The end of the world as we know it?

Great article in this last week's Sunday Times about the unfolding crisis facing humanity, as '...the greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end.'

Thought this a cut above the usual 'end is nigh' pieces which fill up the pages of the Sunday glossies, and was particularly struck by the section examining the decline in the rate of 'innovations'. According to the article , '...the rate of innovation peaked in 1873 and has been declining ever since. In fact, our current rate of innovation which Huebner puts at seven important technological developments per billion people per year is about the same as it was in 1600. By 2024 it will have slumped to the same level as it was in the Dark Ages, the period between the end of the Roman empire and the start of the Middle Ages.'

Presumably this is partly because the wonders of the market mean that bright young science graduates know they're more likely to make cash developing iPods and games consoles than plugging away at long-term, poorly rewarded, genuinely innovative work, with no immediate practical applicability or financial reward.

Drawing parallels with the (relatively) rapid collapse of the Roman empire the article asks, 'is our liberal-democratic-capitalist way of doing things, like cities, an irreversible improvement in the human condition, or is it like the Roman empire, a shooting star of wealth and success, soon to be extinguished?'.

Hopes that this is unlikely because, 'Capitalism may be the Darwinian survivor of a process of natural selection that has seen all other systems fail', appear to grounded more in wishful thinking than objective assessment.

As the article concludes, 'The evidence is mounting that our two sunny centuries of growth and wealth may end in a new Dark Age in which ignorance will replace knowledge, war will replace peace, sickness will replace health and famine will replace obesity. You don't think so? It's always happened in the past. What makes us so different? Nothing, I'm afraid.'