How long does it take to read Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead??
Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain De Botton, Malcolm Gladwell
Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead? by Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain De Botton, Malcolm Gladwell takes about 2 hours 12 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 12 minutes
An evening's read
First published 2016. 120 pages, about 33,000 words.
5 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 3 hours 40 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 12 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 23 minutes |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Is humanity approaching a Golden Age, driven by technology and ever-closer global networks? Or is the notion of progress an illusion born in the West? From the Enlightenment onwards, the West has had an enduring belief that through the evolution of institutions, innovations, and ideas, the human condition is improving. This process is supposedly accelerating as new technologies, individual freedoms, and the spread of global norms empower individuals and societies around the world. But is progress inevitable? Its critics argue that human civilization has become different, not better, over the last two and a half centuries. What is seen as a breakthrough or innovation in one period becomes a setback or limitation in another. In short, progress is an ideology not a fact; a way of thinking about the world as opposed to a description of reality. So is the cup half full or half empty? As part of the Munk Debates series, held in Toronto biannually, pioneering cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and bestselling author Matt Ridley squared off against noted philosopher Alain de Botton and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, giving us an entertaining and thought-provoking face-off between four of the world's most renowned thinkers --Publisher's description.
Subjects: Progress, Civilization, Forecasting, Social prediction, Progrès, Civilisation
