Seminar: Making progress on Progress Studies in the UK
The concept of Progress is not new. It is a product of Enlightenment thinking and ‘the invention of the future’ and was championed until the end of the Cold War, since when it has been out of fashion, if not derided.
More recently, the idea and importance Progress and the concept of Progress Studies has been promoted by author of The Great Stagnation (2011) Professor Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen) and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, most notably in We Need a New Science of Progress in the The Atlantic as well as by The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. In 2023, Nico Macdonald co-curated The Great Stagnation summit with Tyler Cowen and public service champion Civic Future, which was followed by New Wild West in 2024.
With the new Labour administration, we have more of a narrative around Growth. But we have no established modern theory of Progress, or even a model for for the public understanding of the subject.
This seminar is being led by Nico Macdonald.
Nico Macdonald teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation on the University of California Education Abroad Program and is an External Examiner at University of the Arts London. He is co-author and convenor of BIG POTATOES: The London Manifesto for Innovation and was Chief Executive of The Research & Development Society. In 2023, with Civic Future he co-curated The Great Stagnation summit at Churchill College, Cambridge. He also co-programmed the Story of London Festival ‘Future City’ debates for the Mayor of London’s Office and chaired the Mayor’s London 2012 Global Futures debate series on Technology. Early in his career he was instrumental in the disruption of the publishing and design industries, building on digital technologies to facilitate more progress than they had delivered in a half-millennium. He shares references to and opinions on innovation and creativity and society and politics @Nico_Macdonald and his site is: spy.co.uk
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Other thinkers and academics working in this areas include Deirdre Nansen McCloskey at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Professor Diane Coyle at the University of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy; Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes and Sam Bowman at Works In Progress and Stripe Press (who recently published Foundations: Why Britain has stagnated); Professor David Edgerton at King’s College London; Jason Crawford at The Roots of Progress Institute; James Phillips in the Prime Minister’s office; The Age of Invention author Anton Howes at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA); writer and podcaster Dan Senor; Samo Burja of Bismark Analysis; writer and academic Joel Kotkin; Azeem Azhar of Exponential View; author Phil Mullan; Professor Mariana Mazzucato at UCL; Ash Milton and Wolf Tivy at Palladium Magazine; Sam Richards at Britain Remade; Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz; spiked writer and London South Bank University professor James Woudhuysen; writer and economist Matt Ridley; and writer and philosopher John Gray.
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Cover image credits: Copper Mines on the Parys Mountain by John Warwick Smith