A few months ago my father sent me a link to an essay, “Is Growth Over?” by Robert Gordon.  Gordon’s thesis is that the rapid economic growth over the past 250 years is quite possibly a unique episode in human history and that long-term economic growth is likely to come to a halt.  His thesis reminds me of a book I read about twenty years ago, “Steady-State Economics,” by Herman Daly.  Daly’s suggestion was that we need to shift our focus from growth to sustainability – but I digress.

Gordon on the industrial revolutions which have taken place of the past 250 or so years:

The analysis in my paper links periods of slow and rapid growth to the timing of the three industrial revolutions:

• IR #1 (steam, railroads) from 1750 to 1830;
• IR #2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, running water, indoor toilets, communications, entertainment, chemicals, petroleum) from 1870 to 1900; and
• IR #3 (computers, the web, mobile phones) from 1960 to present.

It provides evidence that IR #2 was more important than the others and was largely responsible for 80 years of relatively rapid productivity growth between 1890 and 1972.

Once the spin-off inventions from IR #2 (airplanes, air conditioning, interstate highways) had run their course, productivity growth during 1972-96 was much slower than before. In contrast, IR #3 created only a short-lived growth revival between 1996 and 2004. Many of the original and spin-off inventions of IR #2 could happen only once – urbanisation, transportation speed, the freedom of women from the drudgery of carrying tons of water per year, and the role of central heating and air conditioning in achieving a year-round constant temperature.

Read his paper and come to your own conclusions but I find his arguments compelling.

Paul Krugman had a post today where he took some issue with Gordon’s conclusions.   It’s worth a read.  That said, as much as I respect PK and value his insights, I don’t share his techno-optimism.  PK:

What Gordon then does is suggest that IR #3 has already mostly run its course, that all our mobile devices and all that are new and fun but not that fundamental. It’s good to have someone questioning the tech euphoria; but I’ve been looking into technology issues a lot lately, and I’m pretty sure he’s wrong, that the IT revolution has only begun to have its impact.

Consider for a moment a sort of fantasy technology scenario, in which we could produce intelligent robots able to do everything a person can do. Clearly, such a technology would remove all limits on per capita GDP, as long as you don’t count robots among the capitas. All you need to do is keep raising the ratio of robots to humans, and you get whatever GDP you want…

… in a sense we are moving toward something like my intelligent-robots world; many, many tasks are becoming machine-friendly.

I take issue with two of his assertions.  First, hasn’t this “intelligent robots will remove all limits on per capita GDP/enable a leisure-based society” idea been around for 70-80 years now?  How has that panned out?  Sure, past performance is no guarantee of future results but why would we expect things to proceed differently now?  That’s not a rhetorical question.  Why would we expect things to be different now?

Second thing – not unrelated to the first – why is it inherently good for “many, many tasks to become machine-friendly”?  Again, not a rhetorical question.  What’s the argument in favor?  I see a benefit to automating some tasks – repetitive tasks which require little to no thought or craftsmanship – but I also see a downside to automating others – people losing understanding of underlying cause and effect.  (That potential downside hits close to home.  The reason I became a scientist was to develop for myself a better –  a more quantitative – understanding of cause and effect in the natural world and to spread that understanding around.  I still believe that’s a worthwhile goal.)  Are there things that it’s inherently good – and perhaps essential – for people to know how to do even if a machine could do them more efficiently?  Basic math, for example?  Even not so basic math like linear algebra.  Isn’t it better to have an understanding of how to accomplish what you need to accomplish in order to give the machine sensible instructions?  Aren’t you better off having an understanding of the process yourself in order to understand if the machine is giving you a sensible result or a bunch of nonsense?  Or to debug your code when you encounter a nonsense result?

My view of most technology which we’re exposed to on a day-to-day basis?  I’m reminded of the claim

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

Offhand, I’d say that >95% of new technology serves that purpose, i.e., it’s of little to no  social benefit.  Most technology produced today qualifies as either an expensive toy or is designed to extract money and/or information from people without them being fully aware of it and/or without providing them any meaningful benefit, see, e.g., software and associated hardware which facilitates mining of Big Data.  Overall, I’d say our society’s focus on technology is a phenomenal waste of human capital – much too much time and attention paid to something which is only sometimes good thing.

Oh, and my opinion of iPads, etc.?

Use your iPhidget for directions?  Please.  I got an in-hand navigation system right here, pal.  It’s called a map.

(Tip of the hat to my father-in-law for making me aware of the video above.)