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🎇 An age of transformation: My chat (+transcript) with techno-futurist Peter Leyden
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,
The 1990s and the dawn of the internet were a pivotal time for America and the wider world. The history of human progress is a series of such pivotal moments. As Peter Leyden points out, it seems we’re facing another defining era as society wrestles with three new key technologies: artificial intelligence, clean energy, and bioengineering.
Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I chat with Leyden about American leadership in emerging technology and the mindset shifts we must undergo to bring about the future we dream of.
Leyden is a futurist and technology expert. He is a speaker, author, and founder of Reinvent Futures. Thirty years ago, he worked with the founders of WIRED magazine, and now authors his latest book project via Substack: The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050.
In This Episode
* Eras of transformation (1:38)
* American risk tolerance (11:15)
* Facing AI pessimism (15:38)
* The bioengineering breakthrough (24:24)
* Demographic pressure (28:52)
Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Eras of transformation (1:38)
I think we Americans tend to reset the clock in which we get in these dead ends, we get in these old patterns, these old systems, and the things are all falling apart, it's not working. And then there is a kind of a can-do reinvention phase . . .
Pethokoukis: Since World War II, as I see it, we have twice been on the verge of a transformational leap forward, economically and technologically. I would say that was right around 1970 and then right around 2000, and the periods of time after that, I think, certainly relative to the expectations then, was disappointing.
It is my hope, and I know it's your hope as well, that we are at another such moment of transformation. One, do you accept my general premise, and two, why are we going to get it right this time?
If I'm hearing you right, you're kind of making two junctures there. I do believe we're in the beginning of what would be much more thought of as a transformation. I would say the most direct parallel is closer to what happened coming off of World War II. I also think, if you really go back in American history, it's what came off of Civil War and even came off of the Founding Era. I think there's a lot of parallels there I can go into, I've written about in my Substack and it's part of the next book I'm writing, so there's a bigger way that I think about it. I think both those times that you're referring to, it seems to me we were coming off a boom, or what seemed to be an updraft or your “Up Wing” kind of periods that you think of — and then we didn't.
I guess I think of it this way: the ’50s, ’60s, and ’90s were exciting times that made it feel like the best was yet to come — but then that momentum stalled. I’m hopeful we’re entering another such moment now, with so much happening, so much in motion, and I just hope it all comes together.
The way I think about it in a bigger lens, I would just push back a little bit, which is, it's true coming off the ’90s — I was at WIRED magazine in the ’90s. I was watching the early ’90s internet and the Digital Revolution and I sketched out at that time, in my first book but also cover stories in WIR
Published on 2Â months, 4Â weeks ago