| Economists Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolfsson see very different things when they look at the stagnation of the U.S. economy in recent years. It’s almost as if they’re looking at an optical illusion image – one seeing a candlestick while the other sees two faces just inches apart. In this series of TED talks, they both outlined their thoughts. |
on how we are entering the second half of the chessboard with more and more technologies. In Race Against the Machine Brynjolfsson and McAfee brought together a range of statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. The book makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because there's been technology has stagnated, but instead because humans workers aren't keeping up.
According to Brynjolfsson, as machines take on more jobs, many find themselves out of work or with raises indefinitely postponed. Is this the end of growth?
No, says Brynjolfsson -- it's simply the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy. A riveting case for why big innovations are ahead of us ... if we think of computers as our teammates.
In the TEDx videos below, be sure to watch the opposing viewpoint from Robert Gordon in his own talk and in a debate with Brynjolfsson.
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Gordon sees the candlestick — he believes that the growth could be tapering off for good and that our best innovations may be behind us. As he points out, between 1900 and 1960, we went from traveling by a horse and buggy to taking Boeing 707s. But in the sixty years since, we haven’t learned to go any faster at a mass commercial level. What’s wrong? In his talk, he outlines four headwinds which are keeping us from continued growth at the pace of the past two centuries: demographics, education, debt and inequality.
For Brynjolfsson, the key to growth is to "race with the machines." Meanwhile, Brynjolfsson sees the faces. He says that the stagnation may simply be growing pains as we move from an economy based on production to one based on ideas. He also looks to the past for an example, taking us back 120 years to the Second Industrial Revolution. While all the tools were in place for mass production, it took three decades for productivity to skyrocket. The first generation of managers — who had old ideas about systems and workflows – had to age out of the system for growth to start. This is where Brynjolfsson thinks we are now. He sees another wave of innovation in our future — if humans can learn to work alongside computers and robots in more symbiotic ways.
SOURCE TEDx Talks
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