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The Great Progression 2025-2050
“There’s a new narrative able to come together about progress emerging all around us. … Let’s call this the story of The Great Progression.”
“We happen to have arrived at a juncture between two very different historical eras and that makes everything on the ground very confusing, and very traumatic.”
“Here’s the thing about tipping points: when they happen, they happen fast. … One day the world works one way, like it always has, and then the next day it works a very different way.”
“The next 25 years will see the introduction and scaling up of not one but three fundamentally new technologies that will have world-historic impact. We’re heading into a triple-whammy tech boom — not just another Long Boom, but a Long Boom Squared.” (Energy, Biotech, Infotech)
“The 2020s will see the addition of 3 billion more people who will get connected to the internet for the first time. … By the end of this decade the entire population of 8 billion people on the planet will be able to work or learn or shop online.”
“Long booms often create the conditions for progress. They are usually driven by the introduction of fundamentally new technologies, which create new industries, which create new kinds of jobs, which create new wealth. If the new technologies are transformative enough, then they can take decades to scale and fully build out.”
“The problem of the coming decades in America and throughout the aging West is going to be that there are not enough people to fill all the open jobs.”
“What accounts for this pendulum shift between eras is a reconfiguration of the American electorate … The transition phase between eras, when the electorate is roughly split 50/50, is marked by extreme political polarization and governmental paralysis. That’s America in the last decade.”
“There are two sides to all tipping points: a reaction away from what people don’t want or need anymore, and an attraction to what they do want or need.”
“Innovation is messy, with much trial and error. But California, more than any other state, is fully engaged in solving those future challenges, from climate change (now phasing out the sale of gas autos by 2035) to dealing with the diversity of its population (now only 35 percent white).”
“When you create those conditions of abundance, you foster social cohesion rather than strife. You generate trust rather than cynicism. Rather than widespread pessimism, you get optimism again.”
“…in transformative times you have to think in terms of what is called grand strategy, … You must step back and think big-picture and long-term. … And you must take risks that meet the moment.”
“When old systems start breaking down, and new systems are not yet fully formed, people all over the world desperately look for answers. Authoritarian states provide a sense of certainty in the very uncertain times of transformation.”
“…humans are going to have to work at a planetary scale with a level of global coordination that we have never done before.”
“The Great Progression is not inevitable. We will have to make this, or something roughly like this, actually happen.”
“We are steadily mastering the game of progress. We might be up against some complex challenges, but we have all the capability we need to pull off another leap forward in progress.”
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