On the Brink of Utopia

Humanity can plausibly enter an era of innovation if it meets five main conditions.

Contrary to popular belief, you may not be living in the most innovative time in history. Economists Tyler Cowen and Robert J. Gordon point to data that suggests that humanity experienced a much bigger wave of innovation between 1870 and 1970. During this period, technological breakthroughs such as electricity, the automobile, indoor plumbing, antibiotics and the telephone radically transformed human life. Innovations boosted productivity and sparked a shift from an agrarian economy to a service and industrial economy. 

Today, humanity is undergoing a shift to a knowledge economy, but the verdict is still out on whether the near future will be genuinely innovative. In his book The Innovation Delusion, Lee Vinsel points out that most of the technologies in the room with you were probably invented more than 50 years ago – an indicator that, perhaps, most of the innovation talk you hear from Silicon Valley companies is just that. In many ways, humanity is experiencing “innovation theater...