| | What do we actually mean by "progress"? Sometimes the constant drumbeat of bad news drowns out the good, leaving optimism in short supply. That may be why Americans are downbeat about an economy that in many aspects is humming along pretty well. (There are some good reasons for the gloom to be sure, inflation and high housing costs among them.) This week is no exception: even as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Center for Microeconomic Data suggests that "consumers [are] more optimistic about their financial situation and credit access," the January consumer price index report showed rising prices , confounding those who expected a decline. All in all, it's a mixed bag, and the barrage of conflicting signals can make progress seem out of reach. But maybe we're just thinking about it wrong. In a recent issue of his Honest Broker newsletter, Ted Gioia explains why he measures progress by "the exact opposite of the prevailing metrics ." After enumerating a list of "heretical questions" that poke holes in a "traditional" narrative of progress couched almost entirely in terms of technological innovation, Gioia offers a list of hypotheses on "real" progress. (He also manages to get in a good-natured dig at Sebastopol, CA—the home of O'Reilly HQ—wondering how "a city that rejected progress and efficiency in almost every possible way" could become such a popular spot with Silicon Valley folks.) I won't share all his hypotheses (please read them!), but the first is worth citing in detail: above all, Gioia emphasizes, "progress should be about improving the quality of life and human flourishing. We make a grave error when we assume this is the same as new tech and economic cost-squeezing." While I'm not as pessimistic as Gioia about the potential new technologies offer, I'm completely on board with the idea that the current wave of "economic cost-squeezing" is actually impeding technological innovation—to the detriment of users. As I noted in WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us, "The lessons of technology innovation remind us that progress always entails thinking the unthinkable, and then doing things that were previously impossible." But innovation alone is not progress—"it is up to us to ensure that the fruits of productivity are shared." + From the New York Times: "What a Split in Consumer Confidence Means for Biden" + From TIME: "Bidenomics Is Real Economics." + From Vox: "Do We Really Live in an 'Age of Inequality'?" + Om Malik asks, "Is Optimism Wired or Tired?" | | | | | Progress doesn't mean growth at all costs Breakthroughs in green energy are already making the world better for humanity, but the unbridled financialization of the industry may destroy all the gains we've made so far. Last month, TIME's Alana Semuels published an investigation into the shady salespeople and pernicious loans that have caused a crisis in the solar industry. At the heart of these problems is a market-driven ethos founded on growth at all costs: Since at least 2016, big solar companies have used Wall Street money to fund their growth. This financialization raised the consumer cost of the panels and led companies to aggressively pursue sales to make the cost of borrowing Wall Street money worth it. National solar companies essentially became finance companies that happened to sell solar, engaging in calculations that may have been overly optimistic about how much money the solar leases and loans actually bring in. It's a recipe for disaster in an industry we need to ramp up if we're to meet our climate goals. Here's the good news: the issue isn't with solar technology itself—costs for solar and other renewable energy technologies continue to drop, and demand is still high, as Slate's Nitish Pahwa points out: "On a wider scale, the solar sector is still ballooning and providing record amounts of green energy worldwide." We just need to shift the focus from benefiting Wall Street investors at the expense of consumers to benefiting the communities putting this technology to work. + From the Financial Times: "The biggest US renewable energy developer has expressed confidence that Republicans would not follow through on threats to rip up the Inflation Reduction Act if they win this year's election." That's good news since "the cost of the Inflation Reduction Act's energy and climate provisions is now expected to be significantly higher than previously projected, at least partially because of greater-than-anticipated investment in climate-friendly technology ," according to The Hill. + From Jacobin: "Why Private Investment Isn't Driving a Rapid Green Transition" + Energy companies have been doing a little disincentivizing of their own. | | | | | "Economic losses for our allies are not wins for the US" Progress isn't a zero-sum game. That's why it's unhelpful to describe national economies as pitted against each other in some pitched battle for dominance, argues Noah Smith in a recent post . "It's not crazy to say that the U.S. is outpacing our democratic developed allies," he explains. "It's simply wrong to think that this represents something to celebrate." The reasons for differences in economic output range from different attitudes toward hours worked to the specific cultural, political, and social circumstances of each country. But as Smith makes clear, "Absolutely none of this is good news for the U.S." Detachment and seclusion won't help us solve the intractable global challenges we face—we should be cultivating a common purpose among those who share our goals: We need to stop thinking of Germany, the UK, Japan, etc. as our old rivals, and start thinking of them as our indispensable partners. Their strength is our strength, and their weakness is our weakness. This is something we realized in the aftermath of World War 2 and the early days of the first Cold War, when we did the Marshall Plan and opened our markets to European and Japanese goods. We need to remember that spirit right now. | | | | | An elegy for San Francisco We talked at the top of this issue about the difference between technological innovation and the progress that comes from sharing its benefits. Nowhere is this disjuncture laid more bare than in San Francisco—a city that seems like it's always being excoriated for its failures (even though, despite some very real challenges, things aren't as bad there as they've been made out to be). Perhaps San Francisco's image has become so fraught because of what the city has historically symbolized: it's the land of the Gold Rush, building fortunes with every new industrial boom, but it's also a progressive haven where liberal ideals rule the day. While those contradictory impulses have always pulled in opposite directions, today the fabric of the city has been too badly warped by the excessive wealth produced by the tech industry, laments writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books . And it's not clear that San Francisco will recover. Cities are vitalized by the communal spirit of their residents, and this spirit is reinvigorated by the interactions that occur between city dwellers in restaurants and stores and on the street—the kinds of chance meetings Solnit eulogizes in her memories of San Francisco's past. (As she notes, these are also the very interactions that so much tech innovation has made obsolete.) Just as Smith critiques economic silos among countries, Solnit suggests that we need to consider the intertwined systems we're part of and foster those connections in the service of ensuring a better quality of life for all residents. But in San Francisco, things are going the other way. In her evocative piece, Solnit traces the contours of two disparate geographies: one in which billionaires have actively withdrawn and isolated themselves from city life—all while planning a new metropolis just outside its bounds—and the other in which those who remain struggle to survive in a space "that has been radically reshaped by [those same billionaires'] urges and ideals." And what's happening in San Francisco is a sign of things to come, as the superrich disavow responsibility for the cities where, as Solnit points out, they really only sort-of live: I used to be proud of being from the San Francisco Bay Area. . . .We were the left edge of America, a refuge from some of its brutalities and conformities, a sanctuary for dissidents and misfits and a laboratory for new ideas. We're still that lab, but we're no longer an edge; we're a global power centre, and what issues from here—including a new super-elite—shapes the world in increasingly disturbing ways. + From Quartz: "The Tech Billionaires Planning a New California City Don't Think It Needs a Government." + From The Atlantic: "Meet Me in the Eternal City." + From the New York Times: "American Cities Aren't Doomed After All." + From the San Francisco Standard: "Specialty Businesses Make San Francisco Unique, but We Can't Sustain Them." | | | | | A toolkit for imagining the future When progress is hard to imagine, books can be a toolkit that helps us think in new ways. I said as much in a recent interview with Techs on Texts's Jed Sundwall that focused on Frank Herbert's Dune series but soon spiraled out to touch on science fiction in general, the history of O'Reilly (the company), and many of the concerns outlined above. As I told Jed, "If you don't have words for a thing, it's very hard to talk about it. And once you have words for it, you can see it differently." Watch or listen to the entire episode here. | | | | | | | | | | —Tim O’Reilly and Peyton Joyce | | | |
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