Have we begun to lose faith in the future? The idea of ‘progress’ didn’t truly exist throughout the majority of human history. Most ages didn’t see history as an upward curve – they saw history as cyclical, full of ups and downs.
This belief only shifted around the 1500s, says Jason Crawford, founder of The Roots of Progress and the author of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto.
The idea that progress would automatically continue became widespread, until the first World War shattered the illusion that technology would bring peace and cooperation. Out of this rose a counterculture concern that modernity was a mistake, that progress itself was the problem. But was it? Are we now moving backwards? How can we regain trust in pushing forward?