Jason Crawford, the founder of The Roots of Progress, has become a prominent voice in the discourse on human progress, technological development, and the future of civilization. Through his extensive writings and interviews, he advocates for a renewed appreciation of the industrial and technological revolutions that have shaped the modern world. His work encourages "industrial literacy" and a "philosophy of progress" for the 21st century.

On the Nature and Importance of Progress

  1. "In the broadest sense, 'progress' is everything that helps people live better lives—lives that are longer, happier, healthier, and more comfortable; with more intellectual and spiritual richness; with more choice, freedom, and opportunity." [1]
  2. "We need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. One that teaches people not to take the modern world for granted. One that acknowledges the problems of progress, confronts them directly, and offers solutions." [2]
  3. "Progress is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes, so that we can keep it going, and even accelerate it." [3]
  4. "I want humanity to regain its self-esteem and its ambition, to figuratively and literally reach for the stars. I want us to dream of flying cars, fusion energy, nanotech manufacturing, terraforming planets, exploring the galaxy." [3]
  5. "The progress of the last few centuries—in science, technology, industry, and the economy—is one of the greatest achievements of humanity." [3]
  6. "Progress is an ever-evolving journey, not a destination." [4]
  7. "There are three main categories of progress: material progress (technology, industry, and the economy), intellectual progress (science, knowledge, and education), and moral progress (including society and government). The three are distinct but inseparable: they depend on each other, reinforce each other." [1]
  8. "If you care about human life and well-being and health and happiness, then you have to look at that fact and be somewhat in awe of it. You have to ask, 'how did we get here?' 'Why did it take so long, and how can we keep it going?'" [5]
  9. "Ultimately, progress increases our agency. In fact, in some sense, I think increasing human agency could just be a north star for progress, the key thing that we're trying to enable." [6]
  10. "Progress was agonizingly slow for most of human history, but the rapid progress of the last few centuries was not a fluke." [2]

On Industrial Literacy

  1. "Industrial literacy is understanding… That the food you eat is grown using synthetic fertilizers, and that this is needed for agricultural productivity, because all soil loses its fertility naturally over time if it is not deliberately replenished." [7]
  2. "Industrial literacy means understanding that the components of the global economy are not arbitrary. Each one is there for a reason—often a matter of life and death." [7]
  3. "With industrial literacy, you can see the economy as a set of solutions to problems. Then, and only then, are you informed enough to have an opinion on how those solutions might be improved." [7]
  4. "People should look around at industrial civilization with a little bit of awe and wonder and gratitude, understanding that we are the lucky people in all of human history who get to enjoy this standard of living." [3]
  5. "That half of everyone you know over the age of five is alive today only because of antibiotics, vaccines, and sanitizing chemicals in our water supply." [7]

On Solutionism and Problem-Solving

  1. "Solutionism means fully accepting what's in front of us and enthusiastically stepping up to meet the challenge." [2]
  2. "Believing in the next solution is not blind optimism or even wishful thinking — it is a recognition that humans are problem-solving animals." [2]
  3. "We need to solve the problems of progress with more progress, which is how we've solved most of the problems of progress throughout most of history." [8]
  4. "Progress happens because solutions create new problems to solve." [2]
  5. "Problem-solving is fundamental to human nature." [2]

On the History of Technology

  1. "Every individual technology or even broad technological areas go through something like an S-curve. It starts off slow, has a fast ramp up, then levels off." [9]
  2. "How then do we get exponentially increasing progress over a very long period of time? Well, we do it by overlapping the S-curves." [9]
  3. "It's not a coincidence that we had three revolutions that all happened around the same time roughly speaking in history: we had the scientific revolution, we had the industrial revolution, and then we had the revolution of democratic republics." [9]
  4. "If cement weren't 10,000 years old, it would seem like a futuristic technology: liquid rock!" [3]
  5. "Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? Why weren't bicycles invented until the late 1800s or something, even when... It didn't obviously depend on some scientific breakthrough, right?" [6]
  6. "Tech trees are a very real thing." [10]
  7. "It's common for people to look at the early industrial revolution and think that it actually didn't have much to do with science because so much of it was sort of mechanical tinkering, but I think this is wrong— it had a lot to do with the broader scientific culture, the approach to observation and measurement." [5]
  8. "Behind the world of our daily lives, there is a hidden world, one that keeps our world running. It is an industrial world, one of factories, engines, chemicals, and infrastructure, that most people rarely notice or appreciate." [11]
  9. "If you were alive right now you won the cosmic lottery. The clothes that you wear, the breakfast you ate this morning, the fact that you were able to take a hot shower... all of this is a gift from our ancestors that we just take for granted." [8]
  10. "Nuclear power... is the number one example that I point to of technological stagnation in the late 20th century technology that should have grown much farther than it did and was really stunted in its infancy." [5]

On Culture and Mindset

  1. "The mission of the organization is to establish a new philosophy of progress for the twenty-first century." [1]
  2. "Controversy about progress has really always been around. In fact, the idea of progress is more the exception rather than the rule in history." [12]
  3. "Doers, they need a creed, they need some set of answers to those questions. They need some basic philosophic ideas about what is our goal? Why are we doing this? What justifies it?" [6]
  4. "The world is ripe for a reset. We need not to go back to some of the views of the past, which were definitely naive in some crucial ways, but to go forward with a new synthesis." [6]
  5. "My wife is amazing and has been amazingly supportive as I've made this career transition and gone off on this. 'Wait, so you're going to write your blog full time. What is this?'" [13]
  6. "I think learning is a superpower." [13]
  7. "We need to figure out what drives progress, what might cause it to slow down or stop, and what, if anything, we can do to re-accelerate it." [2]
  8. "A positive vision of the future... what's the future that we are excited to create, what's a future that we really want to live in?" [8]
  9. "If people see material progress as a destructive engine, then you're going to get a lot fewer people who are putting their time and talent and resources into it, and you're gonna get a lot more people who are putting their resources into fighting it." [10]
  10. "The Techno-Humanist Manifesto is a book laying out a new philosophy of progress." [3]

On Economics and Society

  1. "Economic growth is driven by ideas, not resources — and as history shows, the well of innovation is unlikely to ever run dry." [2]
  2. "Predictions of resource scarcity have a fundamental flaw." [2]
  3. "In all of those cases [of failed progress], what was missing was was Liberty and freedom and human individual rights. So those are things that we must absolutely protect, even as we move technological and industrial progress forward." [14]
  4. "Technological progress ultimately is progress for people." [14]
  5. "At the highest level, economic growth throughout all of human history is like a super-exponential curve." [5]
  6. "If we get AI right, it will accelerate empowerment, enabling people to learn any subject, start any business, and realize any vision." [2]
  7. "The humble plastic bag is an engineering marvel." [15]
  8. "Retirement is a 20th-century invention." [15]
  9. "I have never gotten so much pushback and dog piling as when I said that actually the automobile was one of the greatest inventions ever." [5]
  10. "The big question of progress is how much does technological and industrial progress translate to human progress." [8]

Learn more:

  1. Jason Crawford on progress and the history of technology - Luminary.fm
  2. Jason Crawford - Freethink
  3. The Roots of Progress
  4. #72 Roots of Progress: On the history of technological progress and how innovation and invention happen with Founder & CEO Jason Crawford. - Daniel Scrivner
  5. Jason Crawford, founder, The Roots of Progress - MachinePix Weekly #61
  6. Jason Crawford on The Techno-Humanist Manifesto - Lux Capital
  7. Industrial literacy - The Roots of Progress
  8. Stripe Press — Ideas for progress
  9. Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress & the History of Technology - YouTube
  10. ClearerThinking.org Podcast | What causes progress? And how can we stop it from slowing? (with Jason Crawford)
  11. Jason Crawford | Substack
  12. Jason Crawford — The Roots of Progress | Episode 162 - YouTube
  13. #75 Jason Crawford of Roots of Progress: My favorite books, tools, habits, and hacks.
  14. Philosophy of Progress with Jason Crawford [Idea Machines #40]
  15. 2021 in review - by Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress