explores a number of new companies doing R&D in microgravity mā¦
- Weekend Reading: Baseball Graphics, the Mind Illuminated, and the Crucial Century
ā¾ļø How Many Outs? Baseball Graphics Compared Some top-notch baseball geekery, with Jason Snell comparing the graphics overlays from Fox, MLB Network, and ESPNās telecasts. Iāve thought about this, too, but have to givā¦
- Why New Technology is Such a Hard Sell
Why does it take so long for new technologies with seemingly-obvious positive benefits to get adopted? This example on the speed with which the polio vaccine was adopted and administered are incredible, but an outlierā¦
- Age of Invention
A newsletter from Dr. Anton Howes, a historian studying innovation and the Industrial Revolution. Iām a historian of innovation. I write mostly about the causes of Britainās Industrial Revolution, focusing on the liveā¦
- Instant Stone
This is another great one from last year on Jason Crawford's Roots of Progress project, in which he dives into advancements in human progress. In this post he covers a brief background on cement, one of the oldest ofā¦
- Progress Studies
A few weeks back, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison co-authored this piece for The Atlantic calling for research into the study of progress. From the thesis of the piece: Progress itself is understudied. By āprogress,āā¦
- Does Invention Come from Deprivation or Plenty?
Another interesting post from Roots of Progress, following up from the previous one, which asked why it took so long to invent the bicycle. This question on invention is an interesting one. My first reaction is to agrā¦
- Weekend Reading: nvUltra, Progress, and Comma.ai
š nvULTRA This is a new notes app from Brett Terpstra (creator of nvALT) and Fletcher Penney (creator of MultiMarkdown). I used nvALT for years for note taking on my Mac. This new version looks like a slick reboot ofā¦