The big question for this segment is what forms will innovation take in the Anthropocene? [MUSIC] The Anthropocene itself is an innovation, a mega innovation. Since the great acceleration, the astonishing period of change and growth in the late 20th century, during my life time, we humans have more or less taken over the biosphere. This is the first time a single species has dominated the biosphere since life began almost 4 billion years ago. In this process, collective learning is clearly the most active driver of innovation. And since the great acceleration of the late 20th century, the power of that driver and the rate of innovation, both seem to have taken off. A threshold seems to have been crossed in the history of the biosphere. As we humans try to figure out what this means for us and for future generations, it's clear that innovation will become more, rather than less important. And not just technological innovation. But also innovations in governance, the management of research, in the legal structures that govern the activities of business, governments, and individuals, and even in areas such as ethics. And our understanding of the goals have changed. What after all is a good life? If we're to change how we manage human society and the biosphere as a whole, what direction should we be heading in? Is there a consensus about global goals? Here too we will need new ideas. We will need all the drivers of innovation that we've looked at so far and more. Collective learning will surely continue to generate a trickle of innovations, as it has throughout human history. Competition on global markets may drive technological innovation. Governments and corporations can steer innovation in powerful ways. So can the work of scientists and researches in labs throughout the world. But education will also be crucial, particularly interdisciplinary education. This is because an increasing number of major problems today, such as climate change or the management of global resources, now lie between disciplines, between corporations, and even between nations. Solving these big problems will require thinkers who can move nimbly between fields, regions, and scales, as we've tried to do in this course. The Anthropocene will require innovations that are not just focused on short term goals, such as meeting quarterly profit targets or winning the next election, but on the well being of future generations of humans in the next century. Sometimes this may sound like an impossible challenge. While some scholars argue that innovation is speeding up, others have argued that rates of innovation are actually slowing. The tsunami of innovations that began just two or three centuries ago, which is very recently on the scale of human history, may have passed it's peak. If there are limits to the rate of innovation, as there are to population growth, the more problems we solve, the more costly the next round of innovations will be, the larger the teams required to make them and to disseminate them and the more likely that the returns from them will diminish. Have modern societies already picked most of the low lying fruit of innovation? Such pessimism make sense if we see innovation merely as a driver of growth, of increasing consumption. But as we become more aware of the dangers of increasing human consumption of resources, our understanding of innovation will surely change. As issues of sustainability loom larger, we may begin to see innovations in our thinking about what we mean by a good life. Or in methods of building global consensus on issues, such as climate change or the reduction of poverty and disease. In the future, ethical, social and even the static innovations may prove as important as technological innovations. And innovations designed to help us live with the biosphere may begin to look as interesting as innovations that help us exploit the biosphere. Curiously, the challenge of living with the biosphere is one that most earlier human societies were very familiar with during most of human history. So it may turn out that new forms of innovation will encourage us to turn back to the experiences and traditions of earlier human societies as we try to innovate our way towards a new relationship with planet Earth. These are all daunting, but also exciting challenges for a younger generation that will be managing our modern global society in the next few decades. And our remarkable human capacity for innovation means that we can face these challenges with a lot of optimism. Let's end by thinking about the biggest scale of all. Back to the scales of big history. Will innovation continue forever? I think we know the answer to that one. There are limits, even to innovation. To innovate you need resources and you need free energy. In gazillions of years in the future, the universe will run out of free energy. At that point, everything will break down, innovation will stop. Meanwhile, let's enjoy the fact that we live in an era of staggering creativity and innovation. But let's also remember that innovation destroys as it creates. [MUSIC]
