What We Can Still Accomplish

One of the unexpected benefits of posting my reflections on the future of industrial society in public is that quite often I get advance warning of events on the horizon that others haven’t anticipated yet.  Sometimes, I’m glad to say, it’s because someone in my commentariat happens to have noticed an obscure news story or a little-known fact and brings it to my attention. Fairly often, though, the warning I get has a different and sadder source.

Years ago, a bunch of social psychologists did an...