Breakfast with Bongani Bingwa

We’re in a new Renaissance that started in the early 1990s.

— Prof Ian Goldin, Oxford

Today is the slowest day we’ll know all our lives.

— Prof Ian Goldin, Oxford

This could be humanity’s best century ever. But it can also be the worst.

— Prof Ian Goldin, Oxford

Humans are richer and healthier than ever before, yet global tensions seem to be rising.

We should look to the first Renaissance to ensure we flourish amidst the 2nd one we’re living through now.

So says Prof Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford.

Goldin is the author of “Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance”.

The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield interviewed Goldin for his weekly business book review.

Listen to the interview in the audio below.

Description of “Age of Discovery” on Amazon:

The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery.

To avoid being torn apart by its stresses; we need to recognise the fact ― and gain courage and wisdom from the past.

“Age of Discovery” shows how.

Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided.

Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing.

Scientific discovery is racing forward.

But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others ― and make us all more vulnerable to one another.

Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace.

That’s why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we’re headed.

To make sense of present shocks; we need to step back and recognise: we’ve been here before.

The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others; likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratised communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement.

But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery.

Now is the second Renaissance.

We can still flourish ― if we learn from the first.

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