The Cellar - View Single Post

it · 08-13-2015, 09:22 PM

So, to say usually I am not a fan of Keynesian economics is a huge understatement...

But I've been noticing some of the shifts in investments and innovation over the years, and thinking about the bloom and burst economical impact on the world, and I am wondering if technological progress the way we know it isn't in some way one of them.

while for a long period innovation was focused on ubiquitous technologies and extending their reach utility and infrastructure, over the last few years you see increasingly more innovation in the realms of toys for the wealthy... Space tourism, smart houses, household robotics, self-driving cars.

I can't help but wonder, has this happened before? Weren't fat oversized computers becoming corporate and institutional mainstreams at a time of general economic depression during the 70s? Didn't the explosion of automobiles happen straight after the big american depressions at the turn of last century?

Maybe this is how it's done - a period in which we make the big investments to overcome the central challenges to what we could achieve, and a period in which we pick the low hanging fruits and squeeze the juice out of it - exploring what we can do with it and making it ubiquitous to society at large.

If this is true, maybe the modern day combination of welfare and government intervention deserves some credit - maybe what we need is not to stop doing this but to find ways to prevent it from causing unnecessary suffering.

08-13-2015, 09:22 PM	#257
it Banned Join Date: Dec 2011 Posts: 772	So, to say usually I am not a fan of Keynesian economics is a huge understatement... But I've been noticing some of the shifts in investments and innovation over the years, and thinking about the bloom and burst economical impact on the world, and I am wondering if technological progress the way we know it isn't in some way one of them. while for a long period innovation was focused on ubiquitous technologies and extending their reach utility and infrastructure, over the last few years you see increasingly more innovation in the realms of toys for the wealthy... Space tourism, smart houses, household robotics, self-driving cars. I can't help but wonder, has this happened before? Weren't fat oversized computers becoming corporate and institutional mainstreams at a time of general economic depression during the 70s? Didn't the explosion of automobiles happen straight after the big american depressions at the turn of last century? Maybe this is how it's done - a period in which we make the big investments to overcome the central challenges to what we could achieve, and a period in which we pick the low hanging fruits and squeeze the juice out of it - exploring what we can do with it and making it ubiquitous to society at large. If this is true, maybe the modern day combination of welfare and government intervention deserves some credit - maybe what we need is not to stop doing this but to find ways to prevent it from causing unnecessary suffering.