New book argues we can’t expect new tech to rekindle rapid economic growth
I wish more folks would read Carlota Perez. We&#x27;ve had 5 tech revolutions since, and including, the Industrial Revolution. It&#x27;ll probably be another 10-15 before something as significant as a computer kicks off the next one.<p>Until then, there isn&#x27;t reason to think a tectonic shift will easily happen.<p>Steamships and canals were a powerful revolution, opening up huge parts of the country to international trade, captured well by how the Erie Canal opened the midwest up to the Atlantic.<p>Rail was another powerful revolution, allowing people to be in New York City and Chicago on the same day. Upon being in both cities on the same day, people observed that the cities didn&#x27;t have their clocks set the same way, as that was never possible before.<p>Instead of a new human transportation revolution, the information age gave us a way for ideas to travel rapidly. At the speed of light in some cases. This is certainly profound, but consider how HUGE an idea this is. If we look at the start of the information age as 1971 when Intel opened its doors, then we&#x27;re already 45 years into this one. A lot has been done. There&#x27;s still more left, but it&#x27;s probably about upgrading the rest of the planet instead of finding whatever US industries are left to be upgraded.<p>If I were to speculate, I might say the next revolution that could change society in a comparably profound way would be self-driving cars and other forms of automation. Perhaps around 2025-2030 society will be cool with cars driving themselves and many, many businesses will be started to explore the automation space. To compare, there were over 1800 car companies in the US between 1896 and 1930, but today there are 2 US car companies. Another comparison, there were once 500 US steel companies, but today there&#x27;s basically 2. So perhaps 2030 starts with self-driving cars moving the same speed as human-driven cars and maybe by 2080 they go 300mph instead, which would upgrade humanity&#x27;s transportation capabilities in a similar manner to when rail upgraded steamships or when cars upgraded rail. This would open up huge amounts of land that is otherwise inconvenient and could give rise to new housing technologies, as new houses would surely be built on this newly accessible land.<p>We are 45 years into the information age. It&#x27;s completely reasonable that it&#x27;s not blowing our mind asunder the way it did 10, 20, 30 years ago. I am VERY excited for whatever comes next.