The role of innovation in our accelerating future

Abstract

According to the original idea, a sustainable future is expected to keep humanity and our habitat on Earth free from drastic, catastrophic changes, while also allowing ideology-free progress with beneficial scientific, technological, and cultural advancements of society. Changes in human society have occurred throughout history, sometimes rather slowly, some other times with dramatical speed, even by revolutions. Nevertheless, in our recent past many processes have accelerated to levels never experienced earlier, achieved primarily through a staggering range of scientific and technological advances, followed by cultural changes, some of which have not been anticipated. This was a consequence of associated better living standards for many, which also resulted in a major population growth on our planet. Although a pandemic like Covid-19 or other major international events may temporarily reduce the pace of some global changes, as of now, such events do not appear to cause major slowdowns of fundamental changes in the main trends. Therefore, while facing an accelerating future, there is today a much more urgent need for purpose-focused innovations and for their most important sources: real, nature-based science, and truth-committed scientists and technologists. Ramifications for culture and society in general are also essential. More action would be required to counter the cultural pandemic of the information-avalanche of trendy simplicities dressed up as “know-it-all” excuses, used by many in our society. Their intent is to skip the effort needed for real, science-based education and for logic-respecting thinking with responsibility. Especially, in the age of WWW and Internet, it would be highly important to formulate reasonable expectations for a code of “Internet-Integrity”, as a Cultural Innovation, that would help to provide better focus on truthfulness and fact-based understanding of nature, society, and culture in our rapidly evolving Information Age. In turn, such a “Cultural Innovation” could also lead to a more broadly-based participation, hence more successes in the development of new, purpose-focused technological innovations, and at a deeper level, in the enhanced, further development of their scientific foundations.