What made it possible for the human species to conquer the world, build a global digital economy, and still want more? What drives technological progress and economic growth in the long run and on a global scale? And how will technological progress, economic growth, and the overall prosperity of human civilization unfold in the future?
This book sheds new light on these big questions by incorporating findings from physics, anthropology, psychology, history, philosophy, and computer science in a brand-new theory of economic growth. Looking back across the millennia, it identifies five major technological revolutions which have transformed humankind’s capacity to process energy and information―the cognitive, agricultural, scientific, industrial, and digital revolutions―and characterizes the new avenues of economic development which they have opened while also exponentially accelerating growth.
Author(s): Jakub Growiec
Series: Frontiers in Economic History
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 180
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1.1 What to Expect from This Book
1.2 Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
1.3 Five Eras, Initiated by Five Revolutions
References
Part I The Drive for Development
2 Enter Local Control
2.1 Evolution: Brought Us to Life and Left All Alone
2.2 The Meaning of Life
2.3 Instrumental Convergence
2.4 Like It or Not, You're in It
2.5 Local Control and the Hierarchy of Needs
2.6 Origins of the Human Civilization
References
3 The Force Unleashed
3.1 Filters Behind and Before Us
3.2 Evolution, Here's a Surprise!
3.3 Technology and Human Control
3.4 Will AI Become a Filter?
References
Part II The Growth Mechanism
4 Hardware and Software
4.1 A New Model of Growth
4.2 What's in Hardware, What's in Software
4.3 What Outputs Do We Produce?
4.4 Hardware and Software in Pre-industrial Eras
4.5 Engines of Modern Growth
4.6 What's Coming Next?
References
5 Mechanization, Automation and the Labor Market
5.1 Human Skills: Augmented or Replaced?
5.2 Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?
5.3 Complex Tasks and Economic Linkages
5.4 Automating Research
5.5 Human Control and the Useless Class
References
6 Scale of Operations
6.1 Increasing Returns to Scale
6.2 Technological Accelerations
6.3 Making of the Global Research Network
6.4 Making of the Global Economy
6.5 Institutions, Scale and Growth
6.6 A Case for Global Digital Policy
References
Part III The Great Leaps
7 Accelerating Growth in the Past
7.1 What Is Development?
7.2 New Dimensions of Development
7.3 Revolutions in Energy, Revolutions in Learning
7.4 Accelerations? By Orders of Magnitude!
7.5 Feedback Loops Across the Eras
7.6 Inequality Between and Within the Eras
References
8 Accelerating Growth in the Future
8.1 Global Data Accounts
8.2 Inputs and Outputs of the Digital Era
8.3 Evidence of a Data Explosion
8.4 Singularity Is Near?
8.5 Secular Stagnation? No, Thank You!
References
Part IV Lessons for the Digital Era
9 Side Effects of Growth
9.1 Local Control Implies Side Effects
9.2 Ecological Consequences of Human Local Control
9.3 Psychological Consequences
9.4 Information Overflow
References
10 Challenges of the Digital Era
10.1 Managing Global Inequality
10.2 Augmenting Representative Democracy
10.3 Addressing the Scale Mismatch Between Economy and Policy
10.4 New Moral Dillemmas
References
11 Bracing for Artificial General Intelligence
11.1 The Last Invention We Will Ever Make
11.2 Existential Threat
11.3 AGI Is an Alien Kind
11.4 Assumptions of a Doomsday Scenario
11.5 Human Civilization Without Humans?
11.6 Transhumanism Is Modesty
11.7 Selected Alternative Scenarios
11.8 How Long Is the Long Run?
References
