Age of Discovery
豆瓣
Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
Ian Goldin / Chris Kutarna
简介
Da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus, Raphael, Michelangelo. These names recall an era in which an unprecedented rush of discovery broke through long-standing barriers of ignorance and connected the whole world, politically and economically, for the first time. We still think of such surges of human ingenuity as rare. But they don't have to be. Today, for instance, our resources are better, our education is more advanced, and the pace of breakthrough innovation is doubling every two years. The same forces that converged then to spark genius and upend social order - great leaps in science, trade, migration and technology - are present again in our lifetime, with potentially even greater results.
In Age of Discovery, Oxford Professor Ian Goldin and Oxford Martin Fellow Chris Kutarna show how we can achieve our own golden age, given the will. But many of the factors that undid the first Renaissance are rising once again: warring ideologies, fundamentalism, climate change, pandemics. Can we weather the crises and seize the moment to leave the world a legacy it will still celebrate, 500 years later?
contents
Acknowledgements xiii
1 To Flounder or Flourish? 1
The moment we’re in 1
The past is prologue 2
The way forward 7
Good housekeeping 9
PART I The Facts of a Renaissance Age 13
2 The New World 15
New maps 15
New media 25
3 New Tangles 37
Trade 37
Finance 42
People 48
Technology 58
Beyond ‘connected’ 62
4 Vitruvian Man 67
From misery to middle class 69
A new golden age 73
Why now? 81
Tarnish on a golden age 89
Fresh stains 92
Glimpsing greatness 98
Part II Flourishing Genius 101
5 Copernican Revolutions 103
Paradigm shifts 103
New shifts 109
The formula for flourishing genius 130
6 Cathedrals, Believers and Doubt 139
Collective efforts 139
Collective doubt 148
Four reasons to believe 153
Reasons to fear 162
Part III Flourishing Risk 169
7 The Pox Is Spreading, Venice Is Sinking 171
The downside of linking up 171
Too complex to unravel, too concentrated to keep safe 172
New poxes 177
Merchants of destruction 185
Taking nothing for granted 189
8 Bonfires and Belonging 201
Empowered prophets 201
New bonfires 204
When the mainstream divides 211
The price of a broken bargain 221
Part IV The Contest for Our Future 231
9 David 233
Magnify flourishing genius 234
Mitigate flourishing risk 249
Goliath 265
Notes 266
Index 296
