Dramatic changes in the rate of world economic growth have occurred in the past because of technological advancement. Based on population growth, the global economy doubled every 250,000 years from the Palaeolithic era until the Neolithic Revolution. This new agricultural economy began to double every 900 years, a significant increase. In the current era, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the world’s economic output has doubled as an average, every fifteen years, sixty times faster than during the agricultural era. The productivity, or output per hour of work, has quadrupled since 1947 in the United States while employment has not risen at nearly the same rate. As the rise of innovations causes a similar revolution one could expect economic output to double much faster with the requirement for remarkably little human labor or intervention, and this may challenge our assumptions for future global economic growth and stability. It may not be business as usual because the resources of the planet to sustain humanity are finite.
They key issue is that technology-driven developments are able to further increase existing inequalities and create new ones at a time when we are already back at unsustainable levels. The simple and convincing argument about the structural nature of inequality in capitalist systems has shaken our perspective on ‘capital’ and inequality to the core. Most people are now open to the suggestion that inequality is not the fair outcome of different levels of performance but, moreover, the result of a distributive system that is fundamentally flawed and designed to favor a few people at the top.
Labor markets in particular look exposed to the forces of progress. Many ‘middle class’ jobs will be vulnerable as a result of technological change, either through the possibility that white-collar jobs themselves can be automated, or that employers are at the losing end of global competition as markets become more polarized. When large parts of the middle classes are threatened with unemployment through no fault of their own, the level of pressure on the social and political systems will rise. At times in which the political process is more and more focused on the short term, it is dangerous that long-term policy thinking is widely neglected.
If you look at the problem of inequality through the combined lenses of the deep-seated structural problems in the primary economic and financial distribution system and the technological chance -increasing impact of disruptive technology-, we discover a major societal problem.
A wide variety of real-life evidence showing how new technologies are penetrating our economic and social lives. It is not hard to see that we are at the brink of a period of accelerated innovation responsible for fundamentally changing the social and economic fabric of our society. New developments likely to accelerate social polarization are just about to kick in with full force as the economic and social impact of digital technologies accelerates. Even though the first impacts of the digital revolution have already become visible over recent years, we have by far not seen the future yet
In this new age, the maturing of digital technologies will allow for the automation of many cognitive tasks leading to similar social and economic impacts as those during the industrial revolution. Information and communication technologies — of all kinds — double their power measured in terms of price performance, capacity and bandwidth almost every year. As a result, we are witnessing accelerating trends of exponential growth in the Nano- Info- Bio-Cogno (NIBC) revolution unfolding all around us. Just as soon as we have grasped the relevance of some new NIBC innovation, we are challenged by yet more extraordinary discoveries and inventions that completely overwhelm our expectations and understanding.
This paradigm shift presents asymmetric opportunities for unparalleled growth as well as rising asymmetric risks for humankind’s globalized structure, its sustainability and longevity. There are some more challenging public policy questions that are not currently addressed. There is the danger of the creation of swathes of transitional unemployment and a significant role for public policy to shape the process so the somber scenario of social breakdown does not become a reality. When jobs are replaced or job descriptions change beyond recognition, let alone the task of creating completely new work, a proactive educational policy is essential. This is common sense and should lead to an immediate rethinking of what, today, passes as suitable educational policy.
In the best of all possible worlds, it will mean an end to work that is unfulfilling and we’ve seen already an explosion in the diversity of creative output in the world. There is a lot to suggest we should be optimistic about such a transformative shift. The developments and innovations produced by passion, and aided by technology, have stretched the imagination. From the realization of many concepts formerly considered science fiction, to the creation of new forms of art, we already stand in awe of what passion and innovation can achieve. Just imagine a world where that output is expanded exponentially.