Setting Sail

Charting a course for progress

It can take a long time to ask the basic questions.

Before that, I spent my early twenties investigating questions in theoretical physics. I studied gravity, quantum physics, and computing. From my point of view, the more mathematical and abstract the question, the better. I was studying the "serious" problems.

I didn't ask myself other, more basic questions. How did my refrigerator work? What was the story behind its invention? How did it diffuse throughout the world? Who is able to make use of one to keep their food for longer, or to store vaccines? For that matter, who even has access to reliable electricity? How does the electric grid differ between countries? And on and on and on.

I realized that everything around me—cars, refrigerators, buildings, air conditioning, traffic lights, planes, housing, and so much more—was a black box. Large chunks of my existence relied on technology, systems, and infrastructure that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know how they worked, how they changed over time, or how we’ve made progress in giving them to more people.

The wonderful truth is that I could keep going through my whole life benefiting from these systems without ever having to personally understand them. But the flip side is that I would be clueless about so much of our world. And that seems wrong to me.

Though physics is amazing, this whole new swath of questions demanded that I ponder them. I couldn't be the only one who didn't know this stuff. I wanted to learn more, to understand the work happening at Our World in Data, Human Progress, Works in Progress, and at so many organizations dedicated to studying progress and how the world is changing.

I was lucky to join a cohort of amazing writers and thinkers for the first Roots of Progress Fellowship. My focus wasn't as an expert, but as a chronicler. That's what I will continue here with Charting Progress.

I want to understand the invisible infrastructure that shapes our world. I want to understand different industries such as energy, manufacturing, and construction. I really want to understand the data behind my questions, and that will be a prominent feature in these dispatches. If there's one thing I've learned from my time in science, it's that it can be really difficult to read a graph! My hope is to get to the bottom of them.

I also want to understand because I think it's the only way to take the next step: improving our current systems. Like Hannah Ritchie, I know that I need the right kind of optimism to be motivated about improving our future.

I wrote that Charting Progress is about “Navigating towards a brighter future for all.” That future won't come by default. It requires all of us, and I want to illuminate those possible paths. Because the map isn’t set, nor is the destination. Both are in flux, and exploring is what I’ll be doing here in each dispatch.

It’s time to raise the anchor and set sail.

Note: The post’s icon is from Matin Mahirli.