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Apr 21, 2022

🚨 NEW 🥳 WORKS 🍾 IN 🥳 PROGRESS 🚨 Issue 07 is now live! With essays on prizes for new inventions, duelling as an anti-violence institution, geothermal energy, why ideas *aren't* getting harder to find, and more! PLUS: How polyester stopped sucking! worksinprogress.co/#issue-7

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Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Our lead essay tells the story of the post-war plan to bulldoze over Brixton, Camden and many other great London neighbourhoods, to build a gargantuan road network. Thankfully, it was stopped – but in the process gave birth to the modern NIMBY movement.

worksinprogress.co

London’s lost ringways - Works in Progress

A monstrous plan to build major motorways through some of London’s greatest neighborhoods fell apart. But the price was the birth of the NIMBY movement, and a permanent ceiling on Britain’s infrast...

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Natural gas is bad for the environment. Like, really bad: per unit of heat, leakages might make gas worse for climate change than COAL. But air source heat pumps aren't ideal either.

@AudreySchulman

describes how geothermal heat networks might help.

worksinprogress.co

Local warming - Works in Progress

Gas heating is bad for the environment. But home-built heat pumps aren’t perfect either. The best option might be geothermal energy grids that take the best from both ways of heating people’s homes.

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Everything you thought you knew about the Longitude Prizes is wrong, says

@antonhowes

. And modern day innovation prizes probably won't give us great leaps forward either. But if we do them well, they CAN work – but we need to re-invent them to get that.

worksinprogress.co

Why innovation prizes fail - Works in Progress

Innovation prizes seem to solve many problems in science and technology. But their famous role in helping sailors calculate longitude is misunderstood, and they may work best when used to promote...

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Why was violent duelling so common around the world until so recently? And why do we find it across the globe in hunter-gatherer societies?

@Evolving_Moloch

explains how duels emerged to *manage* violence, and often involve complex rituals to reduce it.

worksinprogress.co

Why we duel - Works in Progress

Duels can be brutal and even lethal. But duels emerged in societies around the world for an important reason: to control and manage violence, not just to celebrate it.

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Many people fear we've picked the low-hanging fruit in science and technology, and so ideas are getting harder to find. Wrong, says

@bswud

. The real problem is that we've traded in our stepladders for footstools: we're getting worse at FINDING ideas.

worksinprogress.co

Scientific slowdown is not inevitable - Works in Progress

Some think of advances in science and technology through the metaphor of low-hanging fruit: we “picked” the easy ones, and the rest will be very difficult. But it may not be the ideas that are...

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Apr 21, 2022

Growing up, I was taught to hate polyester. But now I can't get enough of it, and it's become one of the most popular fabrics on earth. What happened? The great

@vpostrel

tells the remarkable technological and commercial story of how polyester got good.

worksinprogress.co

How polyester bounced back - Works in Progress

Somehow, polyester went from being the world’s most hated fabrics to one of its favorites. It reinvented itself thanks to advances in materials science, and did it so successfully that many people...

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

Our Substack later will give the low-down on all of these, plus the best stuff we've seen around the web over the past couple of months. Subscribe now so you get that, and everything else that we've got coming. There's a LOT more to come from us in 2022!

worksinprogress.substack.com

The Works in Progress Newsletter

Get the latest updates on our magazine, featuring new and underrated ideas to improve the world. Visit our website: worksinprogress.co. Click to read The Works in Progress Newsletter, a Substack...

10:55 AM · Apr 21, 2022

Replying to

I loooove the illustrations we got done for the issue too. It's one of the most fun parts of each issue, getting new styles and artists for each one. I love both of these!