The Acceleration of Historical Change and Our Singular Century

Menard Family Institute for Economic Inquiry Presents 

In today’s world, the advent of the Information Revolution and the ensuing rapid acceleration of technological change has upended American society and global civilization in ways that are as profound as anything we saw during the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, it looks as if we are now entering an age of permanent revolution, in which radical technological and social change – from nuclear weapons to the internet and Artificial Intelligence - cascade across the world largely nonstop as we head towards what many deem a Singularity.

In a world that seems to be spinning out of control, politics becomes much more disorienting and polarizing. Faced, apparently, with the possibility that the next century could witness either the extinction of humanity or the establishment of a global utopia, both our hopes and our fears tend to be larger than life. Today, political opponents are not just people with whom we disagree. They are people whose supposedly misguided views could destroy the planet. Do ordinary standards of political competition still apply when your opponents' policies will destroy human civilization? Should they be allowed free speech? Should they be able to organize politically even if their electoral victories would destroy life on Earth?

Join Walter Russell Mead, the Global View Columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a Distinguished Fellow at Hudson Institute, for a lecture that examines the major forces transforming American society today.