Progress stories always rest on deeper values, and today’s may be seriously misaligned with human thriving.

Our tech-scape has changed from one that normalises attention hacking to one that scales attachment hacking.

Efficiency without wisdom breeds systems that optimise growth and engagement at the expense of humanity.

In chasing convenience and efficiency, we risk designing a future in which human value becomes optional.

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves do not develop in a vacuum. They are in constant dialogue with much bigger stories – the shared narratives of our culture and our time. These stories shape what we desire, what we fear, what we strive for, what we count as purpose, and what we deem morally good or bad. Most of these stories feel so natural to us that we no longer recognise them as stories, for they tend to masquerade as truths.

One of the most powerful of these narratives is the progress story. Most of us believe – often unquestioningly – that our civilisation is, or should be, moving steadily onwards and upwards. We trust, or at least hope, that science and technology will make things better. We assume that more intelligence, more efficiency, and more optimisation must lead to a more desirable world.

But what exactly do we mean by progress? We tend to imagine it as a steady, linear rise towards something better: more knowledge, more freedom, more wellbeing, more connection, more comfort. Yet how we measure progress depends entirely on what we value. For some, progress means greater equality; for others, it means greater freedom. For some, technological acceleration signals hope and opportunity; for others, it evokes ecological collapse and social fragmentation.

Progress narratives, in other words, are never neutral. They rest on deeply held assumptions about what counts as “better.” And right now, in our hyper-polarised age, these assumptions become ever more irreconcilable.

From Attention to Outrage Economy

Consider our relationship with technology. In our pursuit of technological progress, we have built digital environments that are, in many ways,........

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