I think it's funny how MA's original post focused so aggressively on "obstacles to progress" like safety regulation and sustainability concerns. It seems to me that the real obstacles to progress are the things that take up most peoples' time: work, paying bills, and getting educated. From where I'm standing the surest way to create a techno-renaissance would be to give people tons of free time and free education. The historical examples I'm aware of seem to indicate that when educated people have more time to recreate, they also have more time to innovate and invent. Weird how it's just the FDA or EPA that's the problem, and not all the pointless make-work that most people perform in order to pay rent and generate passive income for their employing corp's owners.