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> Perhaps the best-kept secret in the world is that it is getting better by almost every measurement. [...] The late, great Hans Rosling was superb at breaking down these dimensions in video form [...] but if you want the real deal, I recommend Steven Pinker's excellent "Enlightenment Now"

Indeed. Thanks for plugging the inimitable Rosling (I'd also strongly recommend his excellent book, "Factfulness") and Pinker. Rosling has incredible anecdotes from the real world, and Pinker is methodical and rigorous. Each book is a companion to the other.

(Me brags: A few months ago I've had the pleasure of meeting Steven Pinker in person and even have a small chat about his book, the late Rosling, and other topics.)

And I hope Hans Rosling's exhilarating enthusiasm rubs off on many folks. I was so enthralled with Rosling's work that when I was in Sweden earlier this year, I took a train to Uppsala (where Rosling lived and worked) and spent a day there just to breathe some inspiring air. Rosling was a force of nature.

PS: Yes, for all the "positivity bias" that Rosling and Pinker are accused of, they repeatedly acknowledge that there's still a long a way to go, and never claim that everything is hunky-dory. As Rosling puts it: "Things can be both bad and better".

Re Rosling: I have a feeling that we are improving immensely at the base of maslows pyramid but there is plenty of sabotage occurring further up. The march towards authoritarianism in much of the world is one that jumps out.

Remove China from the numbers and Pinker and Goslings points pretty much disappear. Both aren’t a secret, they are well known and criticized a lot for their use and abuse of numbers.

Except, wait... tell us why we'd remove China (or any other part of the world that seems less important to you) again?

I'm pretty sure India also has a positive outlook.

And if we remove those countries we're removing half the world's population...

Child malnutrition rates in India are worse than in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, actually: https://www.deccanherald.com/state/top-karnataka-stories/mal...

Impressive GDP growth aside, persistent malnutrition suggests that for huge chunks of the Indian population (a shocking _seventy_ percent of women are anemic), something's not working. Who cares what GDP growth is? What's it really measuring if people still aren't getting enough to eat?

The number of calories lower class Indians are consuming is dropping, which your link has got to in part be reflecting. It's a mess.

The point is that developed world has stalled. Which is probably true on some measures but we do not know why. There should be slower but incremental improvement as there is room for that still. A plenty of room in fact.

Life expectancy is still gaining though and flattening. That is the main variable encompassing almost everything. Including normalized per income is flattening. Income per capita has flattened somewhat, but it might be a natural sigmoid the China, Russia and such have yet to reach. So that's about it.

>Life expectancy is still gaining though and flattening. That is the main variable encompassing almost everything.

There are big breakthroughs coming on this front. Look up the work of David Sinclair, aging is a tough nut to crack but not impossible.

> 4. Not only does age and wisdom allow you to observe tech over many cycles, but the older I get the more I realize that tech is nothing outside of its relationship to politics, culture, and ourselves. Look at how young children just assume everything is a screen, now. Tech is now an important aspect of the daily political conversation. In just 15 years we've gone from a society that rents VHS movies to one that feels entitled to comment, upvote and subscribe to everything they watch. It's fucking crazy how much tech has reprogrammed everything from the way we find love to the way we get from A to B.

I think you caught the idea better than anybody else. The tech industry is no longer about the tech itself, and much more about everyday world around us. The tech ate the world — sure.

I can't remember the last project in our engineering company where we ever bothered with the product spec wise, and we haven't done anything like a PC or a smartphone in years. We almost solely work on "gadgetising" existing everyday stuff now — household appliances, toys, all kinds of vending machines, ad displays and installations, EV stuff, aircraft and rapid transit infortainment.

The essence and the shape of thing is way more important these days than what's inside. Things are definitely changing that way. Prime majority of our biggest clients these days are companies whose business had zero things to do with tech just few years ago, but is all about it now.