The well-being of humanity depends on progress

Have you ever wondered why the bicycle, a simple mechanical device, was not invented until 1817? Or why nuclear, a carbon-neutral source of energy, is not used more by humanity? These kinds of questions obsess American Jason Crawford, who gave up a successful career in the technology sector to found The Roots of Progress, a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of progress. Like many intellectuals from economics and technology, he believes that the conditions that make progress possible remain unknown, and that there is an urgent need to better understand them. He informed to News of some of his findings after five years of trying to unravel this mystery.

What is progress?

In its broadest definition, it is anything that allows humans to have a better life. It means living longer, happier and healthier, both mentally and physically. I also use the term in its more traditional sense, that is to say scientific, technological, industrial and economic advances, which are also the easiest to measure.

Why do we need more progress, we who lead such comfortable lives in North America? Shouldn’t we focus on redistributing what already exists?

The distribution or diffusion of a technology to all parts of the world is a form of progress. That said, you cannot redistribute what has not yet been produced or invented. 200 years ago, people already felt comfortable. Yet most lived in what is now considered extreme poverty. For a long time, only the wealthy could afford inventions such as running water, toilets or refrigerators. Nowadays, they seem to us basic necessities to which even the poorest must have access. But I don’t believe that a poor person’s standard of living is sufficient because he has a refrigerator, in the same way that I don’t believe that a rich person’s standard of living is sufficient because he can travel. in the space. I want everyone’s standard of living, rich and poor, to be better in the future. Otherwise, we will not have done for future generations what previous generations have done for us. So much progress is still possible, and it would be a tragedy to stop now.

In your publications, you sometimes analyze seemingly simple technologies, such as the bicycle, to try to understand why they were not invented earlier. What do you learn by doing this?

In most cases, I find that many prior technological advances were necessary, but that these are not obvious at first glance. This is the case of the bicycle, but also of the threshing machine, in the agricultural field. Both rely on the ability to manufacture precise mechanical parts, and being able to distribute the finished product to a large market to be economically profitable. Nevertheless, from time to time, I come across inventions that nothing prevented from being created earlier. Take the example of signaling flags to communicate between ships. As far as I know, they did not appear before the XVIII^and century. Yet we were able to make flags long before that, and there was a great military need for such a system.

What makes progress possible?

This is a question I am still trying to answer! What I’ve observed so far is that progress comes through a series of self-reinforcing cycles. Technologically, for example, the invention of a more precise tool makes it possible to create parts that were impossible to manufacture before, which then helps to design even more precise tools, and so on. On the economic level, the accumulation of wealth makes it possible to better finance research and development, which leads to new technologies, and therefore more wealth. But the crucial element is that progress must, on the cultural level, be seen as both possible and desirable, which has far from always been the case when analyzing history. It was only around the sixteenth^and century than people like Francis Bacon [un philosophe anglais qui a été l’un des pionniers de la pensée scientifique] looked around and found that the inventions around them had not always been there, had not always been known, and that there were perhaps other inventions, other discoveries to be made if we tried to find. Gradually, more and more people believed in the possibility of progress, and more and more effort was put into it.

Much effort is still devoted to it today. Yet you say you are worried about the future of progress.

When we compare the advances of the last few decades to those of the previous 200 years, we notice that progress has slowed down. I believe that one of the causes of this deceleration is the emergence, from the second half of the twentieth^and century, of a movement that fears and distrusts progress. This movement is still very influential today – we see it with the obstructive activists who prevent the implementation of projects in their communities, with people who write about deviance and the dangers of technology. Now, the more we rebel against the idea of ​​progress and fear it, the less we will have of it.

Still, aren’t we right to distrust progress at times, especially when considering its excesses, such as the nuclear bomb or climate change?

I am not saying that we must return to the philosophy of progress of the 19^and century, which was naïve and often blind to the risks inherent in technological development. But I believe that rejecting the progress that some are calling for is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We must reaffirm its value while framing it in a reasonable way. [Le physicien israélo-britannique] David Deutsch once wrote that it is in the nature of progress to solve problems while creating new ones. What is needed is to seek solutions to these new problems. Chemotherapy can treat cancer, but it can cause nausea. It would be a mistake to refuse this potentially life-saving treatment when its side effects can be alleviated with nausea medication.

How can the perception of progress be improved?

You have to start with the story. It’s easy to romanticize the past, to romanticize nature. But when you study how people really lived in the past — and how they still live in some parts of the world — you realize that it was anything but idyllic. Cooking over the fire sounds romantic, until you learn the smoke causes cataracts. You don’t want to go back to the days when children got smallpox and starvation was common. Understanding these simple facts is the foundation of the belief that progress has contributed to the well-being of humanity, and that it can still do so.