The end of 2017 is barely a week away. So now is the perfect time to reflect on the positive difference humanity has made to the world over the past 12 months. How have we advanced as a species? 

We often underestimate the progress we make because it is incremental: an algorithm here, a genetic tweak there… but all these things combine to improve our future. 

As Kevin Kelly from Wired wrote, "Ever since the Enlightenment and the invention of Science, we've managed to create a tiny bit more than we've destroyed each year… That few percent positive difference is compounded over decades into what we might call civilization… [Progress] is a self-cloaking action seen only in retrospect."