Transition Point: From Steam to the Singularity: How technology has transformed the world, and why what comes next is critical

By Sean A. Culey

TRANSITION POINT: REVOLUTION, EVOLUTION OR ENDGAME?

We live in disruptive times. The world is changing faster than ever before, leaving people dazed, businesses struggling, economies floundering and societies fracturing. But why? Transition Point is the result of over five years of research to establish the answer; a breathtaking tale of freedom, unintended consequences and disruptive technologies that starts 1000 years ago and ends up in the second half of the 21st Century.

Starting with an examination into the drivers of technological change and the social, economic and political factors that both enable or suppress it, Transition Point explains why industrialisation happened where and when it did, why progress comes in waves, and why the technologies in the current wave, such as robotics, blockchain and AI, are likely to be the most disruptive of all.

It then addresses the million-dollar question: what's next? What impact will this wave have on our businesses, our economies and most importantly, on our society? Culey explores how our current trajectory could result in a new golden age, but also how it is just as likely to result in a digital dictatorship of compliance and constant surveillance. Finally, he explains why we may soon see Homo sapiens' role as the dominant species come to an end.

As Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, stated; "We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before."

Transition Point explains why this is happening, what it means, and why the decisions we make now will prove to be critical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Dec 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789012941

Sean A. Culey

Sean Culey is a global keynote speaker on the topic of disruptive technologies and their impact on business, the economy and society, a renowned business transformation specialist and the author of numerous articles in magazines such as Forbes and The European Business Review.

Book preview

TRANSITION POINT

From Steam to the Singularity

Sean A. Culey

Copyright © 2019 Sean Culey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Matador Publishing and the author do not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

9 Priory Business Park,

Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN: 9781789012941

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Helen, Taylor and Pierce

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Cover Design and Interior Artwork

Part One: Engines of Revolution

1    Time, Testosterone and Technology

2    From Producers to Consumers: The West Takes Off

3    A Quite Extraordinary Series of Events

4    Exploration, Enlightenment and Entrepreneurism

5    Revolution! The World Takes Off

6    Gallifreyan Economics and the Art of Creative Destruction

7    Understanding Innovation: Gradually, Then Suddenly

8    The End of the Industrial Age

Part Two: The Sixth Wave

9    The Automation of Labour

10  The Automation of the Knowledge Worker

11  Convergence! The Automation of the Value Chain

Part Three: Evolution or Endgame?

12  New Wave, New Paradigms

Sixth-Wave Business

13  A New Business Mindset

14  A Copernican Business Revolution

Sixth-Wave Science and Technology

15  Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact

16  The Death of Privacy

17  AI Unleashed

18  Retaining Control

Sixth-Wave Economics

19  The Time of Keynes’ Grandchildren

20  A Revolution for Me, But Not for Thee

21  Levelling the Field

22  The Potential for a New Golden Age

Sixth-Wave Society

23  All Empires Fall

24  Cracks in the Foundations

25  Chaos by Design

26  Basic-Income Bread and Virtual Circuses

27  The Mother of All Cultural Lags

28  Brave New World or Big Brother?

Beyond the Sixth Wave

29  Battle of the Gods

30  A Tale of Two Species

Conclusion

References

Notes

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thanks to my wife and soulmate for the last thirty years, Helen, without whose support this book would have never been written. The last five years have created a financial rollercoaster on which you did not ask, nor want, to ride. I couldn’t have done this without the support of someone who believed in both me and this project, and I am eternally grateful for having you in my life.

Secondly, thanks to my sons Taylor and Pierce, for their patience with a father who was mentally distracted by this project during critical years. Also, thanks to my parents for teaching me the virtue of responsibility and effort.

Finally, thanks to all those who have over the years encouraged me to write this. In no particular order, these include: Niels (‘Don’t write a book, write the book’) van Hove, Dr Heather Skipworth, Professor Richard Wilding OBE, Professor Alan Waller OBE, Clive and Jenny Froome, Sharon Burton, Gretchen Becker, Sandra Lam, Raphael Rottgen, Lawrence Corr, Nigel Price, Steve Connell, Mark Tattum, Karim Sayani, Nameer Khan, Peter Wilkins and Daniel McMurray.

Introduction

This history behind this book starts back in the summer of 2012, when I was chairperson for a European supply chain conference in Madrid. During the two-day event I listened to various speakers excitingly talk about new technologies that were being developed, ranging from big data analytical tools to warehouse robotics, and it dawned on me that no one was considering what would happen when these were all applied. At the end of the day I sketched out a picture of an end-to-end supply chain and overlaid the different technologies and the areas they would automate. I quickly realised that we were facing a wave of technology that had some very disruptive potential.

A couple of months later I took the ideas from this sketch and wrote an article for The European Business Review called Transformers: Supply Chain 3.0 and How Automation will Transform the Rules of the Global Supply Chain. It proved popular. I then received a call from the organiser of an event I was speaking at, who had an urgent request: could I prepare and deliver a second presentation at short notice as the last speaker of the day had just dropped out? I stated that I had just written an interesting article that I could easily convert into a presentation. He agreed, I did it, and the audience loved it, with the Q&A session going on so long that the organiser had to come in and shut things down. It had touched a nerve, but intriguingly, the questions from the audience were not so much about the technology, but about their social and economic impact. Questions such as ‘What does this mean for our jobs? For society? For our children’s futures?’

I was increasingly asked to speak at events in locations ranging from Asia to Africa, the Middle East to Eastern Europe, as well as private sessions for companies who wanted to shake their teams out of complacency. To ensure it stayed relevant, I constantly updated both the content and the style of delivery. Then, in autumn 2013, I decided that this would make a good book. I agreed with my wife that I would take three months off work to transform this material into a short book that should be finished by Christmas. That proved to be ridiculously naive. It quickly became apparent that while my observations identified connections that few had noticed, it was also somewhat incomplete. Like the vast majority of books, blogs and opinion pieces, it was just detailing what was happening, but contained little explanatory insights. Everyone agrees that the world is changing at a breathtaking pace, one that is leaving many people dazed, businesses struggling, economies floundering and societies fracturing. But why?

Establishing the answer to the ‘why’ question requires an understanding of not only the nature of technological change, but also of the social, economic and political factors that enable and suppress it, plus those that are impacted by it. Suddenly the rabbit hole starts to look deeper than one would expect. Exploring how deep constitutes Part One of this book.

It gets worse, for once you understand the concept, cause and impact of technological change, and the waves that drive it, then further questions emerge. What stage are we in now? What types of technologies does the current wave contain? Which areas will it impact? The truth is that we are about to experience a period of technological change on a par with the introduction of electricity. And like electricity, it will power new production capabilities, create new consumer products and develop entirely new ways of living. Exactly how these technologies are primed to automate every aspect of the business world, from digging things out of the ground to the sale and delivery of finished products, creating a more personal, automated and local supply chain, constitutes Part Two of the book.

Finally, the really big question – so what? What are the likely issues, challenges and opportunities that will arise as a result of all of this disruption? What impact will all this technological change have on business, the economy, our society and our evolution? As the 19th-century Danish philosopher and social critic Søren Kierkegaard observed, life can only be observed backwards, but it must be lived forwards. What lessons can we extract from Part One to ensure that progress is both possible and positive? To be clear, I don’t have all the answers – no one does – but I hope I’m able to frame and connect some of the most important and thought-provoking issues and questions. One thing became clear; to discuss technology without investigation into the socio-economic impacts would have been like discussing Christianity without talking about God. These areas are intrinsically linked, and as a result, geopolitics also comes into the discussion, for that tries to control both our economic and our social activities, and technology now provides new ways to do that.

Part Three, therefore, examines six key areas that will be impacted by this current wave of transformative change: our paradigms, our business practices, our scientific and technological explorations, our economic models, our society and our world views. In the business section I explore how capitalism has morphed into corporatism, and how corporate leaders need to adopt a longer-term and more entrepreneurial mindset to adapt to the demands of a new wave, ensuring not just their survival, but also the creation of a more sustainable, customer-centric business model. In the science and technology section I explore the rise of genetic engineering, the dystopian potential for technology to erode our freedoms and privacies, and the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. In the economics section, I explore the changing nature of work, the threat of mass technological unemployment, the need to recalibrate the economic model to ensure a level playing field, and the case for a universal basic income. The society section is perhaps the most interesting – and the most controversial. In this I examine how Western society is currently unravelling, struggling to adapt to rapidly changing technological forces, but taking totalitarian steps just to retain a semblance of order. I examine how some of this chaos is being driven by ideologues, and how their attempts to undermine the foundations that led to the progress defined in Part One is bearing fruit. Finally, the last two chapters explore what happens after this wave. This includes an explanation as to why our world views and the deities we worship will determine our future, and why this may be the beginning of the end for Homo sapiens as the dominant species on the planet.

In places I propose suggestions: ways to improve businesses to deliver more value to more people, ways to ensure technology does not take over, ways to recalibrate our economic models and ways to ensure society works for everyone. I cover some major topics that have been turned into books all on their own, but rather than simply sensationalise, I try to show how, as with the first industrial revolution, the choices we make and the freedoms we allow will determine the society we end up with. However, make no mistake – dystopian outcomes are still viable, and they are much easier to achieve than the utopian ones, for in many cases they simply require doing nothing.

I never intended this to be such a big project, nor such a large book. But the further I went down the rabbit hole, the more I realised that technology, society and the economy are intrinsically linked, and I was unaware of anyone bringing these elements together in a way that highlights both the historical causes and the future implications of this interrelationship. While tempted to split this into separate books; one on technology, and another on the social and economic impacts, I ultimately felt that the power came from explaining their connection, and that if I separated them, then the impact would be lost. The reader would learn ‘how’ and ‘what’ is happening, but not ‘why’. I’ve frequently questioned the logic of undertaking such a large and ambitious project, questioning both my right to do it and whether I was being selfish in pursuing it. The time it has taken me to produce this work, mostly due to my family’s fondness for food and their aversion to homelessness, has also been frustrating, for since I started many other books have been published on similar topics. It has also been interesting to watch potential events that I had written about actually unfold. As we will explore, the transition period between technological and economic waves is a dangerous, divisive and disruptive time. To then watch the European migration crisis, Brexit and the US election, the nuclear sabre-rattling between the US and North Korea, the escalation of tensions between the West and Russia and the polarisation of Western society was quite a thing. As was watching many of the radical new technologies transform from being mere ideas into implemented solutions.

I hope the extensive journey of exploration and discovery I’ve been through over the last five years researching and writing Transition Point translates well. In places it may make you concerned and fearful, in others inspired and hopeful. But most of all I hope it makes you think. In places I have not shied away from being controversial, for I believe that when honesty and freedom of speech dies, society dies with it. I hope that this book challenges you to think carefully about some of the decisions that are currently being made, that we do not sacrifice too much in our pursuit of progress, and that we can work together to ensure that the future is a positive experience for everyone.

Best wishes and thank you.

Sean A. Culey

Cover Design and Interior Artwork

The three images that feature on the cover and at the start of Part One and Part Three are reinterpretations of the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions, and of doorways and endings. As such, Janus is the perfect guide, for this is a story of beginnings and transitions, and from this transition could come new beginnings or endings – or both.

On the cover, Janus’s two heads are represented by James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine that powered the industrial age; and an android representing the forthcoming artificial-intelligence age. I name this image Transition Point: From Steam to the Singularity.

The version of Janus that opens Part One again uses James Watt, but this time his partner is Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, wearing a pair of Google Glasses which in 2014 were the epitome of wearable technology. The image is named Engines of Revolution for these two individuals were the primary inventors of the two engines that powered two revolutions – the steam engine and the search engine.

The final Janus transition image opens Part Three of this book, called Evolution or Endgame? Janus now represents a juxtaposition between a utopian Pollyanna and a dystopian Cassandra vision of the future. Pollyanna Janus becomes female in form, representing the rise of women across industry and the workplace. She is augmented, representing a future where we merge with technology, constantly on and constantly connected. A world of technological advancement and abundance. Her dystopian Cassandra alternative represents the nightmare sci-fi scenario of runaway AI, where technology, not humanity, becomes the prevalent force on the planet, where our hubris has led to human decline.

I commissioned the artwork in the summer of 2014, and they were all completed by a wonderfully talented young US artist called Houston Sharp, who I’m delighted to announce has since gone on to become an in-demand concept artist/illustrator working on Hollywood blockbusters such as Wonder Woman, Rampage and Dark Phoenix. I wholeheartedly recommend checking out his portfolio of work at https://houstonsharp.deviantart.com/gallery/

Part One

Engines of Revolution

1

Time, Testosterone and Technology

The farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Sir Winston Churchill

Picture a child sat playing with two toy dinosaurs, a ferocious meat-eating Tyrannosaurus rex, and a plant-eating, spiky-tailed, plate-covered Stegosaurus. Got it? Good. Now consider the fact that the child is far more likely to have met a real Tyrannosaur than a Stegosaurus, by a not unsubstantial 18 million years, as Rexy and Steggy lived 83 million years apart. Life has been around far longer than we have, but nothing has had the same impact. To understand how little time humans have played a role in this planet’s story, the following analogy is often used: imagine the history of Earth was converted to a single calendar year. Anatomically modern humans only made an appearance at 11.58pm on the 31st December; just 150,000 years ago. Believed to have originated in Africa (although recent findings indicate that it may have been Europe), for most of their existence humans have lived unremarkable lives, foraging for food and focusing on not being eaten by predators or killed by other groups of similarly uncommunicative upright apes. We only discovered how to magic up fire around 125,000 years ago, but while we could now warm ourselves, for 65,000 years the fireside conversation was somewhat lacking, as it was only 60,000 years ago that we attempted speech. These early conversations were pretty unremarkable, which is probably why no one bothered to write any of them down. The eventual transition from grunts to words had profound side-effects, enabling the development of more complex thought processes, cultural creativity and other attributes that separated us from other mammals. For this achievement we bestowed these ancestors the honour of being called anatomically and behaviourally modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens).

Homo sapiens wasn’t the only upright, bipedal, talking humanoid on the scene, and if gambling had been a thing back then, you would have almost certainly put your shiny stones and favourite shells on Neanderthals emerging as the dominant species, given their larger brain, better eyesight and substantially more powerful physique. Their large muscular frames enabled them to be successful ambush hunters, as well as helping them cope with the cold of the Ice Age better than Homo sapiens. Strong, smart, aggressive and capable of communicating as well as humans, Neanderthals should have been invincible. Yet like the dwarves in Middle Earth, while their physique made them well suited for short bursts of speed and close combat hunting, they were not the best at long-distance running, balance or throwing. They were also pretty antisocial, probably due to them producing so much testosterone that they could win Mr Olympia simply by following the Jane Fonda workout. High levels of testosterone in the presence of competition fuels dominance, whereas high testosterone in times of low threat or competition creates fierce protectiveness. These traits probably resulted in Neanderthals – especially the males – not playing well with others, particularly those they deemed competition for food or females, explaining why they formed small and very close-knit family groups. This unwillingness to mingle probably resulted in some serious Game of Thrones-style interbreeding, limiting their genetic diversity.[¹] Homo sapiens, on the other hand, experienced a gradual reduction in their testosterone level, developing more ‘feminised’ features than their Neanderthal cousins, such as a reduction in brow prominence and a more rounded face. Reduced testosterone levels have been linked to the development of language and social skills, which explains why females demonstrate a higher level of social interaction skills than males. Male humans are also hardwired with a genetic honey trap that lowers testosterone after they have children, especially when they are around family groups. This makes them less competitive and sexually aggressive when they become fathers, and thus more likely to stick around after mating. It also makes them more sociable and willing to work with other males.

The Neanderthals’ small groups and testosterone-fuelled antisocial behaviour were not a problem in the forests of Europe where they lived during the Ice Age. However, when the climate warmed, the forests where they hunted receded and transformed into wide open spaces, and their inability to run long distances or work together in large groups severely limited their hunting effectiveness. Neanderthals and humans competed for the same food, and while Neanderthals formed small, exclusive family units, Homo sapiens formed larger and more inclusive tribes, developing a social fabric that helped keep them all warm, safe and fed. The security and support of the group also allowed them to travel further to find food, working together to overcome different climates and terrains, increasing their adaptability and widening their resources⁶. In a world of open plains, hunting down massive beasts like mammoths required collaboration, cooperation and networking over considerable distances – plus a willingness to share the spoils. This was where modern humans were more genetically and socially able. It is believed (it’s hard to know for sure as evolution isn’t a spectator sport) that the Neanderthals’ inability to collaborate with others and form large groups made it harder for them to overcome the difficulties of their harsh Eurasian environments, restricting their ability to compete for food in the open spaces. Despite their obvious physical advantages and the fact that they had a 150,000-year head start, we survived, and the Neanderthals’ did not. Homo sapiens’ more inclusive nature was the difference. Our ability to work together and find common purpose, identity and unity enabled our ancestors to overcome hardships and achieve goals bigger than they could as individual units. Without this, it is unlikely that we would have developed beyond simple hunter-gatherers, and we certainly wouldn’t have become the industrialised nations we are today.

Interestingly, the impact testosterone has on social structures can be seen in great apes such as chimpanzees and bonobos. While chimps and bonobos are from the same taxonomical genus – Pan – and look somewhat alike, slight differences in genetics make a huge amount of difference socially. Both live in stable social groups and have a relatively long lifespan. However, male chimpanzees have high testosterone levels and, as a result, are incredibly strong and competitive, creating patriarchal hierarchies where issues are often resolved through violence, whereas male bonobos have much lower testosterone levels and, as a result, female bonobos rule the roost and most disputes are settled with sexual contact. Bonobos make love, not war, so to speak, and are pansexual, caring little about the age or gender of their sexual partners. Life in a bonobo tribe is akin to acquiring permanent residency at Caligula’s palace. While chimps operate in packs of males to deliberately hunt out, attack, kill and often eat any chimpanzees that stray into their territory, an unknown bonobo that inadvertently walks into another group’s territory will receive a much more, ahem, ‘pleasant’ reception. The bonobos’ survival relies totally on the existence of the Congo River, which caused the evolutionary split between them and chimpanzees around a million years ago. As apes are unwilling to cross wide stretches of water, the river has served to keep them apart. This has allowed the bonobos to develop an ape utopia, a never-changing lifestyle safe in the protection of the fruit-laden trees that make up the humid Congo Basin, whereas their relatives north of the river had to adapt to more open, changeable and hostile environments, and their strength and aggressive nature were essential to ensure their survival. Had chimpanzees ever learnt to swim and crossed into the Congo Basin, then we would be learning about bonobos from history books rather than nature programmes. The bonobos would be ill prepared for the velocity and ferocity of the violence that would befall them if their respective groups were to meet. The only way bonobos would survive a chimp attack would be if they managed to figure out how to craft their environment to develop protective shelters and weapons. Yet despite millions of years of advantage, regardless of their propensity for love or war, neither bonobos nor chimpanzees have figured out how to create fire, build structures and invent new things.

Approximately 9,000 years ago the victorious Homo sapiens expanded their Paleo diet by learning how to cultivate and irrigate the land to grow crops like wheat. Then, around 6,000 years ago, we learnt that by domesticating and feeding other species such as cows and oxen we could use them for their meat, muscle, manure and milk. The relative newness of this knowledge from an evolutionary perspective explains why so many people have problems digesting wheat, gluten and milk products, as our digestive system evolved long before we introduced these into our diet. Around this time the first human civilisation emerged in the fertile crescent – Mesopotamia – and people started to gather together in large urban areas, creating the first city states. Records of trade were captured by the Sumerians around the same time in the form of cuneiform writing and hieroglyphics, ushering in the period we now call ‘recorded history’, allowing an insight into how they lived. The emergence of both writing and trade represented the first real economic shift, enabling a more sophisticated exchange of value than just barter. Around this time the wheel also made an appearance, indicating the rise of the first machines and our ability to use other species to supplement our own muscle. From then on progress started to speed up. The Bronze Age overlapped with the age of the Ancient Egyptians, a period that lasted an astonishing 3,000 years, which meant that for the first 1,000 years both mammoths and the pyramid-building Egyptians coexisted. The Great Pyramid of Giza, the last of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, was built between 2560–2540 BC, and was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.[²]

The Bronze Age civilisation collapsed around 1100 BC, ushering in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, a time where the skill of literacy was carelessly misplaced. The Greek Dark Ages did have their upside, for as well as losing the skill of writing, the old Mycenaean economic and social structures, strict class hierarchy and hereditary rule were also forgotten. The Dark Ages lasted until the 9th century BC, when the Greeks remembered how to write, but this time instead of using the Linear B script used by the Mycenaeans, they adopted and modified the Phoenician alphabet to create their own. Written records from this time indicate that a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century, and coinage appeared around 680 BC. New sociopolitical institutions arose around the 5th century BC, and over in Athens the concept of a democracy was born. Then, in 146 BC, the Greek city state of Corinth came under Roman rule, consolidating the Roman hegemony of Greece. Under the Romans, Europe was transformed. The Roman Empire spread across most of Europe, developing a common language (Latin – although not the first language of most of the empire’s inhabitants), central and local government, military, economic trade and commodities, currency, banking, improvements in infrastructure, transportation, organised labour, occupations and trade guilds, great feats of architecture and engineering, sculpture and arts, etc. Which I guess answers the famous question, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ There was also one key discovery: owning slaves enabled the elites to spend their time concerned not with hard, physical activities but with affairs of a more intellectual, philosophical and leisure-centric nature. However, to ensure the elites could relax and enjoy these privileges, methods of control and entertainment were needed to keep both slaves and plebeians in order, else they could rise up and overthrow them. Hence bread and circuses became the order of the day.

One would think that the Roman era would be when humanity really started to take off, but as we now know, it was not to be. A society based around slaves has no need to industrialise, and slave owners have no need to change the status quo. So they didn’t. The Western Roman Empire, an area that spread from Northern Africa all the way to Britannia, finally collapsed in the 5th century AD, and as their provinces regressed the foundations established by the Romans fell into disrepair and ruin. As historian Ian Morris highlights, in the 1st century BC the Emperor Augustus[³] boasted that he had transformed Rome from a city of brick into one of marble. After the fall of the empire, Rome and all the other towns and cities across Europe then reverted to a world of wood. This period became known as the Middle Ages, a period covering a thousand years from the 5th to 15th century AD which is more renowned for great plagues and famines than progress. It is often referred to as the Dark Ages, a period of intellectual ‘darkness’ between the extinguishing of the ‘light of Rome’ and the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century. Yet despite this moniker, certain great advances were made, one of which was the second economic shift – the introduction of double-entry bookkeeping and the ability of businesses to keep track of debits and credits.

This period also saw the introduction of new ethnic groups into Europe and the rise of the modern religions: the expansion of Christianity, Buddhism, the rise of monasticism and the birth of Islam, all of which unified people behind common belief structures. Religion has both unified us and divided us – but it has also held us back. The ability to question mankind’s place in the universe was deemed completely out of bounds because it challenged the established order of things. In 1633, Galileo Galilei was put on trial by the Catholic Church because he dared to question their geocentric belief that everything, including the sun and the heavens, revolved around the Earth. Despite being found guilty of being ‘vehemently suspect of heresy’ and forced to spend the rest of his days under house arrest, Galileo fared better than the Dominican monk Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), who was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition for the crime of heresy, including believing in heliocentricity. The Inquisitors could have looked through his telescope and seen the evidence for themselves, but they preferred to keep to their beliefs, much to the misfortune of Bruno and Galileo.

This closed world view started to change in the West when a series of paradigm shifts set off a chain reaction of knowledge acquisition. These events are referred to as ‘ages’ to reflect the enormity of what they represented:

•The first age redefined our image and knowledge of the world. The age of Exploration, a period between the 15th the 16th century that bridged the period between the Middle Ages and the modern era, a time when the New and Old Worlds were reconnected, when Europeans discovered and explored Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania. This period redefined the shape of the known world and created the expansion of European countries as they raced to explore and claim these new lands.

•The second age redefined our image of society. The age of Enlightenment, a period starting in the 17th century following the discoveries of new lands that had challenged the traditional view of the world, opposed superstition and intolerance. Its purpose was to reform society through reason and individualism, challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the promotion of scientific thought and method, scepticism and intellectual interchange. Up until the Middle Ages the practices of episteme (the philosophical investigation into the causes of things) and techne (the application of knowledge in order to do things, such as farming, crafts and industry) were separate and distinct. Science was philosophical in nature, concerned with establishing mankind’s reason for being, our telos, and as such the domain of the elites, whereas techne was the tool of uneducated craftsmen. The second age brought these two areas together and created a willingness for science to interact with practical affairs as well as philosophical ones, helping to solve real-world problems of production. A new attitude towards science arose that placed pragmatism before idealism.

•The third age redefined our image of the economy. The results of the previous two ages created the perfect foundations for the most influential age of all – the age of Industry. The creation of new trade opportunities through the age of discovery and of a new type of society through the age of enlightenment led – specifically on one windswept island in the Atlantic Ocean – to the creation of a new model, one built on industry and economics. During this time techne and science combined to form ‘technology’, creating a series of cyclical technological revolutions, each building on the foundations of the previous. Revolutions that bent the curve of human progress upwards to such an extent that it makes a mockery of all of the chaos and conflict that went before.

Fire Up the Engines

To demonstrate the impact this revolution had on the rate of human progress, imagine we had the capability to travel back through time and select a lucky individual from Britain to transport one hundred years into the future.[⁴] Any chosen time travellers, from the start of recorded history right through to the 17th century, would have had only minor problems adapting to this leap forwards, as the ways of working, trading, cooking, communicating and travelling would still be relatively familiar. This includes disruptive periods such as during the 1st century AD when the Romans conquered Britain. However, from the beginning of the 18th century our time travellers would find adjusting to this new world increasingly difficult. A 19th-century time traveller would notice a significant transformation in every aspect of society. To comprehend the amount of change they would have to absorb, consider the following paragraph taken from the front page of the Warren Mail, printed on Tuesday 3rd February 1880:

What has been accomplished since the 19th century dawned is marvellous… Eighty years ago, Whitney’s cotton-gin had hardly begun to work, and the spinning mule was not yet born. But these two have clothed the world. Eighty years ago, men were dreaming of the steamship, which Fulton invented in 1807. His thought has brought China nearer to us than England was when he built his first boat. Fraunhofer taught the young century spectrum analysis, and Fresnel the polarization of light, and all the arts and sciences now owe them a debt beyond measure. Eighty years ago, Jenner was stoutly battling against derision for the idea which, when the century was still young, subdued its first great scourge.[⁵] To-day there is scarcely a science or useful art that is not constantly indebted to photography, but when the century was born the photograph, which Arago rightly styled a gift to the whole world was unknown. Iron bands have almost annihilated distance, and a capital far exceeding the entire wealth of any nation in 1800 has been expended in making this the age of railways, but the century was already thirty years old when the first railroad was opened. The use of anthracite in making iron, and the Bessemer process for making steel have each revolutionized the world; modern civilization would be simply an impossibility if iron could still be treated only in the ways known when this century was young. The sewing machine has brought blessing and comfort to the mother of every household and has saved much to every wearer of clothes, and yet the oldest patent of that nature is not forty years old. Into the cottage of the humblest and poorest, the oil-well has sent light, but petroleum is one of the latest children of the century. And the grandest of them all, the telegraph, which enables London and New York to whisper to each other day and night, and brings news of the industry and commerce of the whole world to the breakfast table of every merchant or workman or employer, has been at work only thirty-six years. Of its thousand appliances and modifications, each a miracle, the signal service and the telephone are among the latest and most marvellous. But who can guess what the new year may bring forth? It is no longer true that Science moves but slowly, creeping on from point to point. For centuries science crept; then it marched, then ran, and now it flies on the wings of the lightning.

Yet despite 19th-century technology flying on the wings of the lightning, our time traveller would still have been able to adapt to this future world, and after a few weeks, probably find gainful employment and survive. A 20th-century time traveller, on the other hand, would be completely and utterly lost. Consider someone living in London in 1918, at the end of the First World War, being transported to 2018. They would find themselves in an alien environment. They would recognise us as people, but not the society within which we live. Everything around them, including the sheer volume and variety of people, would be new and intimidating. The methods of transportation and communication devices we use, the food we eat, the work we do and the leisure activities we undertake would all be completely alien. One of their biggest challenges would be understanding what we said. They would recognise the language, but not the terms. They would, to all intents and purposes, be unemployable and after twenty-four hours probably unhinged by the experience.

The Great Transformation

The last century has seen dramatic changes to the very nature of Western society. Our time traveller would be amazed at the number of different races, sexual orientations and cultures that walk the streets; the mobility, lifestyle and freedoms people enjoy; the unbelievable amount of information people can access and the sheer number of things they can buy. The basics of modern living, such as central heating, electric lighting, fridges, freezers, vacuum cleaners, microwaves, dishwashers, televisions, radios, computers, games consoles and most recently, intelligent home hubs like the Amazon Echo, would all seem amazing. They would find that people now live longer, are healthier and have more disposable income than ever before. They would also be amazed at how little time people spend on chores, and how much time they spend on leisure. In fact, the whole concept of an entertainment industry would be a new experience, as it didn’t exist one hundred years ago. While 20th-century advancements in technology enabled us to affordably traverse the world and see places we were never able to before, 21st-century advancements have done the opposite and brought the world to the individual. The ability to access a wide variety of media, watch events occurring on a different continent as they happen, and listen to music recorded decades ago are all available to everyone regardless of social standing. No longer are people limited to single sources of news, nor just the local gossip – we now nearly all carry devices that bring the news, events and entertainment of the world to us whenever we want. To our time traveller, the concept of being able to access virtually the combined information of the world via a device that fits in your pocket; one that recognises your face, knows where you are, contains a map of the world so detailed that it can visually and verbally guide you from place to place, answers spoken questions, captures moving and still images, plays music and films and which allows you to instantly see and speak to anyone else who has a similar device, regardless of their location, would seem, as Arthur C. Clarke once declared, like magic. They are more likely to believe that you are a wizard who has control over a tribe of tiny Borrowers that live inside the rectangular device, rather than in some mythical creation called ‘computer technology’. They would almost certainly be unable to grasp the concept of the Internet because they would have no point of reference or context with which to associate it. People’s pre-occupation with ensuring availability of something that you couldn’t see, touch or smell would seem delusional. They would struggle to understand or accept your description of it because they simply couldn’t visualise what you were describing. What could you use for reference? A computer? They’d have no idea. Television? In 1918, these were still nearly a decade away. Now imagine trying to explain Pokémon Go to them.

Our time traveller would also find a world where the success of humanity is visible through our numbers, our health and our wealth. The world population quadrupled from 1.9 billion in 1917 to 7.5 billion in 2017, while the level of poverty decreased – dramatically. In 1910, 83 per cent of the world’s population was living in poverty (on an income of less than $2 per day) and 67 per cent was living in extreme poverty (income of less than $1 per day). This was not some isolated, so-called Third World phenomenon, but a worldwide one, affecting even those living in the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Studies by the Quaker, Seebohm Rowntree, in 1901 found that one third of the population of British cities such as York, now a prosperous and picturesque cathedral city bustling with cafés, restaurants and designer shops, had total earnings [that] are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. Rowntree’s description of ‘merely physical efficiency’ clearly defines how poor people really were: A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs money. They cannot save, nor can they join a sick club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco, and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation, nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description. Should a child fall ill, it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.

Winston Churchill was famously influenced by Rowntree’s report, stating that reading it made [his] hair stand on end and that the revelations of the study regarding poverty were a terrible and shocking thing, expressing sympathy with people who have only the workhouse or prison as avenues to change from their present situation. While poverty and homelessness still exist in York, as in all places, they are nothing like what Rowntree described just over a century ago. The creation of the welfare state in the United Kingdom has provided a safety net to ensure that no one lives in those awful conditions, and the last 100 years has seen York move from 28 per cent of the population not having the funds to post a letter, to none. This elevation out of poverty is a global not local phenomenon, as more of the world’s population manages to rise above the bottom levels of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and do more than just survive. According to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a demographic site called Our World in Data,[⁶] every day sees 325,000 more people gain access to electricity, 300,000 gain access to clean drinking water, and the number living in extreme poverty dropping by 217,000. Despite an ever-rising population, in 2015 the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide fell below 10 per cent for the first time ever, as shown in Graph 1.

Graph 1: Percentage of World Population Living in Extreme Poverty.

The world has also experienced an explosion in education. In 1917, the world literacy rate was 23 per cent, as most poor and working-class people stayed within the confines of their village or town, and if you could read, information was limited to papers, a few books and public notices. Fast-forward one hundred years to 2017 and the literacy rate had leaped to 86.3 per cent. Two thirds of the world’s Internet users are now from developing countries, a sign of the power of market forces and how fast the world is becoming technologically advanced. The poor now have the means to instantly access almost the entirety of human knowledge, something that the wealthy of 1917 couldn’t have even if they pooled all their collective wealth.

All the technologies that we now take for granted, ranging from antibiotics to air travel, would be unavailable to our 1918 time-traveller, regardless of their wealth. Every new generation has more rights, more wealth, better health and a longer life expectancy, as well as vastly increased levels of education and entertainment, than the previous. I had a better childhood and significantly more opportunities than my parents, who were born at the end of the Second World War and both left school at fifteen. My parents, even though they were both brought up by working single mothers in rural England, experienced more freedom and opportunities than their parents. Likewise, my children have 24/7 access to information, entertainment and a whole host of amazing and rapidly advancing technology that my generation couldn’t even imagine at that age. I grew up in a Britain where many people still only had black-and-white TVs that only broadcast three channels, all of which shut down before midnight every night with a rendition of God Save the Queen. You could only buy stuff when shops were open, and most closed at 5.30pm, 1pm on Wednesdays and all day Sundays. All knowledge was locked away in books and the twenty-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica was the equivalent of the Internet – if you could afford it. Telephones were hardwired and if you wanted one you had to wait six months until you were connected. Compared to the current ‘on-demand, whatever you want to watch/read/listen to, whenever you want it, on whatever device you want it’ world, it was pretty rubbish. Yet despite all of this technological advancement, we fail to remember how far we’ve come, protesting even the slightest disruption in its availability. For example, if the in-flight entertainment system stops working people are quick to moan, forgetting the sheer majesty of the fact that they are watching TV while seated in an armchair that is flying through the air in a metal tube.

As a litmus test of whether this technological revolution has been a good thing for mankind, one only needs to consider travelling back in time to live in any previous era. I would struggle to find many people in the West who would give up the lifestyle and technologies of today for those that existed previously. Life without the Internet, twenty-four-hour entertainment, mobile phones, cars, planes, air conditioning, microwaves, electricity and refrigerators sounds OK until you have to experience it. While many people romanticise over a paradise lost, harbouring nostalgic thoughts of a more honourable, respectful time and of landscapes that look like Constable paintings, they would almost certainly balk at having to live a life without antibiotics or any other worthwhile form of medicine or pain relief. A world without medicine, flushing toilets or computers is one of ignorance, illness and a short life expectancy. The past was also not such a great time to be female. Despite the obvious social issues around a lack of suffrage and limited influence on the running of things, issues such as childbirth were significantly more problematic, mostly due to a lack of pain relief, and caesarean sections were generally not elective, mainly due to their habit of killing the mother.[⁷] So while nostalgia is a wonderful thing, take off the rose-tinted glasses and the harsh reality of life in bygone ages quickly dawns and opinions rapidly change.

This time travel thought experiment demonstrates just how unprecedented this period of change has been. We have reshaped every aspect of our environment more in the last hundred years than we did in the previous 10,000 – and this is just the beginning. A time traveller from 2020 who is transported to 2120 is almost certainly not only going to be unable to recognise the environment in which people now live – they probably also won’t recognise most of its inhabitants. But what caused human advancement to suddenly take off in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries? Why did our progress suddenly go from linear to exponential? The answer is our ability to innovate. The last 250 years have not just witnessed the age of industry, but also the age of innovation – a new world where we continually seek new and improved ways to do things. A world where economics and the power of creative destruction rule. In 250 years we have moved from steam engines to search engines, from modes of transport powered by hay, to those powered by electricity. We’re also just getting started. The futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil suggests that progress is speeding up so much that the last twenty years have contained as much technological advancement as the previous hundred, and that the 21st century will contain a thousand times more progress than the 20th. If that’s the case then if we were to travel to 2118, it would feel as alien to us as the present day would to someone from before the industrial revolution. Future generations will probably balk at our ownership of motorcars that depreciate wildly and spend 85 per cent of their time lying idle in the same way as we look back at people who used to pay for horses and live-in servants.

Not Magic

Humans have one defining feature that distinguishes us from other biological forms – the ability to imagine and invent things that do not yet exist and use them to solve problems. Ever since our ancestors picked up bones, rocks and flint to pound, cut and kill, we have consistently sought to find new ways to improve our well-being and ensure our survival. Our innovative capability has proven to be the most powerful force that has been unleashed on this planet, taking us from hunter-gathers to spacemen. It has brought us everything from the first stone tools, the ability to harness fire, the knowledge to combine copper and tin to make bronze, all the way to the recent development of machines that can understand us and provide us with instant information. We have used our inventiveness to tame the wild, farm the land, build monuments to celebrate ourselves and our gods, and create civilisations. Regarding which is mightier, the mind or the muscle, history has shown that the mind wins every time.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Democritus once declared, no power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge. Democritus highlights an important concept and one which has consistently demonstrated the extraordinary ability of humans; our infinite ability to think of new solutions to problems and innovate ourselves out of trouble. The pursuit of progress has created a complete re-evaluation of man’s place in the world; a transformation caused not by changes in external factors, but by one that we have created ourselves. Ancient society was far from free. People were bound by family and clan or tribal ties, by honour and pride, by ancestor worship and mythical gods. We had to understand that the supernatural is not in control, and that thunder was not caused by Thor’s hammer nor floods by Poseidon, in order to believe that natural forces could be tamed, controlled, improved. As the comedian Tim Minchin once quipped, Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be… not magic.

The evolution of civilisation and technology become intertwined, a conjoined story about our ability to constantly redefine the art of the possible. Our own inventiveness, not mysterious forces, have changed the world we live in. The main drivers behind this inventiveness have been the desires to understand the world around us, to make life easier, work more productive and activities more efficient – and to find new and innovative ways to kill each other. These intellectual drivers; war, wisdom and wealth – the crafts of exploration, economics and elimination – have created enormous expansions in our knowledge and technological capabilities:

•War is driven by our desire to protect what we have, stop something nasty from happening to our people, eliminate threats or take over neighbouring lands and resources.

•Wisdom is driven by the need to understand, and includes the fields of scientific and geographic research, the quest to know the unknown, to answer the questions, ‘I wonder why this happens? What’s over there? Is there a better way of doing this?’

•Wealth drives the economics of profit and production efficiency. It is driven by entrepreneurs asking, ‘Can I make life easier? How can we do this better and cheaper? Can I use my time to make something people value?’ and finally, ‘Can I make money from this?’

For most of human history, it is the art of warfare that has driven innovation. While war naturally destroys both human lives and material goods, it also stimulates the introduction of technological innovations and political reforms. The threat of conflict creates urgent demand for technological advancement and has been a constant driver throughout history, especially in Europe, generating significant advancement in both armament and architecture. All major empires, from the Roman to the British, became that way due to their knowledge and ability to use superior firepower to overcome, subdue or replace a technically inferior one. The introduction of new machines of war such as cannons and guns brought together scientific practices such as chemistry, mechanics and engineering to develop bigger and better ways to suppress whatever opposition you are facing – or to intimidate them into not fighting in the first place. Despite their obvious negative outcomes, from a long-term perspective wars have been the catalysts of social progress, because the victors were usually societies that operated a more efficient model of organisation and better utilisation of material and human resources. The victor also tended to appropriate any new ideas from the vanquished, and the newly acquired territories provided a rich source of new materials and resources to be traded, and often a new market with which to colonise and develop.

The nature of warfare has changed dramatically due to advances in technology. The development of castles with moats, saw the development of trebuchets and siege engines to attack moated castles. From biplanes that dropped bricks, to flying fortresses that dropped bombs, then the bomb, all the way to the modern-day development of autonomous drones and missiles that fly and guide themselves, the history of warfare has predominantly been a catalogue of victories by the side with the most advanced technology.[⁸] Whenever a less sophisticated culture clashes with a more technologically advanced one, regardless of whether it is Neanderthals versus Homo sapiens, the hunter-gatherer societies facing European colonists, or the Japanese against the nuclear-armed Americans, it generally turns out badly for the less advanced side. Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Guns, Germs and Steel highlighted one of the greatest examples of the unfair advantages technology provides in war. Diamond details how the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a small unit of only 169 soldiers defeated the Inca leader Atahualpa and his army of 80,000 warriors using a lethal combination of subterfuge, surprise and technological superiority. Atahualpa had seen the Spanish coming, but had decided that such a small number were no threat to him and his massive army, so he invited them to his camp, expecting to capture them easily. He had, however, not understood the power and fear that their steel blades, cannons and strategies could produce. The Spanish captured Atahualpa within a few minutes of the battle commencing, and then utterly defeated his men, killing thousands of them without losing a single soldier. Atahualpa’s freedom was promised in exchange for enough gold to fill a room twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet wide and eight feet high. The Spanish received the bounty, but Pizarro executed Atahualpa anyway, just to make a point.

Despite a constant drive to advance our military capabilities, wisdom and wealth have now become the primary drivers of innovation. Wisdom, especially in the sciences, tends to leap forward when pressure is applied, usually from war, wealth or both. The desire to excel at warfare can also create scientific breakthroughs which sometimes have commercial viability, creating wisdom and wealth. On their own, the sciences have traditionally not been a disruptive force, because they have, in some way, simply been about discovering what was already there, with most scientific discoveries resulting in uncovering and understanding the world around us better. This is important, for understanding how things work is the precursor to being able to control and ultimately improve them. What caused the rate of innovation to explode was the alignment between scientific discovery, industrial endeavour and financial reward. A series of technological revolutions have occurred since the men of invention, industry and investment joined forces, each one building on the knowledge and information generated from the previous, laying the foundations for the next. As our time traveller would have experienced, the inventions of the last two centuries have altered nearly every aspect of society. We have replaced muscle with machine, horses with automobiles, and pens and paper with computers. Seemingly innocuous inventions such as the shipping container have transformed the logistics industry and enabled an explosion in global trade. Our inventiveness has enabled the developed world to progress from purchasing the essentials of life – food, fuel and clothing – through to ever more desirable consumer products. Our ability to invent defines us as a species, for our ability to think beyond our immediate survival has allowed us to both appreciate and preserve the past while simultaneously striving to create a better future. We continue to make numerous discoveries that make previous certainties now seem absurd, causing us to reconsider how much we actually know about the world around us. Old ways of thinking, old formulas, dogmas and ideologies are tested, proven to be untrue and replaced by new ideas and concepts with increasing regularity. This mindset drives us forwards and challenges all our assumptions. Even ideas based on previously sound scientific basis are continually being shown to be false, from the inner workings of our bodies to the number of planets in the solar system. It is a mindset that has led us to a place where many believe we will soon be able to transcend our biological limitations, reverse the signs of ageing and even prevent death. We have progressed to this stage of dominance not through our physical abilities, but through our cerebral ones. Our future is intrinsically linked to that of science, technology and our confidence in our ability to think and innovate.

Turtles all the Way Down

It is important to note that despite sharing similar innovative capabilities, the different groups of human settlements and cultures across the world developed technologies at different rates and of varying degrees of complexity. There is a reason why great technological leaps occurred in some societies, but not in others. An environment had to exist that freed the individual from beliefs and social structures that had previously held them back for centuries. To create an explosion in innovation the size of the first industrial revolution, social foundations needed to exist that would allow ideas to be shared, innovations to be developed, and the outputs to be kept.

So how did the West end up developing such foundations? Western Europe had, for much of its history, lagged far behind the more culturally advanced and equally literate civilisations of India, China and