If the world is thought to be suffering from both too little innovation and too much at the same time, it may be reasonable to think that the future will look a lot like the past. That strategy offers some room for optimism. Thanks to technological change and the resulting economic growth, many countries are now vastly richer than they were 300 years ago, and rich in ways pre-industrial societies could not have conceived of. Fears of mass unemployment raised by earlier technological leaps never came to pass. Instead, technology allowed people to live longer, fuller lives. Quite possibly this time will be no different. Humans' greatest advantage over machines has always been their flexibility, which should help them adapt to the new world around them. A generation from now people everywhere will almost certainly be richer and live longer, and most of those looking for work will probably still be able to find it.
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