The purpose of this project is to look for and communicate the most effective ways to advance humankind – to increase our quality of life, help the environment and all-around make the world a better place. In my opinion the number one priority should be to eradicate extreme poverty (e.g. six million starving children). Followed by that people should have more free time and live much longer, happier lives. There are many interesting ideas, scientific breakthroughs and innovations that have great potential to contribute to these goals, e.g. vaccines, the Internet or robotics. But all these great individual innovations are ultimately the result of an underlying process.
What is really at the center of humankind’s progress is innovation – doing better things better. That involves science and technology, but also business creating value through goods and services, politics to set a certain framework and society, i.e. people to change and make progress possible. Think of it like a lock that needs the right combination of factors, and when you know that combination you can unlock progress much faster and more effectively. And it is possible to find these combinations, though that requires a lot of hard work and thinking. Hence, the first goal of this project and my research in the innovation field is to understand what unites all innovations and its enabling factors. Could there be a sort of “unifying theory for the advancement of human civilization”? I think so.
Over the past 180 years alone the economy in the developed part of the world has increased 32-fold. Once vaccinated we can walk through cesspools of diseases like gods, our technology would be nothing short of magic to our ancestors. The two underlying things that enabled this incredible progress are science (to learn about the world) and technology (to apply that knowledge in useful stuff). However, technology has no value if we humans don’t do the right things. While the potential of science and technology to make our lives better has increased exponentially over the last few generations, we people – how we think and act – are largely the same or linear. I believe that once people understand how innovation has enormous multiplier effects and is at the very center of making their lives better progress can happen twice as fast.
The second goal of this project is to spark socio-political change by communicating powerful messages in the most compelling ways – articles, metaphors, memes, videos, vlogs and books.
Generation Utopia 