β Scribed by Carl Benedikt Frey
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
How the history of technological revolutions can help us better understand economic and political polarization in the age of automation From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among societyβs members. As Carl Benedikt Frey shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the labor share of income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends, Frey documents, broadly mirror those in our current age of automation, which began with the Computer Revolution.Just as the Industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. But Frey argues that this depends on how the short term is managed. In the nineteenth century, workers violently expressed their concerns over machines taking their jobs. The Luddite uprisings joined a long wave of machinery riots that swept across Europe and China. Todayβs despairing middle class has not resorted to physical force, but their frustration has led to rising populism and the increasing fragmentation of society. As middle-class jobs continue to come under pressure, thereβs no assurance that positive attitudes to technology will persist.The Industrial Revolution was a defining moment in history, but few grasped its enormous consequences at the time. The Technology Trap demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present.
BUSINESS et ECONOMICS / Labor
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
We examine the e!ects of human capital on consumption, stock market, and other #uctuations in a general equilibrium continuous-time model. A representative con-sumer}worker}investor derives utility from consumption and leisure. A representative "rm demands labor as the sole input to a stochastic pro