We are constantly in search of solutions to pressing twenty-first-century challenges. But our well of ideas seems to be running dry. Annette Kehnel argues the modern age is over and our so-called ‘modern’ problem-solving strategies are holding us back, and actually stifling innovation. It is time to look to the past to reframe our thinking and reclaim old ideas that have worked for humanity over centuries.

Why is it that, despite our frantic search for solutions to the challenges of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves gradually running out of ideas? The trouble is that we’re attempting to fix the problems of the future using ‘modern’ strategies. The term ‘modern’ may evoke progress and innovation, but this ‘modern age’ of ours is, historically speaking, already more than two centuries old. This means that we are endeavouring to solve twenty-first-century issues using frameworks developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – the same frameworks that facilitated the rise of the modern era.

___

We are still stuck in the nineteenth century, approaching problem-solving using a system of coordinates that is nearly two hundred years old.

___