An introduction to "The Engine of Progress" from Jason Crawford, founder of the Roots of Progress Institute.

To build a better world, we first have to understand how change actually happens.

Barriers to energy abundance — and how to overcome them — were front and center at Progress Conference 2025.

“Progress happens when we choose to make it happen. It happens through choice and effort. And ultimately, to make progress happen, we have to believe in it.”

“People got skeptical, fearful, doubtful of the very idea of progress in the 20th century and we allowed that to slow down progress itself.”

By looking back at future dreams we can see our current hopes and visions in a whole new light.

We can never hope for a future with no problems. The solutions to problems create new problems, which in turn require new solutions, as WIRED founder Kevin Kelly explained recently.

Our inaugural special issue is focused on progress — the search for, the study of, and the project towards a better world.

We asked our experts where they see the biggest blockers right now for more progress. Essentially, from their various areas of focus, what did they see as the largest impediments to driving progress forward around the world and how they would prioritize the necessary interventions? The answers were appropriately varied from the philosophical to the political to the technological.

About the project The goal of driving more progress across the world—scientifically, politically, economically, socially, etc—is one shared by many. And yet, debates about the best way to maximize progress […]

About the project The goal of driving more progress across the world—scientifically, politically, economically, socially, etc—is one shared by many. And yet, debates about the best way to maximize progress […]

One of the fundamental questions for those studying and advocating progress is around understanding what variables can move the needle for the type of progress that you might want to see in the world. It's a key focus of the "progress studies" discipline and a question that has received increased attention from academics and public intellectuals in recent years.

Futurist Ari Wallach asks, "how do we want to be remembered?"

It is wrong to think that these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.

It's possible to measure philosophy's progress in two ways. But is that really the point?