An optimist’s guide to the future: the economist who believes that human ingenuity will save the world

The long read: Every year, thousands of bikes are tossed into rivers, ponds, lakes and canals. What’s behind this mass drowning?

124,000 documents expose inner workings behind US tech firm’s rise as a global empire responsible for 19m journeys a day

«As Uber launched across India, Kalanick’s top executive in Asia urged managers to focus on driving growth, even when “fires start to burn”. “Know this is a normal part of Uber’s business,” he said. “Embrace the chaos. It means you’re doing something meaningful.”»

After more than a decade of writing life-changing advice, I know when to move on. Here’s what else I learned

After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to ecology, to health and to culture itself

When future historians look back on the last half-century, I suspect they will pass over war, terror, and populism to settle on infertility as the decisive event of the age. For the first time since the bubonic plague in the 14th century, the world’s human population is about to shrink — a process that has already begun in many countries. The correlates to the decline are well known: affluence, urbanization, women’s education, abortion and easy access to contraceptives. But identifying hard causes is difficult. Gigantic trends touching on the survival of ancient cultures — and even of our species — get entangled with social pressures and moral ideals. At the same time, one must reckon with the secret dreams and expectations of solitary individuals of every class. The result is uncertainty.

Adversity isn't worth the price of adversity.

To survey the future, we polled global strategists and foresight practitioners on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on…

Despite the constant stream of bad news we see in the media, the reality is that living standards have improved dramatically across time.