Creative Destruction

The price of progress, and what's at stake

Progress, especially technological progress, cannot be stopped. Sometimes we mourn the world we have left behind, but someday the lives we lead today will also make us nostalgic. What will remain and what will we leave behind this time round? What will be replaced by new societal values and technologies, and what will simply be destroyed by age?

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I have been challenged to share my vision of 2050, a place I might never visit, but the land of my children and grandchildren. I will try to describe the contours of what I see coming round the bend based on emerging geoeconomic trends. I hope that you will respond and share your own predictions as well.

Progress

One of my neighbors, who is Mexican American, always heads down south for the winter. Yesterday I saw his bright yellow truck back in the driveway, a sure sign that winter is over and it’s okay to put the tomato seedlings outside.

My neighborhood in Chicago is changing. Once a desolate light industrial district, this Sunday morning it is alive with flowers and bakeries, babies and puppies. Many older homes are being renovated, and new construction is ongoing. Although new buildings are limited to five stories, an apartment house at the maximum height was just topped out on the corner.

Unfortunately, the building is right next door to my neighbor’s house and completely blocks out the sun and his view of the skyline to the east. As building began last fall, I asked him how he felt about this—I would have been apoplectic. Sitting on his veranda, peacefully reading a book as the cranes groaned nearby, he laughed and roared, ‘Ah, that’s progress!”

I wish that I possessed his wisdom and equanimity as I think about the many losses we have seen to progress, and how unrecognizable our world has become. Much of what we have taken for granted is vanishing, and I am not just talking about Blockbusters. I don’t think we have a good grasp of how radically different things will get, sooner than we imagine.