impose constraints

“Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

Digital communication in the form of a mobile phone, meanwhile, is now everywhere; the World Bank estimates that in 2016 the world had more mobile phone subscriptions than people on the planet.I

closely to Acemoglu and Robinson’s definition of inclusive institutions. Key to both are the notions that most people have the opportunity to advance and flourish, that they have a fair shot in the marketplace, and that they get to keep what they earn and build.

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

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

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

it possible to profitably grow while taking less and less. In the Second Machine Age, that has changed.

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