Enlightenment. This intellectual movement began in the second half of the eighteenth century with many societies in the West embracing what Steven Pinker characterizes as four values: reason, science, humanism, and progress. According to Mokyr, the Enlightenment created a “culture of growth” that let both capitalism and technological progress

“human rights protection” score that captures whether people are free from political repression, false imprisonment, torture, and related violations.

call these four paths to dematerialization slim, swap, optimize, and evaporate.

97 percent of the total mass of the earth’s mammals now consists of us and the animals we raise.I

related problem is that while most other kinds of atmospheric pollution stay local, greenhouse gases are global—they

call tech progress, capitalism, public awareness, and responsive government the “four horsemen of the optimist.”

Digital devices are not only spreading quickly; they’re also getting much more sophisticated. Instead of simple mobile phones, more than 1.5 billion smartphones were sold globally in 2017 (versus 450 million non-smartphones). These miniature computers are powerful. India’s most popular smartphone in 2018 was the Lyf Jio F90M. It is powered by a 1.2

People with access to a device such as this can do much more than just communicate. They can also compute and access the substantial portion of humanity’s accumulated knowledge that’s now available for free on the Internet.II These are powerful capabilities, reserved until recently for the global elite. As the author and entrepreneur Peter

“voice and accountability” and “control of corruption,”