Tag Archives: technology

Lovelace & Babbage

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I’ve loved reading [amazon_link id=”0141981512″ target=”_blank” ]The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage[/amazon_link] by Sydney Padua.

[amazon_image id=”0141981512″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer[/amazon_image]

It’s funny, and full of nuggets of information. I never knew Babbage had written a book, [amazon_link id=”B004TS7610″ target=”_blank” ]On The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures[/amazon_link]. That’s on order now! (Browsing around, he seems to have written quite a bit on economics eg there is also [amazon_link id=”B00X61XRDM” target=”_blank” ]Thoughts on the principles of taxation, with reference to a property tax, and its exceptions[/amazon_link]; and [amazon_link id=”0217545602″ target=”_blank” ]Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives[/amazon_link].) I didn’t know Herschel had originally named Uranus ‘George’. I didn’t know Boole had tried to prove money doesn’t by happiness in a literal utilitarian calculus. I *did* know about W.S.Jevons’ Logic Piano because once I saw it in the Science Museum:

Jevons' Logic Piano

Jevons’ Logic Piano

Doron Swade’s [amazon_link id=”0349112398″ target=”_blank” ]The Cogwheel Brain[/amazon_link], which I read some years ago, is a less amusing intro to Babbage. [amazon_link id=”0571172431″ target=”_blank” ]Cultural Babbage[/amazon_link] edited by Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow is wonderful. Sydney Padua writes that her favourite book on Babbage is [amazon_link id=”0136047297″ target=”_blank” ]Mr Babbage’s Secret: Tale of Cypher and APL[/amazon_link] by  Ole Franksen.

[amazon_image id=”0349112398″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Cogwheel Brain[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”0571172431″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention[/amazon_image]

Recent robot round-up

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I’m looking forward to reading Martin Ford’s [amazon_link id=”0465059996″ target=”_blank” ]The Rise of the Robots[/amazon_link] – it gets a good review in the FT today. Edward Luce calls it “well researched and disturbingly persuasive.”

[amazon_image id=”0465059996″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future[/amazon_image]

I’m still a robo-sceptic in the sense of thinking there is nothing inevitable about the employment and income distribution outcomes of skill-biased automation. It’s technological determinism to think otherwise, as the underlying technological waves are channelled through economic and political institutions. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be concerned. After all, there was a wave of automation in manufacturing in the late 1970s/early 1980s and the social consequences of that were devastating – the institutions handled the transition very badly.

There is an interesting recent (free) e-book collection of essays (including one of mine) from the IPPR, Technology, Globalization and the Future of Work. Also this recent paper, Robots at Work, by Georg Graetz and Guy Michaels. They find in a panel of data across industry in 17 countries, robotization increased total factor productivity and wages, although with some adverse effects on hours worked by low-skilled workers.

A challenge to techno-euphoria

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After plucking it off the shelf for yesterday’s post on the ebb and flow of economic power in the long sweep of history (or – what I did on my holidays), Angus Maddison’s [amazon_link id=”9264022619″ target=”_blank” ]The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective [/amazon_link] (read it online here) absorbed me. He identifies three forces driving long term growth: conquest and settlement; trade (specialisation and the division of labour); and technological innovation. On the last of these, he writes:

“It is clear that technological progress has slowed down. It was a good deal faster from 1913 to 1973 than it has been since. The slowdown in the last quarter century [ie. to 1999] is one of the reasons for the deceleration of world economic growth. ‘New economy’ pundits find the notion of decelerating technological progress unacceptable and cite anecdotal or microeconomic evidence to argue otherwise. However, the impact of their technological revolution has not been apparent in the macroeconomic statistics until very recently, and I do not share their euphoric expectations.”

I would really challenge the implication here that macroeconomic statistics are facts and microeconomic evidence just anecdote. SInce Maddison wrote this, we have had the early 2000s boom and then the financial crisis and its aftermath. It will be a while before the macro data can make sense of it all.

It’s quite clear though that there are some innovations that have not improved productivity or welfare – see Thomas Philippon’s marvellous paper Has the US Finance Industry Become Less Efficient? (Answ: Yes) The Maddison challenge is a good one to those of us who do think there is important technological innovation occurring – just as when Solow made his famous comment about computers, there is a question about why it doesn’t show in macro data. One answer might be that GDP data don’t capture the welfare gain due to new technologies (see my [amazon_link id=”B00M0H5PGU” target=”_blank” ]GDP[/amazon_link] for more). Another might be that the technologies are doing more for growth outside the OECD countries – think mobiles in Africa, South Asia or Latin America. But if Maddison is right, the interesting question then is why this wave of technology uniquely has not translated into faster growth and social welfare?

What would Galbraith think about Google?

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I’ve been grazing along the shelf of my old Penguin economics texts and stumbled on this quote from J.K.Galbraith’s (1952) [amazon_link id=”1560006749″ target=”_blank” ]American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power[/amazon_link] (in M.A.Utton’s [amazon_link id=”0140801723″ target=”_blank” ]Industrial Concentration[/amazon_link]): “The modern industry of a few large firms is an excellent instrument for  inducing technical change. It is admirably equipped for financing technical development and for putting it into use. The competition of the competitive world, by contras, almost completely precludes technical development.”

[amazon_image id=”B0010JYWD6″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]American Capitalism[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”0140801723″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Industrial Concentration (Modern Economic Texts)[/amazon_image]

Galbraith is talking complete nonsense, of course. As this little textbook points out in the next paragraph: “The supposed antithesis between price competition and innovation is false: they are different forms of the same competitive process. Innovation is competition.” Many is the oligopolistic industry that has failed to innovate. As Will Baumol pointed out in his book [amazon_link id=”069111630X” target=”_blank” ]The Free Market Innovation Machine[/amazon_link], big firms tend to do incremental innovation, while radical innovation tends to come from small entrants.

This is the heart of the competition debate about Google etc. Will some new entrant come along an torpedo it in the search market, or has it through its scale effectively foreclosed new entry? Critics of the EU competition authorities’ assault on Google (including this week Barack Obama – but listen here to Martha Lane-Fox demolish him) point to its continuing record of innovation; but from another perspective, that looks like it leveraging its scale advantages into new markets, something dominant firms always try to do. I’m with Tim Wu, whose fabulous book [amazon_link id=”1848879865″ target=”_blank” ]The Master Switch[/amazon_link] argues that the opportunity for new entrants to cause upheaval in technology and communication markets has always been created by a regulatory intervention.

[amazon_image id=”1848879865″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires[/amazon_image]   [amazon_image id=”069111630X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism[/amazon_image]

To be fair to Galbraith, this being one of his books I’ve not read, this summary suggests he was not relaxed about oligopoly power; however, he suggests the ‘countervailing power’ of organised labour is the way to control it. I’m all for workers having adequate bargaining power in the labour market but fail to see how that fixes a lack of competition in product markets. Google’s workers are very well treated. I wonder what Galbraith would make of these modern business titans?

Big data meets humanitarian response

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Some time ago I co-authored a report (for the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation) with Patrick Meier on the use of mobiles in emergencies and disasters. Patrick has just released a whole book on this subject, going much wider than the original report, [amazon_link id=”1482248395″ target=”_blank” ]Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response[/amazon_link].

The technology has already moved on considerably – the Big Data phenomenon, for one thing. Importantly, there’s a chapter covering verification techniques; while we found in the original work that crowd-sourced data (as it wasn’t yet called when we first wrote about this) was often more accurate than ‘official’ information, the more verification the better. There’s also a chapter on digital activism – the book’s website sets out all the chapters with brief summaries.

Digital Humanitarians looks like it has lots of examples and it certainly covers some very important and timely questions. Patrick blogs at iRevolution and his latest post talks about the book.

[amazon_image id=”1482248395″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data Is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response[/amazon_image]