As Donald Schon pointed out in the 1970s, for most of human history technological change has been sufficiently slow that we have had plenty of time to adjust to it. Contrast the time it took the steam engine to spread from invention to widespread social and economic effect with the time it has taken for the internet to have an equivalent impact. There was plenty of time to adjust to the effects of new technologies in the past, e.g. it took most of the nineteenth century for the railways to kill off the canals. Now, technological change is so fast and so pervasive that entire industries are transformed in less than a decade: look at how far the newspaper industry has been transformed by the internet in just ten years, with book publishing likely to go the same way soon. Indeed, W. Brian Arthur has gone so far as to argue that the whole basis of the economy as it exists today is being overhauled through technological change, a point on which he is probably right.
The upshot of my argument is that technological progress now happens so quickly that we have limited time to manage its social and economic effects through institutional change. This is particularly difficult for the losers in the technology game, who may have to transform their lives to face a new economic reality. I’m thinking, for instance, of those former industrial communities in places like Wales and the North-East, where technology has enabled the emergence of a global market that has simply overtaken them. Our institutions have yet to be recast in such a way that enables people in these places to catch up and to add value to the new economy, instead trapping them in conditions of chronic worklessness. Individuals, companies and the whole economy need to be more resilient and adaptable.
Yet even if we could develop a new institutional framework to respond to this kind of change, it would probably be out of date as soon as it were operationalized. This is again a function of technological change. Instability becomes the norm.
The upshot of my argument is that technological progress now happens so quickly that we have limited time to manage its social and economic effects through institutional change. This is particularly difficult for the losers in the technology game, who may have to transform their lives to face a new economic reality. I’m thinking, for instance, of those former industrial communities in places like Wales and the North-East, where technology has enabled the emergence of a global market that has simply overtaken them. Our institutions have yet to be recast in such a way that enables people in these places to catch up and to add value to the new economy, instead trapping them in conditions of chronic worklessness. Individuals, companies and the whole economy need to be more resilient and adaptable.
Yet even if we could develop a new institutional framework to respond to this kind of change, it would probably be out of date as soon as it were operationalized. This is again a function of technological change. Instability becomes the norm.
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