Here are eight imperatives—all of them drawing strength and sustenance from the humanities:

1. We need a way of defining and pursuing progress that doesn’t reduce that concept to something that only comes from a digital device.


2. We desperately need access to values and wisdom that aren’t corrupted by the relentless financial metrics and imposed

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Walking through San Francisco's SoMA district, past endless rows of startups all promising to make something 10x faster, I couldn't shake the feeling that we're missing the real story. The question isn't how to optimize the current system, but whether we need to redefine what we're optimizing for.

We have a culture of hyper efficiency and efficiency isn’t the only metric of a fulfilling life. While you can choose to opt out from a lot of it, certainly from ordering food online, you can’t so easily, or at all, from other essential parts of life — like medicine, work, education, and even finding a partner in life.

Cultures, even those with... See more