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本文选自《经济学人》1月16日刊文章。每个时代，人类发展的步调不尽相同，18世纪出现工业革命和机械化工厂，19世纪有铁路和电力，20世纪汽车、飞机、现代医学不断涌现，然而在20世纪70年代以后，人类前进的步伐放缓了，尤其是进入21世纪后。本文认为，人工智能、无人驾驶汽车、基因编辑、线上购物，这些创新技术的不断积累和应用会让2020年代成为咆哮奔腾的十年。我们一起来见证。 
选文精讲 The new era of innovation 创新的新时代Why a dawn of technological optimism is breakingThe 2010s were marked by pessimism about innovation. That is giving way tohope2010年代的特点是对创新的悲观，这正在被希望所代替In the history of capitalism rapid technological advance has been the norm. The 18th century brought the Industrial Revolution and mechanised factories; the 19th century railways and electricity; the 20th century cars, planes, modern medicine and domestic liberation thanks to washing machines. In the 1970s, though, progress—measured by overall productivity growth—slowed. The economic impact was masked for a while by women piling into the workforce, and a burst of efficiency gains followed the adoption of personal computers in the 1990s. After 2000, though, growth flagged again.在资本主义发展的历史中，快速的技术进步已经成为常态。18世纪带来了工业革命和机械化工厂;19世纪的铁路和电力；20世纪的汽车、飞机、现代医学和解放了家务的洗衣机。然而，在20世纪70年代，以整体生产力增长来衡量的（技术）进步放缓了。女性大量涌入劳动力市场掩盖了经济（增长放缓的）影响，而20世纪90年代，个人电脑的使用又带来了效率的大幅提高。然而，2000年之后，经济增长再次放缓。There are three reasons to think this “great stagnation” might be ending. First is the flurry of recent discoveries with transformative potential. The success of the “messenger RNA” technique behind the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and of bespoke antibody treatments, shows how science continues to empower medicine. Humans are increasingly able to bend biology to their will, whether that is to treat disease, edit genes or to grow meat in a lab. Artificial intelligence is at last displaying impressive progress in a range of contexts. A program created by DeepMind, part of Alphabet, has shown a remarkable ability to predict the shapes of proteins; last summer OpenAI unveiled GPT-3, the best natural-language algorithm to date; and since October driverless taxis have ferried the public around Phoenix, Arizona. Spectacular falls in the price of renewable energy are giving governments confidence that their green investments will pay off. Even China now promises carbon neutrality by 2060.- carbon neutrality：碳中和、碳平衡
我们有三个理由认为，这种“大停滞”可能终将结束。首先是最近一系列具有变革潜力的发现。辉瑞生物科技和Moderna这两家公司的疫苗背后的“信使RNA”技术，以及定制抗体疗法的成功，表明科学在持续赋予医学力量。无论是治疗疾病、编辑基因，还是在实验室里z造肉，人类越来越有能力让生物学屈从于自己的意愿。人工智能终于在众多领域表现出巨大进展。Alphabet旗下DeepMind开发的一个程序表现出预测蛋白质形状的非凡能力；去年夏天，OpenAI发布了迄今为止最好的自然语言算法GPT-3；自去年10月以来，无人驾驶汽车已经在亚利桑那州的凤凰城接送乘客。可再生能源价格的大幅下跌让各国政府相信，他们的绿色投资终将获得回报，就连中国现在也承诺，到2060年实现碳中和。
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