There are many answers to the question out there. I may as well supply mine. If you are looking for good news this is the wrong diary. In my not so humble opinion we have progressed toward a whole pile of irreversible tipping points none of which have good in store for us.
If you do not know me I'll explain. The tipping point
is the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development. The term is said to have originated in the field of epidemiology when an infectious disease reaches a point beyond any local ability to control it from spreading more widely. A tipping point is often considered to be a turning point.
Some of these tipping points actually are in the realm of physical or biological science. Climate change, extinction, etc. Others are even more complex:
The term is now used in many fields. Journalists apply it to social phenomena, demographic data, and almost any change that is likely to lead to additional consequences. Marketers see it as a threshold that, once reached, will result in additional sales. In some usage, a tipping point is simply an addition or increment that in itself might not seem extraordinary but that unexpectedly is just the amount of additional change that will lead to a big effect. In the butterfly effect of chaos theory , for example, the small flap of the butterfly's wings that in time leads to unexpected and unpredictable results could be considered a tipping point. However, more often, the effects of reaching a tipping point are more immediately evident. A tipping point may simply occur because a critical mass has been reached.
Things that have been said to be about to reach a tipping point include: society's willingness to tolerate gay marriage, RFID technology in retail sales, and the widespread adoption of Web services .
If this interests you read on below.
Economist Brian Arthur wrote about tipping points some years ago using the concept of lock in
Lock-in means that a particular technology or product is dominant, not because its inherent cost is low or performance is good, but because it enjoys the benefits of increasing returns to scale. As a result, decision makers are greatly influenced by the dominance (large market share) of a product rather than by their preferences for its inherent properties. The wider system can therefore not easily escape the dominant entity. Increasing returns to scale can be due to a range of demand- and supply-side factors, including positive information and network externalities, economies of scale in production, learning effects and infrastructure availability. The result of lock-in is that decision-makers feel forced to choose for the dominant product, even if their intrinsic preference for it might be low. A famous early example of technical lock-in is the QWERTY keyboard.The most famous (simple) model to illustrate path-dependence potentially giving rise to lock-in was developed by Arthur (1989).
In deciding about technologies or products decision-makers can become committed to the project before the formal decision to build was taken. The formation of commitment is not necessarily bad, but when commitment turns into lock-in, it has by definition a negative influence on the project performance. Lock-in can occur at the decision-making level or at the project level. There are possibilities to avoid lock-in when decision-makers can be made aware of this phenomenon. However, lock-in can also be used intentionally, in which case, it is much more difficult to prevent and hence manage cost overruns.
Arthur gave other examples that are even more relevant to our situation today. One is the gasoline internal combustion engine. It is still with us even though there have been many better alternatives. Another is the choice between developing railroads and developing highways for trucks .
For the sake of brevity I will list a few of the most crucial tipping points we face today.
Melting of ice and tundra.
Poisoning water.
Destroying soil.
Extinction of species that will cascade as they occur.
Use of smart phones instead of PCs.
Failure of democracy.
Economic failure.
Belief in technology over science.
The real list is long but here we are at the end of 2014 and we are in deep trouble. I don't know how we can ever hope to even overcome the denial that these problems are real. Our western worldview is built on reducing complex systems to issues and problems destroying the connections that make the real world what it is. That was a tipping point that we passed hundreds of years ago and we are hard pressed to even imagine undoing it.
I'd like to believe that things will be better in 2015 but I am convinced that there will only be acceleration of the present bad trends. But, for what it is worth, "Happy New Year".