[coldtea]

>Your focus on consumer gadgets is incredibly narrow and overlooks so many other things where innovation happens and brings true progress to the world.

I find the world worse than 30 years ago, so I'm doubtful about this "true progress". Our progress is just moving along without a clear goal.

>Also, you can't stop human curiosity and the drive to improve and compete.

You can cut off the economic motives for those things, which turn them from a human thing into an inhuman cut-throat compulsion.

[dractori]

In what ways is the world worse? "So why does it feel like the world is in decline? I think it is partly the nature of news coverage. Bad news arrives as drama, while good news is incremental—and not usually deemed newsworthy." http://time.com/5086870/bill-gates-guest-editor-time/