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The Ingenuity Gap

© Paula E. Kirman

Juxtapose technology developing around us intended to supposedly make our lives simpler, against the rise in global problems such as disease, overpopulation, and environmental issues. Could it be that the world is actually getting too complex? This is the question philosopher and academic Thomas Homer-Dixon asks in his book The Ingenuity Gap (Alfred A Knopf Canada; 496 pp.; $37.95).

Homer-Dixon, who is the Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto, has been touted by the late, great Saturday Night Magazine as an "academic celebrity." He has spoken at international conferences, his ideas been debated and discussed by journalists who have made him the subject of feature articles, and has consulted with former Vice President Al Gore at the White House.

His first book, The Ingenuity Gap (a term which he coined) discusses the challenges facing a contemporary world, and how these issues are developing at such a rapid pace that even the "experts" are having a difficult time keeping up with daily change and flux, and may, in fact, be running out of ideas on how to manage life. As more solutions are needed, fewer may actually be found, leading to potential upheavals in politics, the economy, and even our own daily lives.

Even though the book has been out for a while now, Homer-Dixon received the huge accolade of a Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction, this past November. I spoke with him shortly after the book was published, and it was a fascinating experience.

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Paula: What exactly is an "ingenuity gap"?

Thomas Homer-Dixon: An ingenuity gap is a gap between our rising requirement for solutions to the problems we are facing, and our sometimes inadequate ability to supply those solutions. Ingenuity gaps can appear at various times and places. In general, poor societies are more susceptible, but one of the important messages of the book is that rich societies are susceptible too, especially with many of the modern technologies and communications systems that we are creating which are extremely complex, and also ecological problems we face.

Paula: Is it more that we are running out of ideas on how to deal with these things, or that the problems in our society are getting so complex that we can't possibly think of what the solutions could be?

T H-D: It is largely that the rising complexity in some cases is outracing our ability to supply solutions, so the problem originates on the requirement side: that we have a very rapidly rising requirement for ingenuity, for practical ideas to solve the problems we face. We are creating a world that in many ways is simply too complex for us to manage, and management is increasingly important because we are trying to squeeze an extraordinary amount of wealth and well-being out of our economic systems, our social systems and our ecology.