Why the West Rules - For Now

Date: 17.08.2011 08:30 - 10:00

Location: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

NESTA hosted a breakfast reception with Ian Morris, best-selling author of 'Why The West Rules for Now'.

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Ian's latest book surveys over ten thousand years of human development and innovation and explores such questions as why has technology conspired to help the West dominate the world for the past two centuries? What determines how fast societies develop technologically and socially? Why do calamities sometimes befall them? And what might the future hold for China and the West?
 
It also explores the forces that link the birth of cities at the dawn of history, why the Industrial Revolution happened in Birmingham rather than Kaifeng or Rome, and what the next century might hold.

Read the Storify version of the event