The Technology Trap
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 society’s 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. Today’s 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, there’s no assurance that positive attitudes to technology will persist.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2020–2025years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself - Daniel J. Boorstin
How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom - Matt Ridley
The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation - Carl Benedikt Frey
- I found that the book "The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation" by Carl Benedikt Frey offers a well constructed historical scenario where the current situation we are fits in.
Going into a more polar and personal view, I think that there are not enough jobs at the moment for the western people. So we create them, and handout "fake" rewards for them. Why? Because work has a social utility to provide purpose for individuals. Since we haven't yet found a stable social solution for people not working and having purpose, we are living in a limbo which we might never exit. It also appears from afar, that the is a void to fill in most institutions and that smart people are not being incentivized to fill them
- The book "The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation" offers a well researched scenario with historical footing
- > It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments...
The Luddite labor unrest arose from a very real decrease in living standards for many, many people which lasted for decades. Rural/semi-rural artisans lost out to factories staffed by smaller numbers of children who could be paid far less than adults. Many had no choice but to move to cities to fight for whatever jobs they could, and the squalid conditions and extreme labor surplus inspired communist thought.
So yes, this in many ways is the same argument, but I think it would be unwise to dismiss the 'labor arguments,' because while the industrial revolution in Britain did eventually raise everyone's living standards, it took about a century and the social unrest during that time (in Britain and other industrializing nations) provoked far-reaching, unintended consequences.
If you are interested in this subject, The Technology Trap by Frey has an interesting comparison between the first and second industrial revolutions and the ongoing labor shifts in the modern era.
- The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed from society through labor exclusion is…a radical process.
I read in a book titled The Technology Trap about how in the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk.
That doesn’t seem to be a concern today.
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