Understanding and preventing "progress traps"
Progress traps come about when human ingenuity introduces problems that it does not have the resources to solve, preventing further progress.
Environmental degradation, followed by social decline, is a key example and provides the focal point for this study. Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel), describes the oft-repeated collapse of formerly brilliant societies as a "baffling phenomenon."
Are we somehow able to short-circuit our awareness of man-made changes to the environment? What if these innovations eventually cause harm? Can we unknowingly engineer our own collapse? This site, and the book it accompanies, explore these issues, which become less baffling as you venture beyond conventional ideas.
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Progresstrap.org is a companion site to the book Escaping the Progress Trap
by Daniel B. O'Leary
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