How to Think about Progress

How to Think about Progress is an interdisciplinary work exploring whether optimistic claims about technology’s potential stand up to humanity’s most difficult challenges. Will technology solve the problems of climate change, pandemics, cancer, loneliness, unhappiness, and even death? The authors show that techno-hype is all too often accepted because of the horizon bias, i.e. the modern propensity to believe that any problem that can be solved with technology will be solved in the very near future. The authors situate their analysis in a broad context, drawing on history, literature, and popular culture to emphasize their case against techno-hype. They also draw on a wide range of research, including that of biologists, philosophers of science and of language, psychologists, theorists of technological change, specialists on digital technologies, historians of ideas, and economists. As a corrective to much mainstream “futurism,” the book offers principles for seeing through much of the techno-hype that circulates online and in best-selling books. The authors share insights (without the jargon) from a variety of academic disciplines, making this book an engaging read for all audiences. Readers will find a balanced framework for thinking and writing about technological progress in the face of truly vexing challenges like cancer, climate change, and colonizing mars.