The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?

[Monte Davis]

Thoughtful, breaks some new or at least new-ish ground. Thanks!

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 11:16 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.31
>
> Every form of non-human power that substitutes and thus tends to reduce
> the value of human backs and thighs has been more than offset. In addition,
> every form of non-human manipulation that substitutes for and tends to
> reduce the value of human fingers and eyes has been more than offset. They
> have been more than offset by the fact the every single source of non-human
> power--from the horse to the watermill to the steam engine to the diesel to
> the jet engine--and every single source of manipulation--from the potter's
> wheel to the loom to the spinning jenny to the assembly line to the
> mechanized factory--has required a cybernetic control mechanism. Without
> such a mechanism, machines are useless. They cannot keep themselves on
> course and on track. That was possible only in fantasy and myth--the stone
> servitors of of Daedalos, or the self-propelled catering carts of
> Hephaestus. And as cybernetic control mechanisms human brains had an
> overwhelming productivity edge.
>
> The fear is that this time things really are different. The fear is that,
> this time, technological anxiety is not misguided--at least as far as the
> social status and possibly the living standards of the median human are
> concerned. This fear arises from the fact that the uniqueness of human
> brains as cybernetic control mechanisms is no longer as clear. For the
> first time, we find our machines substituting not for human backs, things,
> eyes, and hands, but for human *brains*.
>
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