The first Keynote Speaker for the 2013 SubOptic Conference is Matt Ridley, whose bio you'll find in the program lauds him as a scientist and a journalist who “champions the potential for human progress.” In fact, he's a published author on the subject; his most recent novel being “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves.” “I'm here to cheer you up,” Ridley says. The world is a better place than it has been in the past. “The world economy is booming ahead at three to four percent a year.” There has been a stagnation in the European economy, but the poorer parts of the world are still growing. There's the possibility of “Money isn't the real resume of how much better life gets. The measure is time.” Ridley explains it on how much you have to work to afford to turn a light on. The light 8 second of labor paid for in 1950 only too half a second in 1997. Other measures are also looking up, or down as it were. Child mortality rates, one of the most important measures of health, is actually falling world wide. People are on average happier. Also, people are less likely now than ever of being killed by extreme weather. Apparently, according to something called the Flynn Effect, the average IQ is on the rise as well.

Ridley asks the quesiton “Does anyone know how to make a compute mouse?”  And the answer is no.  Someone may know how to drill the oil, or turn that oil into plastic, or make the chip.  But there isn't anyone anywhere that is capable of making a mouse.  This is because all of human innovation comes from the exchange of ideas.

The exchange of ideas leads to specialization, which in turn leads to more production.  Ridley stresses that it's thanks to work in the communications industries that innovation moves as swiftly as it does today.