Insightful stuff from Alan Patrick:

So in conclusion, although we think of ourselves as the most innovative generation, Evah!, the truth is that we are not as far ahead as we would like to think, and in fact, given the comms advances we have today, it is arguable we should be a lot better at it - in fact, one could argue that some things are going backwards, and to an extent we are actually resting on the laurels of work done in the last 100 years.

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Being a bit more sanguine, we see a number of social trends kicking off now, driven by the IT/Net and other drivers (the crunch, shifts in global power, economics of energy. various philosophical/religious fundamentalisms) promise to be significant in the future, so we suspect that the 2009 - 2029 period will - as the Depression did - drive major innovation.