Progress

In spite of incresaingly gloomy headlines, many things changed for the better this year.

The death rate of babies under the age of one has fallen steeply in the last few decades. It's now probably at its lowest ever rate in human history. That’s thanks to many modern public health victories: better sanitation, more access to clean drinking water, enhanced nutrition, and the improved education of women.

Many of the problems the world faces today pre-date the latest conflicts and related refugee crises. Five years ago already...

1. Google asked the global public for ideas to address the following societal issues:

Many are imagining, some even planning for, the coming of the "singularity". Some are for, some against, many others sceptical that it could ever arrive.

Ray Kurzweil, who inter alia works on Google's machine learning project, predicts that by 2029, humans will be extending their lives considerably or even indefinitely. He also believes the human brain could be enhanced by tiny robotic implants that connect to cloud-based computer networks to give us 'God-like' abilities.

To Oxford Martin School to see Ian Goldin, former Vice President of the World Bank and former economic advisor to Nelson Mandela.

Goldin believes development is the no.1 issue facing humanity - why do some societies and some individuals develop, get richer, get rights etc....while others don't? Why is GDP so pre-dominant, meaning that destructive practices (e.g. environmental harm) are counted as economic acticity - in short, "why are the bads of economies counted as goods?"

Goldin traced the trajectory of development over recent decades. Dependency theory led to uneven development which countries tried to address through import substitution, but countries are generally not very good at state-controlled production and then the oil price rises of the 1970s led to a vicious cycle of debts and bail-outs.