Every major leap in human progress has this in common | Jason Crawford: Full Interview

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Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=yt_desc “Progress happens when we choose to make it happen. It happens through choice and effort. And ultimately, to make progress happen, we have to believe in it.” Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQECJukTDE2i6aCoMnS-Vg?sub_confirmation=1 Up next, We are living through a slowdown in human progress | Jason Crawford ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ebqoan4SE Humanity’s progress is neither automatic nor inevitable – from the printing press to the Industrial Revolution, and today’s digital age, every leap in technology has reshaped what’s possible for our civilization. Jason Crawford traces the history and philosophy behind these breakthroughs, revealing the forces that drive innovation and the risks that come with unchecked advancement. 0:00 The philosophy of progress 2:17 The idea of progress throughout history 2:52 Francis Bacon 4:30 The Gutenberg printing press 6:38 The Industrial Revolution 8:47 The end of wars? 9:17 After the world wars of the 20th century 11:58 The idea of progress 14:38 Material progress and the human experience 15:01 The technologies of progress 15:38 Agricultural advancements 16:43 Sources of power 18:36 Energy 19:12 Medicine 20:58 Transportation 26:15 Why does the pace of progress accelerate? 29:03 The future of progress 32:55 Has progress slowed down in the last 50 years? 33:36 The regulatory apparatus 34:12 Organizing scientific research 34:46 Loss of confidence and ambition Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/full-interview/the-philosophy-of-progress/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Youtube Member Get exclusive classes and early, ad-free access to new releases without leaving Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/@bigthink/membership/ ►Become a Big Think Web Member Get the entire Big Think Class library, premium print issues, live events, and more. https://bigthink.com/membership/ ►Subscribe to Big Think on Substack Get all of your favorite Big Think content delivered to your inbox. https://bigthinkmedia.substack.com/subscribe/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Jason Crawford: Jason Crawford is the founder of The Roots of Progress, where he writes and speaks about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. He is also the creator of Progress Studies for Young Scholars, an online learning program for high schoolers; and a part-time adviser and technical consultant to Our World in Data, an Oxford-based non-profit for research and data on global development. Previously, he spent 18 years as a software engineer, engineering manager, and startup founder. From 2013–2018, he was co-founder & CEO of Fieldbook, a hybrid spreadsheet-database. He has also been an engineering manager at Flexport, Amazon, and Groupon, and a co-founder or early employee at other startups. Before that, he was a research engineer at D. E. Shaw Research, working on a new supercomputing architecture for computational biochemistry. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.