This time, we experts in the liberal arts—the artes liberales, the skills appropriate to enrich the lives and make productive those of us who are free and must find a way to live by our wits, as we...
The last 30 years have been much more uneven than the previous periods you mention. Moore's Law yields annual gains of 35-50 per cent in the basic technology of computing, and that produces much more than 5 per cent gains in the ITC sector. Not seen so much in GDP because prices are falling so fast. Solar and wind also improving much faster than this
Meanwhile, it's hard to see even 0.8 per cent in the rest of the economy, most notably transport, which used to be the big measure (Steam Age, Jet Age etc).
I would love to see someone work up an analysis of what slavery meant in terms of "productivity" in an age when homes were heated by woodburning fireplaces, and trees were cut down, sawed to proper lengths, split into burnable firewood, and carried across fields into homes and up the stairs to fireplaces to heat, for example, bedrooms, not to mention for wood stoves and fireplaces that cooked food to eat. It took more than a dozen slaves to provide the wood to heat Monticello, for example. The end of slavery must have been a gigantic impetus to come up inventions and production of new sources of heat and food production that did not require so much free labor.
I can't quite see this. Extravagant households in free countries could still hire the labor to run their big homes. If there is enough income inequality, there will be plenty of domestic labor: free or slave. (We're headed in that direction even now--the concept of "dog walker" would have been incredible 40 years ago.) Slave labor is not "free" labor, in the "free beer" sense. IIRC, a person of moderate means who couldn't afford a slave in New Orleans made do with hired Irish domestic labor.
"...since 1870, we have seen successive Steampower, Applied-Science, Mass Production, Globalized Value-Chain, and now Attention Info-Bio Tech modes,..."
Why those particular choices of technological innovation?
For example, "Globalized Value-Chain" is a result of both communication and efficient, fast transport. Communication is powered by electricity, and transport by steam; ships and trains. yet the Romans had a globalized supply chain as far as they understood global, without electricity and steam; communication by writing, and transport by wind and muscle power. The production and harnessing of electricity was the fundamental enabler of fast communication technologies - telegraph, telephone, and now the internet. Information technologies. Principally computing, I would have thought, was the driver in the late 20th century, principally with the invention of the transistor and then microelectronics. I see the "Attention Economy" as a blip. a "flash in the pan" that exploited the communication technologies and network effects. Change the economic model, and the attention economy, especially of dopamine drip social media, becomes more like the telephone and the mail service. Biotech may be a future driver, but not so much to date. Apart from staving off a late 20th-century Malthusian world, most biotech, as in direct genetic tinkering, has been of little impact in the world, with most efforts now focused on medical treatment. There are a few fundamentally new technologies. Most are new combinations and refinements of prior ones. Brian Arthur takes that position. If the Industrial Revolution is a "singularity", it is because there was an exponential explosion of technology combinatorics. I think that continues to this day, albeit with the "low-hanging fruit" largely picked. Computation (again, control of electricity) is helping us reach fruit higher up the tree. The Abundance folks argue that it is the complexity of societies that slows down innovation and invention, and thus, productivity and economic growth. Maybe. But we should see what China looks like after a century, based on rapid growth with apparently lower regulation, or even the US if regulations are slashed.
Bottom line, is there a reason for the technologies selected, or are they more like personal choices?
I would be very happy to have a better periodization for a Mediterranean Basin- & Dover Circle Plus-based take than Dawn-of-Domination (H=0.08; -3000) Late-Bronze (H=0.12; -1500) -> High Antiquity (H=0.29; 150) -> Dark Ages (H=0.30; 700) -> Feudal (H=0.40; 1300) -> Commercial-Imperial (H=0.65; 1700) -> Steampower (H=1.0; 1870) -> Applied-Science (H=2.3; 1910) -> Mass-Production (H=5.2; 1950) -> Globalized Value-Chain (H=12; 1990) -> Attention Info-Bio Tech (H=27; 2030). But I cannot think of one. Do you have a proposal?
My belief is that there ought to be a least-bad way of taking the multidimensional aspects of the average level of technology—understood as ideas to manipulate nature and cooperatively organize ourselves—and its sectoral balance—of competencies and incompetencies—in order to construct a set of useful and least-distorting ideal types. But I do not have a good basis for building one. Still, we can do better than: "ancient, asiatic, feudal, bourgeois". Can't we?
> Alex Tolley: "...since 1870, we have seen successive Steampower, Applied-Science, Mass Production, Globalized Value-Chain, and now Attention Info-Bio Tech modes,..."
> Why those particular choices of technological innovation?
> For example, "Globalized Value-Chain" is a result of both communication and efficient, fast transport. Communication is powered by electricity, and transport by steam; ships and trains. yet the Romans had a globalized supply chain as far as they understood global, without electricity and steam; communication by writing, and transport by wind and muscle power. The production and harnessing of electricity was the fundamental enabler of fast communication technologies - telegraph, telephone, and now the internet. Information technologies. Principally computing, I would have thought, was the driver in the late 20th century, principally with the invention of the transistor and then microelectronics. I see the "Attention Economy" as a blip. a "flash in the pan" that exploited the communication technologies and network effects. Change the economic model, and the attention economy, especially of dopamine drip social media, becomes more like the telephone and the mail service. Biotech may be a future driver, but not so much to date. Apart from staving off a late 20th-century Malthusian world, most biotech, as in direct genetic tinkering, has been of little impact in the world, with most efforts now focused on medical treatment. There are a few fundamentally new technologies. Most are new combinations and refinements of prior ones. Brian Arthur takes that position. If the Industrial Revolution is a "singularity", it is because there was an exponential explosion of technology combinatorics. I think that continues to this day, albeit with the "low-hanging fruit" largely picked. Computation (again, control of electricity) is helping us reach fruit higher up the tree. The Abundance folks argue that it is the complexity of societies that slows down innovation and invention, and thus, productivity and economic growth. Maybe. But we should see what China looks like after a century, based on rapid growth with apparently lower regulation, or even the US if regulations are slashed.
> Bottom line, is there a reason for the technologies selected, or are they more like personal choices?...
The last 30 years have been much more uneven than the previous periods you mention. Moore's Law yields annual gains of 35-50 per cent in the basic technology of computing, and that produces much more than 5 per cent gains in the ITC sector. Not seen so much in GDP because prices are falling so fast. Solar and wind also improving much faster than this
Meanwhile, it's hard to see even 0.8 per cent in the rest of the economy, most notably transport, which used to be the big measure (Steam Age, Jet Age etc).
I would love to see someone work up an analysis of what slavery meant in terms of "productivity" in an age when homes were heated by woodburning fireplaces, and trees were cut down, sawed to proper lengths, split into burnable firewood, and carried across fields into homes and up the stairs to fireplaces to heat, for example, bedrooms, not to mention for wood stoves and fireplaces that cooked food to eat. It took more than a dozen slaves to provide the wood to heat Monticello, for example. The end of slavery must have been a gigantic impetus to come up inventions and production of new sources of heat and food production that did not require so much free labor.
I can't quite see this. Extravagant households in free countries could still hire the labor to run their big homes. If there is enough income inequality, there will be plenty of domestic labor: free or slave. (We're headed in that direction even now--the concept of "dog walker" would have been incredible 40 years ago.) Slave labor is not "free" labor, in the "free beer" sense. IIRC, a person of moderate means who couldn't afford a slave in New Orleans made do with hired Irish domestic labor.
I agree. Slaves need to be paid with a minimal amount of food, shelter, and clothing. They are not free labor, just close to it.
"...since 1870, we have seen successive Steampower, Applied-Science, Mass Production, Globalized Value-Chain, and now Attention Info-Bio Tech modes,..."
Why those particular choices of technological innovation?
For example, "Globalized Value-Chain" is a result of both communication and efficient, fast transport. Communication is powered by electricity, and transport by steam; ships and trains. yet the Romans had a globalized supply chain as far as they understood global, without electricity and steam; communication by writing, and transport by wind and muscle power. The production and harnessing of electricity was the fundamental enabler of fast communication technologies - telegraph, telephone, and now the internet. Information technologies. Principally computing, I would have thought, was the driver in the late 20th century, principally with the invention of the transistor and then microelectronics. I see the "Attention Economy" as a blip. a "flash in the pan" that exploited the communication technologies and network effects. Change the economic model, and the attention economy, especially of dopamine drip social media, becomes more like the telephone and the mail service. Biotech may be a future driver, but not so much to date. Apart from staving off a late 20th-century Malthusian world, most biotech, as in direct genetic tinkering, has been of little impact in the world, with most efforts now focused on medical treatment. There are a few fundamentally new technologies. Most are new combinations and refinements of prior ones. Brian Arthur takes that position. If the Industrial Revolution is a "singularity", it is because there was an exponential explosion of technology combinatorics. I think that continues to this day, albeit with the "low-hanging fruit" largely picked. Computation (again, control of electricity) is helping us reach fruit higher up the tree. The Abundance folks argue that it is the complexity of societies that slows down innovation and invention, and thus, productivity and economic growth. Maybe. But we should see what China looks like after a century, based on rapid growth with apparently lower regulation, or even the US if regulations are slashed.
Bottom line, is there a reason for the technologies selected, or are they more like personal choices?
I would be very happy to have a better periodization for a Mediterranean Basin- & Dover Circle Plus-based take than Dawn-of-Domination (H=0.08; -3000) Late-Bronze (H=0.12; -1500) -> High Antiquity (H=0.29; 150) -> Dark Ages (H=0.30; 700) -> Feudal (H=0.40; 1300) -> Commercial-Imperial (H=0.65; 1700) -> Steampower (H=1.0; 1870) -> Applied-Science (H=2.3; 1910) -> Mass-Production (H=5.2; 1950) -> Globalized Value-Chain (H=12; 1990) -> Attention Info-Bio Tech (H=27; 2030). But I cannot think of one. Do you have a proposal?
My belief is that there ought to be a least-bad way of taking the multidimensional aspects of the average level of technology—understood as ideas to manipulate nature and cooperatively organize ourselves—and its sectoral balance—of competencies and incompetencies—in order to construct a set of useful and least-distorting ideal types. But I do not have a good basis for building one. Still, we can do better than: "ancient, asiatic, feudal, bourgeois". Can't we?
> Alex Tolley: "...since 1870, we have seen successive Steampower, Applied-Science, Mass Production, Globalized Value-Chain, and now Attention Info-Bio Tech modes,..."
> Why those particular choices of technological innovation?
> For example, "Globalized Value-Chain" is a result of both communication and efficient, fast transport. Communication is powered by electricity, and transport by steam; ships and trains. yet the Romans had a globalized supply chain as far as they understood global, without electricity and steam; communication by writing, and transport by wind and muscle power. The production and harnessing of electricity was the fundamental enabler of fast communication technologies - telegraph, telephone, and now the internet. Information technologies. Principally computing, I would have thought, was the driver in the late 20th century, principally with the invention of the transistor and then microelectronics. I see the "Attention Economy" as a blip. a "flash in the pan" that exploited the communication technologies and network effects. Change the economic model, and the attention economy, especially of dopamine drip social media, becomes more like the telephone and the mail service. Biotech may be a future driver, but not so much to date. Apart from staving off a late 20th-century Malthusian world, most biotech, as in direct genetic tinkering, has been of little impact in the world, with most efforts now focused on medical treatment. There are a few fundamentally new technologies. Most are new combinations and refinements of prior ones. Brian Arthur takes that position. If the Industrial Revolution is a "singularity", it is because there was an exponential explosion of technology combinatorics. I think that continues to this day, albeit with the "low-hanging fruit" largely picked. Computation (again, control of electricity) is helping us reach fruit higher up the tree. The Abundance folks argue that it is the complexity of societies that slows down innovation and invention, and thus, productivity and economic growth. Maybe. But we should see what China looks like after a century, based on rapid growth with apparently lower regulation, or even the US if regulations are slashed.
> Bottom line, is there a reason for the technologies selected, or are they more like personal choices?...