21 Lessons for the 21st Century

In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.

The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality.

Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.

Whereas a few years ago Americans and Europeans were still trying to liberalise Iraq and Libya at the point of the gun, many people in Kentucky and Yorkshire have now come to see the liberal vision as either undesirable or unattainable.

If you don’t know what to do with the power to engineer life, market forces will not wait a thousand years for you to come up with an answer.

To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all. Everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying.

The end of history has been postponed.

Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history.

Walls and firewalls are back in vogue.

A bit like the Soviet elite in the 1980s, liberals don’t understand how history deviated from its preordained course.