Joel Mokyr

• In a professional setting, the promotion-focused people are optimistic, speed-oriented, great brainstormers, plan for best-case scenarios and are also open to new opportunities. The people rely on positive feedback and can be dejected when things are not right. They like to think out-of-the-box and dive into work such as musicians, copywriters, inventors and consultants.
• Prevention-focused people are slow and steady, provide accuracy, and have tried and tested ways of doing things. The people are uncomfortable with short deadlines, praise, and feel worried or anxious when things aren’t going smoothly. Being risk-aversive, they do great in administrative work, bookkeeping, accounting, manufacturing and risk-management work. Any job requiring accuracy and attention to detail would fit these personality types.

It enhances and sustains the value of the individual. When managers' motivational strategies do not align with the dominant focus of one employee (prevention or promotion), then it is less likely the individual will achieve one’s goal.

The turn toward financial statistics means that instead of considering how economic developments could meet our needs, it instead is to determine whether individuals are meeting the demand of the economy.

Until the 1850s, social measurement in 19th-century America was a collection of social indicators known as "moral statistics," which focused on the physical, social, spiritual, and mental conditions of the people. Human beings were at the center, not dollars and cents.

What led to the pricing of progress in the mid-19th century was capitalism.

Capitalism is not just the existence of markets. It is also capitalised investment, where elements of society and life - including natural resources, technological discoveries, works of art, urban spaces, educational institutions, and people - are changed or "capitalised" into income-generating assets that are valued by their ability to make money and yield future returns.

A pessimistic futurologist might suggest that perhaps technology may be coming up on its peak and cannot improve further.

Generations have speculated the next advancements that will be past their times, such as the myth of the flying car. Other very accurate speculations are related to the development of mass media. Recently, cloning has become a reality.

The philosophical futurologist's perspective is that the rate of change for our technology has outpaced anything we could predict in the future.

In the past, the Greeks understood the very basics of chemistry, yet it took 5,000 years after that to develop the basic models of chemistry we now understand. In contrast, with our modern advancements, it took only 70 years from the invention of man-made flight to send humans to the moon and back.