I initially misread Jonathan’s request to review a work of fiction, which scared the hell of me because I have not read a novel for at least two decades. Fiction is just not me.
But neither did I really want to review a non-fiction book. I write about non-fiction books often enough. It just would not have felt special.
That left the second option. But being German, writing about optimism does not exactly play to my natural strengths, either.
Nevertheless, I accept the challenge to be optimistic, at least this once. And perhaps it is a good exercise, especially since I am turning 50 next year.
As I began reflecting on this milestone, something struck me: The sheer pace and scale of change I have witnessed in this half century is unprecedented in human history.
Imagine you have taken someone from the year 0 and transported them to the year 1000. While they would find some things different, they would manage reasonably well. The basics of daily life – how people moved, communicated, worked, ate and lived – remained largely unchanged over that millennium.
In contrast, so much has changed over the past half century that it is hard to know where to even begin in describing the differences. And it is a giant wellspring of optimism.
Let me give you a small, personal example. I was born with a minor but irritating heart condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia – essentially a microscopic piece of fibre in the heart that causes it to race uncontrollably from time to time.
In late November, I finally had it fixed through a minimally invasive procedure that simply burnt away the problematic tissue with a heart catheter. This surgery only became safe and routine in the 1990s. Before then, there was no treatment for this condition. When surgery finally emerged, it was, at first, complicated and risky.
If such progress has been possible for my minor condition, consider the transformative treatments that have emerged for more serious health issues. Countless conditions that were once death sentences are now manageable or even curable. It gives me hope that perhaps over the coming decades, we might make similar progress against cancer and other diseases that still plague humanity.
So there you go, my first reason for optimism. But the pace of technological change is also apparent in everyday activities.
My first savings account was a so-called Sparbuch with German Post – literally a small blue book in which payments were recorded, first by hand, later with a needle printer, but always sealed with an official stamp.
Today, if I want to receive or transfer money, there is an app for that. I do not need to set foot in a bank branch or post office, and money swirls around the globe in seconds, converted into all sorts of currencies at minimal fees.
Having grown up with cash, I still maintain a cultural, and perhaps also a nostalgic, attachment to coins and notes. But they are impractical compared to paying with my phone or smartwatch. And so, I have now spent entire foreign holidays without having any cash of the visited country in hand, relying entirely on digital payments.
Communications technology shows a similarly dramatic transformation.
In 1992, aged 17, I spent my summer holidays travelling around Germany on a second-class rail youth pass with three friends. We stayed in youth hostels and explored Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg.
With hindsight, I am still amazed our parents thought it was a good idea to let us teenagers travel on our own (drinking beer is legal in Germany from age 16). But from today’s vantage point, their letting us do it without modern communications technology was even more shocking.
Back then, without emails let alone mobile phones, I would call my parents from a phone booth every few days to confirm I was still alive. When one of my friends fell ill in Dresden and had to return home early, all arrangements had to be made through calls from a station telephone.
Ironically, while newer technology means parents can track their teenagers’ every move, we probably would not let them embark on such independent adventures anymore. Perhaps some forms of progress come at the cost of other freedoms we once took for granted.
Around the same time, I was experiencing the limitations of global communications in another way. I met my wife as a penfriend! We started writing letters in 1991 – and that was the old-fashioned way: pen and paper. She was in South Australia, I was in the west of Germany, and letters took at least a week each way.
We never once spoke on the phone. We were poor students and international calls cost several Deutschmarks per minute. The telecommunications monopolies had not been privatised back then.
Today, I video chat in high definition with family and friends across multiple continents and think nothing of it. Free, instant, crystal-clear communication across the globe has become so normal that we barely marvel at it anymore – and I would not want it any other way.
Yet instant communication has also changed how we relate to each other. Would my wife and I have developed the same connection if we had met through instant messages? There was something special about those handwritten letters that took weeks to arrive – the anticipation, the thought put into each word. When responses are expected within minutes via email or WhatsApp, relationships develop differently. Maybe not worse, but certainly differently.
Similar changes have transformed how we access information. When I started learning English, I would occasionally venture to the newsagent at our city’s central train station – the only place nearby where I could buy TIME magazine or Newsweek for my first taste of international news.
Living in New Zealand today, I have (digital) newspaper and magazine subscriptions from Germany, the UK, Switzerland, the US, Australia and, yes, New Zealand too. News and opinions from around the world are a click away. I can watch TV and radio programmes live or on demand and carry my favourite podcasts from around the world with me. I could not have imagined any of that when I was a student.
The pace of technological change becomes even more striking when I compare my first computer with modern devices. My Commodore Amiga 500, which I got as a 12-year-old in 1987, was a small marvel of its time. It came with a mouse and a graphic user interface! But today, my smartphone has about 24,000 times more RAM, nearly 300,000 times more storage, and runs almost 500 times faster.
These are not just abstract numbers. That little device in my pocket packs more computing power than an entire building full of Amiga 500s. And it powers developments that would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago.
Take artificial intelligence and language learning. I have always enjoyed languages, particularly Italian, which I started learning in my late teens. Unfortunately, living in English-speaking countries limited my Italian opportunities, but today, an AI app serves as my personal Italian tutor – talking with me, gently correcting my mistakes, and discussing news articles with me. Va bene.
The irony in AI translation becoming so capable is not lost on me: Learning languages might soon become optional rather than necessary. But perhaps that just means we can focus human intelligence on other challenges.
All these advances are remarkable, and as someone fascinated by technology since my youth, I cannot help but be amazed by how far we have come. The pace of change shows no signs of slowing – if anything, it is accelerating. Artificial intelligence alone promises to transform our world in ways that might make the changes I have witnessed so far seem modest by comparison.
Though technology has made many aspects of life easier and more convenient, it may also be changing how we interact as a society. When I see a group of young people today, each absorbed in their own digital world despite sitting physically together, I wonder whether we have gained individual convenience at some cost to shared experience.
But perhaps my greatest hope for 2025 – and my constant source of optimism – is that we continue to find new ways to harness these powerful technologies. They enable us to live better, more fulfilled and more interesting lives.
After all, the most remarkable thing about human progress is not the technology itself, but how we choose to use it.
So, as I reflect on nearly five decades of living through technological transformation, I remain cautiously optimistic that these changes will create a better world.
Though being German, I should probably not get carried away with even that much optimism.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
That left the second option. But being German, writing about optimism does not exactly play to my natural strengths, either.
Nevertheless, I accept the challenge to be optimistic, at least this once. And perhaps it is a good exercise, especially since I am turning 50 next year.
As I began reflecting on this milestone, something struck me: The sheer pace and scale of change I have witnessed in this half century is unprecedented in human history.
Imagine you have taken someone from the year 0 and transported them to the year 1000. While they would find some things different, they would manage reasonably well. The basics of daily life – how people moved, communicated, worked, ate and lived – remained largely unchanged over that millennium.
In contrast, so much has changed over the past half century that it is hard to know where to even begin in describing the differences. And it is a giant wellspring of optimism.
Let me give you a small, personal example. I was born with a minor but irritating heart condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia – essentially a microscopic piece of fibre in the heart that causes it to race uncontrollably from time to time.
In late November, I finally had it fixed through a minimally invasive procedure that simply burnt away the problematic tissue with a heart catheter. This surgery only became safe and routine in the 1990s. Before then, there was no treatment for this condition. When surgery finally emerged, it was, at first, complicated and risky.
If such progress has been possible for my minor condition, consider the transformative treatments that have emerged for more serious health issues. Countless conditions that were once death sentences are now manageable or even curable. It gives me hope that perhaps over the coming decades, we might make similar progress against cancer and other diseases that still plague humanity.
So there you go, my first reason for optimism. But the pace of technological change is also apparent in everyday activities.
My first savings account was a so-called Sparbuch with German Post – literally a small blue book in which payments were recorded, first by hand, later with a needle printer, but always sealed with an official stamp.
Today, if I want to receive or transfer money, there is an app for that. I do not need to set foot in a bank branch or post office, and money swirls around the globe in seconds, converted into all sorts of currencies at minimal fees.
Having grown up with cash, I still maintain a cultural, and perhaps also a nostalgic, attachment to coins and notes. But they are impractical compared to paying with my phone or smartwatch. And so, I have now spent entire foreign holidays without having any cash of the visited country in hand, relying entirely on digital payments.
Communications technology shows a similarly dramatic transformation.
In 1992, aged 17, I spent my summer holidays travelling around Germany on a second-class rail youth pass with three friends. We stayed in youth hostels and explored Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg.
With hindsight, I am still amazed our parents thought it was a good idea to let us teenagers travel on our own (drinking beer is legal in Germany from age 16). But from today’s vantage point, their letting us do it without modern communications technology was even more shocking.
Back then, without emails let alone mobile phones, I would call my parents from a phone booth every few days to confirm I was still alive. When one of my friends fell ill in Dresden and had to return home early, all arrangements had to be made through calls from a station telephone.
Ironically, while newer technology means parents can track their teenagers’ every move, we probably would not let them embark on such independent adventures anymore. Perhaps some forms of progress come at the cost of other freedoms we once took for granted.
Around the same time, I was experiencing the limitations of global communications in another way. I met my wife as a penfriend! We started writing letters in 1991 – and that was the old-fashioned way: pen and paper. She was in South Australia, I was in the west of Germany, and letters took at least a week each way.
We never once spoke on the phone. We were poor students and international calls cost several Deutschmarks per minute. The telecommunications monopolies had not been privatised back then.
Today, I video chat in high definition with family and friends across multiple continents and think nothing of it. Free, instant, crystal-clear communication across the globe has become so normal that we barely marvel at it anymore – and I would not want it any other way.
Yet instant communication has also changed how we relate to each other. Would my wife and I have developed the same connection if we had met through instant messages? There was something special about those handwritten letters that took weeks to arrive – the anticipation, the thought put into each word. When responses are expected within minutes via email or WhatsApp, relationships develop differently. Maybe not worse, but certainly differently.
Similar changes have transformed how we access information. When I started learning English, I would occasionally venture to the newsagent at our city’s central train station – the only place nearby where I could buy TIME magazine or Newsweek for my first taste of international news.
Living in New Zealand today, I have (digital) newspaper and magazine subscriptions from Germany, the UK, Switzerland, the US, Australia and, yes, New Zealand too. News and opinions from around the world are a click away. I can watch TV and radio programmes live or on demand and carry my favourite podcasts from around the world with me. I could not have imagined any of that when I was a student.
The pace of technological change becomes even more striking when I compare my first computer with modern devices. My Commodore Amiga 500, which I got as a 12-year-old in 1987, was a small marvel of its time. It came with a mouse and a graphic user interface! But today, my smartphone has about 24,000 times more RAM, nearly 300,000 times more storage, and runs almost 500 times faster.
These are not just abstract numbers. That little device in my pocket packs more computing power than an entire building full of Amiga 500s. And it powers developments that would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago.
Take artificial intelligence and language learning. I have always enjoyed languages, particularly Italian, which I started learning in my late teens. Unfortunately, living in English-speaking countries limited my Italian opportunities, but today, an AI app serves as my personal Italian tutor – talking with me, gently correcting my mistakes, and discussing news articles with me. Va bene.
The irony in AI translation becoming so capable is not lost on me: Learning languages might soon become optional rather than necessary. But perhaps that just means we can focus human intelligence on other challenges.
All these advances are remarkable, and as someone fascinated by technology since my youth, I cannot help but be amazed by how far we have come. The pace of change shows no signs of slowing – if anything, it is accelerating. Artificial intelligence alone promises to transform our world in ways that might make the changes I have witnessed so far seem modest by comparison.
Though technology has made many aspects of life easier and more convenient, it may also be changing how we interact as a society. When I see a group of young people today, each absorbed in their own digital world despite sitting physically together, I wonder whether we have gained individual convenience at some cost to shared experience.
But perhaps my greatest hope for 2025 – and my constant source of optimism – is that we continue to find new ways to harness these powerful technologies. They enable us to live better, more fulfilled and more interesting lives.
After all, the most remarkable thing about human progress is not the technology itself, but how we choose to use it.
So, as I reflect on nearly five decades of living through technological transformation, I remain cautiously optimistic that these changes will create a better world.
Though being German, I should probably not get carried away with even that much optimism.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
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