On Progress

Progress has two key components: Destruction and Construction.

In many ways, in order to move ahead, we have to destroy whatever does not contribute to the place we want to go.

Simultaneously, we have to take what we have or know and use that as the building blocks for what we want.

Both components require intense scrutiny and calculation. Destroy the wrong things and you have nothing to work from. Rely on the wrong knowledge and your foundation is faulty.

Two seemingly unrelated podcasts illuminated this thinking about progress.

In this episode of Embedded, repeated flash floods destroyed the Main Street (and the people) of Old Ellicott City, MD. Rationally, after the second flash flood, it should have made sense to everyone that rebuilding or maintaining parts of the city in the flood zone was foolish. Yet, residents’ sentimentality of their past relationship with Main Street businesses — most no longer operating — created barriers to progress. Instead of imagining a new, vibrant city center where new memories could be made for generations to come, stagnation ensued.

And in this episode of Cautionary Tales, our increasing reliance on machines and computer algorithms is eroding our instincts for navigating our future. Algorithms are mostly built upon data of the past. When that data is bad, say with maps, the directions we are fed can be catastrophic. Do we blindly accept the GPS, or do we review what’s given to us before we set off?

As we contemplate our futures at the end of this year and decade, are we mindfully destroying and building?