机器人创新生态

century ago marked the beginning of a new, exuberant era: the “Roaring Twen- ties.” New technologies promised better ways of living. A hopeful optimism led Americans to cast aside traditional moral standards, valuing conspicuous con- sumption over austerity. Radio shows brought fresh ideas and music into homes and cars transported Americans from their family farms to new opportunities in the city. Americans weren’t the only beneficiaries of all this growth. Europeans enjoyed great economic prosperity in the aftermath of World War I, while South America became a beneficiary of new oil production. It seemed as though the good times might last forever. But the Roaring Twenties also brought Prohibition, a short-sighted regulatory attempt to shape American society that resulted in the rise of organized crime and kingpins like Al Capone. Fascism, authoritarian dictators and civil wars erupted in Eastern Europe and China in the aftermath of collapsed empires. Technological innovations, like the Panama Canal, moving assembly lines and wide-scale electric power transmission, had created new wealth but it wasn’t evenly distributed. More than two-thirds of Americans survived on wages too low to sustain everyday living, and they didn’t have a safety net. High valuations and the promise of massive returns lured enthusiastic investors, who bought company shares—lots of them— using questionable loans. When share prices began their inevitable decline, people panicked. By October 1929, the stock market crashed, setting in motion a Great Depression, a rise in xenophobia and far-right extremism, and eventually, another world war. It’s difficult not to see unsettling parallels to our present-day world. But we are positioned to make better choices this time around. A century ago, the tools of modern strategic foresight hadn’t been invented yet. There was no method of researching and categorizing trends that might influence the future. Rather than studying plausible long-term implications, leaders made decisions in the moment. Or they didn’t actively make decisions at all.