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"Why Can't We Solve Big Problems?"
I'll be giving a TED U Talk in Longbeach at the end of the month. I'll be asking "Why Can't We Solve Big Problems?" I think that blithe optimism about technology’s powers has evaporated as big problems that people had imagined technology would solve, such as hunger, poverty, malaria, climate change, cancer, and the diseases of old age, have come to seem intractably hard.
I'd love to know what the TED Community thinks our difficulties are - or, even if the idea is true at all.
Here's a URL to the story I wrote in MIT Technology Review on the subject: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/
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Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
Apollo program was about national prestige. It was about competition between ideologies and economic systems. This was also the reason why Russians launched Sputnik and a man into the orbit. These things weren't about money. For better or for worse, the Cold War and the arms race seem to have been huge drivers of technological progress. Today's technological progress seems to be driven, mostly, by profit. I think, this is one of the reasons why we "launch birds into pigs" these days.
Perhaps, humanity needs a shift in values. Edith Widder in her talk "How we found a giant squid" http://www.ted.com/talks/edith_widder_how_we_found_the_giant_squid.html) urged to explore oceans, because "Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth." This phrase caused multiple concerns in comments from different people. Perhaps, we need a better purpose for innovation than economic growth.