Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar

Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? A provocative look at what happens next at the frontiers of human knowledge.The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers--from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory. And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally--recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative book, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future.Bhaskar argues that the challenge at the frontiers of knowledge has arisen not because we are unimaginative and bad at realizing big ideas but because we have already pushed so far. If we compare the world of our great-great-great-grandparents to ours today, we can see how a series of transformative ideas revolutionized almost everything in just a century and a half. But recently, because of short-termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making, we have built a cautious, unimaginative world. Bhaskar shows how we can start to expand the frontier again by thinking big--embarking on the next Universal Declaration of Human Rightsor Apollo mission--and embracing change.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Science, Sociology, Audiobook, History, Futurism

432 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher and digital publisher. He is Co-Founder of Canelo, a new publishing company, and Writer in Residence at DeepMind.

He has written and talked extensively about publishing, the future of media, the creative industries and the economics of technology.

He has worked as a digital publisher, an economics researcher, a book reviewer and founded several web initiatives.

Michael has a degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford where he won the University Gibbs Prize. He has been a British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur, a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow and is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Oxford Brookes International Centre for Publishing and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, if limited, exploration of human thinking and the future of ideas.

Human Frontiers is Bhaskar's third book and it aims to explore the history of big ideas, how these have come about, and explain why these major leaps forward seem to be slowing (or halting). I have previously enjoyed his previous work (Curation is well worth reading) and so was excited to get into this one, as it's certainly a juicy topic and one that has a lot of scope for thoughts and potential explorations.

In short, however, while there are some good sections, this book felt (to me, a lot of the time) like an extended blog post that had been padded out with extra material to justify the price/book cover. The structure of the book is somewhat questionable, because it tries to divide the arguments into 'Today' and 'Tomorrow', however most of the content in the latter section still references back to the former, or even earlier, and so there is limited space/time given over to the discussion of how we can get more and bigger ideas, rather than just recreating what we already have now.

Without wishing to be too harsh, it had the feeling of an undergraduate thesis; one where someone has done all of the research and has all of the references, so spends most of their time building an impressive picture of the current landscape, but then doesn't leave themselves enough time to develop any significant ideas. It's only really in the last chapter and epilogue that Bhaskar turns to seriously look at the future (and the epilogue is just a regurgitation of basic sci-fi tropes around Kardashev civilisations), and so I came away feeling disappointed that there wasn't more exploratory discussions or (ironically) some larger thinking on display.

To be fair to the author, the early sections of the book covering human development and the history of ideas/inventions is thorough and I certainly enjoyed it; he doesn't fall into the trap of only covering 'Western' thinking and the rise of different civilisations/cultures through time are covered, to show how diversity of thinking has shaped the current world. If the book had aimed to simply provide a historical overview then I think it would have done a good job, although whether that would have been enough for a book or interesting enough to purchase would be another question.

Do I think there are some good parts of this book; yes, and it provides a good overview/entry point into the discussion, however personally I come away disappointed at the payoff. I'm happy to read through some of the historical elements if the future-gazing is intriguing, however I found it to be lacking here.

Overall 3/5, some good ideas and certainly worth a look if you're interested in human development/idea creation and history of inventions.

[Jenny (bookishjenx) · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.

Michael, no matter how many statistics you put in to make the same point over and bloody over again, this book still won’t justify any of your arguments.

A bunch of stupid opinions from a tired, grumpy, old man.

Gave up as he wrote “much of what formerly constituted counterculture is now vapid, toothless, deracinated… music isn’t the heartland of a broiling subculture so much as an accessible, easily digestible menu to be sampled from at will.”

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are we reaching the limit of progress?

Yes. We are spending more and more to get less and less. We have more researchers now but no ground breaking discoveries.

1. All the Low hanging fruits are taken
2. The new problems are much harder (space VS air travel), 3. It now takes much longer to learn what is already known and older researchers are not as creative…
4: Financialization causes investors to chase steady income from established companies. Retirement funds already are the biggest investors so aging societies become more and more risk averse
5. Universities play it safe, recruiting professors who think alike, publish lots of papers to improve their ranking. Einstein will not survive as a professor now
6. Competition breeds efforts in research spending. Sputnik moments gel the nation together and increase research spending.
7. We are still working to prove Einstein’s theory from the last century. Movie franchises are from last century (Spider-Man and Avenger comics, Star Wars). Art Noveau has already been discovered. There are no more new music genres. The list goes on.

No.
1. AI will help speed up solutions, not only in chess and Go but also in protein folding prediction.
2. Quantum computers will be able to do calculations at unthinkable speed.
3. Biotechnology with CRISPR will help us insert or change our defective genes easily.
4: international collaborations will improve research. More women and racial diversity will help the output in companies and universities.

Suggestions:
1. For individuals: have a hobby. Read outside your field. Meet different people for cross pollination of ideas. Be bold and try new things.
2. For schools; Montessori style self driven learning.
3. For companies, universities and countries: am encourage risk taking. Embrace failure as most will fail but some will succeed with explosive results.
4. Diversify the work teams.

A great book!

[Fin Moorhouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much fun. Where did all the big ideas go? Are they becoming irreversibly harder to find? Are we witnessing a 'great stagnation', and how might we get out of it?

Facts and stats at firehose rate of delivery. Lighter on overarching theses / arguments — I would have appreciated more careful thinking about how and why working on speeding up 'big idea' generation could actually be a pressing priority, and also about the feasibility of especially long or irrecoverable stagnation. But this was hugely enjoyable; breathless and discursive enough never to drag. More ideas about ideas!

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. Michael Bhaskar did an incredible job writing a book about technology and innovation that didn’t bore the hell out of me. I typically don’t read these types of books, but I saw a lot of buzz about it before it came out. It took me a while to finally read it, but it’s amazing. The book discusses the history of innovation, where big ideas come from, and then it gets into some really interesting topics. Bhaskar discusses how the culture wars and cancel culture stifle innovation, and why that’s an issue. It also discusses the pros and cons of regulation and some of the issues with capitalism when it comes to regulation, which is an extremely important topic. To conclude the book, Bhaskar gives some suggestions and ideas so we can keep innovating, and it’s fantastic. I highly recommend this book.

[Arthur Halsall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having picked this book up at the library without much thought I’d say I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The notion of the ‘frontier’ or what Bhaskar describes as where big ideas meet cutting edge technology, as slowing down had not occurred to me. On a day to day basis and having lived through the release of chat GPT 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 it’s not something that has resonated with me. However, Bhaskar makes a very compelling argument for why over the last decade there has been almost a cowardice from big ideas and radical approaches towards innovation. The previous decades have taken an incremental approach to innovation and development. The author implies that is not sufficient in meeting the enormous challenges we face today. Although, and this is touched upon in the last chapter, I feel big ideas have major implications in the unintended consequences that happen from their inception. For example, Communism, Fascism, social media, chlorine gas and so on. But at the same time, the great filter which is mentioned does indicate that the frontier must keep its momentum to break through that ceiling of societal collapse.

As you can see from the monologue above, this book has generated a lot of wider reflection and thought about ideas. In addition it has spurred an excitement in me to think about big ideas more, whether that be at work or outside of it. Bhaskar states Google used to give employees one day of the week to work on something that was creative and could benefit the company in some way. I already have this approach at work due to the small size of the company and I think it is important for others to adopt it too. Another thing is experimenting with chat GPT around producing novel ideas which it is very good at, and then challenging them to improve them. Perhaps adopting AI as a general purpose technology may prove immensely effective in generating the big ideas of the future. Who knows, but I’m sure Bhaskar would be supportive.

All in all Bhaskar makes a grounded and persuasive argument for both the recent slow down of the frontier and the need for us to increase its momentum. If you are interested even remotely in innovation or the trajectory of society then I would pick this up. As a testament to Bhaskars argument, someone once said something like ‘the world of tomorrow is decided by the surrounding ideas of the present’. I believe these turbulent times are in part a result of outdated systems, culture and ideology competing with technology and fairer more globalised world views. New and big ideas from the frontier must emerge to take on these challenges.

[Mbogo J · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea that big discoveries have stagnated if not at all vanished always plagues any age. Laments of how the present era falls short of some imagined golden age fill countless books and this book marks the register as the 2021 iteration of that lament.

The only good thing I can say about this book is the writing, it's engaging and very easy to follow, but beyond that I didn't learn anything new from it. It reads like a meta narrative of things you've encountered before in magazines and blog posts. It didn't help that there is no unassailable metric to measure innovation or a big idea. Rising patents come close but they fail spectacularly when you factor in patent trolls. Bhaskar got around this issue by proposing we do a qualitative analysis instead. This is all good but then you can never ran away from the accusation that you are just passing off your biases as "qualitative judgement." Large swathes of this book turned into long laments about how the current state of academia stifles "big ideas" but then across centuries big ideas have always been stifled. Almost all big ideas have their creator being jailed or at worse burnt at the stake for heresy. Our era just buries them in paperwork and endless proposal writing to no end.

I for one will not join in the indictment of the current generation. Sometimes it is okay to make marginal gains and this current era gets a pat on the back for dedicating its energies towards social justice. A quest for fairness is far more admirable than some sweeping conclusions which will most likely be proven wrong in the next generation.

This book had a promising canvass but failed to deliver on a worthy sight. Years back I read a book written around a similar topic, I have regrettably forgotten the title, but that book's author instead of joining in the lament chose to write about ideas on the "cutting edge" where it's hard to make a call whether they are genius or advanced quackery. There were ideas on alternate theories to the meteor impact as a cause for dinosaur extinction (I have never fully bought it and prefer the volcanic theory instead), theories on the pre-big bang universe and many other truly interesting topics. This is how you prosecute this thesis but if you have a penchant for self righteous tirades, you can glean some content from this book. It is not a bad book, it just could have been better.

[Justohidalgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I personally know the author and have worked with him in the past.
The evolution of Michael as a writer is clear. From a deep and complex approach to the theory of publishing, he went on to write Curation, which is still to me the best book on content and digital I’ve found.
With Human Frontiers, he tackles an even bigger issue, such as the future of humanity and the limits we will have as society and culture.
I see the book as three different ones. The first one and longer is amazingly lucid and hard on us, almost negative. It’s the part that most impacted me. I had never read, what, 200 pages, telling me, to my face, that we are f***ed. With data and analysis. At that moment I purchased two new copies for two of my colleagues because I wanted them to see this part.
The second one is more optimistic, and, maybe, more “standard”, but nevertheless very well written. We have options to continue our evolution as a society as a whole, but we need to take responsibilities.
The third one, very short, was pure imagination. What could happen if all goes extremely well? Maybe because I was still deeply thinking about the first part, I didn’t truly enjoy it.
But even some days after finishing the first part, and after reading the whole book, I still find fascinating tidbits that are shaping my latest thinking and writing. I really recommend this work.

[Emily Lo · Rating 3 out of 5]

First heard of this book via a radio interview in which the author alludes to a few interesting points which led me to buying the book.

Similar thoughts to many of the reviews here. The author makes a worthy attempt to back up their ideas through drawing across historical and current stats. The research makes for an interesting read for the first quarter of the book. But at some point, the book starts to waffle and it becomes incredibly difficult to follow what the chapter is trying to convey.

Because of this I found it difficult to complete the latter half of the book as the chapters drone on and jump about. There needs to be more structure and it could have been cut down to be more concise.

The idea of the book is great, the research is thorough but the delivery is all over the place.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first half of the book is pessimistic but thought-provoking. As a civilization, we seem to have reached a point of saturation in breakthrough ideas and technologies. Michael explores the reasons for this and it's fascinating.

In the second half, he does look at recent big ideas and explores ways we can break the innovation bottleneck.

[Mohannad · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF

At first the book covers the history of ideas very well but halfway through it becomes laborious to read. The same point regurgitated a thousand different ways as it there is a minimum word count that needs to be reached.

Couldn't bring myself to finish it.

[Suus · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Recommended reading!