A new philosophy of progress for the 21st century
Why study progress? The progress of the last few centuries—in science, technology, industry, and the economy—is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. But progress is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes so that we can keep it going, and even accelerate it.
We need a new philosophy of progress. In order to make progress, we must believe that it is possible and desirable. The 19th century believed in the power of technology and industry to better humanity, but in the 20th century, this belief gave way to skepticism and distrust.
We need a new way forward. We need a systematic study of progress, so we can understand what is needed to keep progress going. We also need to advocate for progress. We need a progress movement that both explains and champions these ideas and puts forth a vision that inspires us to build.
Progress Conference 2024
A two-day event to connect people & ideas in the progress movement
Presented by the Roots of Progress, together with the Foresight Institute, Works in Progress, the Institute for Progress, HumanProgress.org, and the Institute for Humane Studies
October 18–19, 2024 in Berkeley, California
Meet great people • Catalyze new projects • Share ideas • Be energized & inspired
The progress movement has grown a lot in the last few years: we have progress journals, think tanks, and fellowships. What we haven't had so far is a regular gathering of the community. Introducing the first annual progress conference:
- ~200 vetted attendees: writers, builders, policy makers, storytellers, and students
- Speakers including Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen, Steven Pinker, and Virginia Postrel
- Hosted at the Lighthaven Campus in Berkeley — plenty of space for informal 1:1s and small-group conversations
Attend talks on topics from tech to policy to culture, get to know other attendees as you hang out on cozy sofas or enjoy the sun in the garden, sign up to run an unconference session and find others who share your interests and passions, or pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality.
The Roots of Progress Fellowship is a career accelerator program to empower intellectual entrepreneurs for progress.
Our goal is to empower writers who want to make a career out of explaining progress to a large, general audience. Ultimately, we will help these intellectuals achieve two ambitious goals:
- Be able to sustain themselves as full-time progress intellectuals after this 2–4 year program, by developing a personal brand and sources of revenue to support their work, and
- Write a book or create an equivalent, thematically unified body of work (e.g., a series of essays or blog posts, a scripted podcast series, or a multi-episode documentary) that brings an important topic in progress studies to a general audience.
This is a strategy for the age of online media. In the Internet age, the writer is the brand, and the best writers are going independent. Instead of hiring staff researchers to write under our brand, The Roots of Progress helps writers build individual brands. Because these writers are independent, they’ll have the intellectual freedom to say what they think, without toeing a party line: we want to foster a culture of debate within the broad principles of progress, humanism, and agency that are the core of the progress movement. This is a high-leverage play: we invest in people for a limited time and their work pays dividends for progress (and for themselves) for years to come.
Essays & Talks
Announcements
Press
Progress, Rediscovered
A new movement promoting scientific, technological, and economic solutions to humanity's problems emerges.
Do we need a better understanding of ‘progress’?
A growing and influential intellectual movement aims to understand why human progress happens – and how to speed it up. Garrison Lovely investigates.
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