A digital dictatorship - MoneyWeek
Is technology making us richer, or poorer. Why – 20 years into the biggest techno-boom in history, and with more than 100 Silicon Valley start-ups valued at more than a billion dollars – is real GDP growth only roughly half the average of the past 20 years. What kind of technology fails to increase economic growth. Some technology is clearly helpful. A primitive club increases the range of a man’s arm and the power of his swing. But soon his enemies will have picked up clubs too. The resulting “arms race” makes the human race poorer, not richer. That made nuclear weapons essential – and essentially useless. You could use them against your enemies only if you didn’t mind being exterminated yourself. Mechanical clocks first came on the scene in Europe in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. The clock did not extend our arm or increase the force of our swing. We could not use it to impose our will on others, or on nature. We could not make day night or night day. Tick, tock, tick, tock – we were forced to march to its rhythm evermore. Source: moneyweek.com
