[A mission statement for my Substack newsletter, Changing Lanes]

Changing Lanes is a newsletter for optimists.

If you’ve been reading from the beginning, you may find this surprising. The first three issues were skeptical: of Tesla's coming foray into robotaxis, of fare-free public transit, and of Hyperloop technology. To judge from these posts, it may seem that Changing Lanes aims to debunk and tear down. It has not been rich in hope for the future.

But I am hopeful for the future. I want it to be better than the past, and I believe it is possible for that to happen.

Many people think otherwise. Popular culture has embraced dystopian thinking for decades. The agent of destruction differs from account to account, from nuclear war to environmental degradation to climate change to unaligned AI. Hope for the future often seems naive or childish, while lack of hope passes itself off as sophistication.

But there are opposing cultural and philosophical undercurrents to this mainstream view. They go by different names, and have different political commitments. On the right, there are the techno-optimists. On the left, there are the solarpunk anarchists. In the middle, there are the technocrats who espouse the abundance agenda. I am in sympathy with all of them. They differ on some matters, but they agree that human ingenuity, rationalism, science, engineering, and hard work can make, not a utopia, but a better world than we have. If we are willing to think, and work, and above all build, we can have a world that is richer and cleaner, more comfortable and more safe, with more human flourishing and less exploitation and drudgery.

While I appreciate all of these groups, the one that I am most drawn to is the progress movement. The Roots of Progress Institute (RPI), one of its standard-bearers, describes it thusly:

The progress of the last few centuries—in science, technology, industry, and the economy—is one of the greatest achievements of humanity. But progress is not automatic or inevitable. We must understand its causes so that we can keep it going, and even accelerate it. We need a new philosophy of progress. In order to make progress, we must believe that it is possible and desirable. The 19th century believed in the power of technology and industry to better humanity, but in the 20th century, this belief gave way to skepticism and distrust. We need a new way forward.

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