Where is technology leading us

Authors Authors and affiliations Joseph N. Chapter First Online: 11 December This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Joseph N. Pelton 1 1. In the West, we seem to be drifting into a kind of lazy addiction to smartphones and gadgets. You mention six threats to democracy in the book. Which of these are you most worried about? I would say that, in the medium term, what worries me the most is the possible collapse of the middle classes due to automation, as well as the dramatically increased levels of inequality — because inequality tends to result in all sorts of other problems.

I think there is enough historical evidence to suggest that the causes of various forms of inequality over the last 30 to 40 years have been at least significantly driven and caused by technological change. They made a pretty compelling argument that technological change has led to increased inequality over the last 30 years or so. Look at the growth of the precariat; the number of jobs that are now insecure, platform-based, or gig-based; the fact that a tiny proportion of people are now richer than billions of people, and a significant number of those are tech entrepreneurs.

People are talking a lot about the prospects of mass technological unemployment. Millions of people might be out of work. What will that do to our economy? I mean you look at the levels of inequality that are reached in Latin America. Because rich people end up starting to buy democracy. Everyone loves technology, and startup entrepreneurs are feted and venerated. One thing I talk about in the book is that technology has become immune from criticism. His massively transformative purpose is to create abundant access to healthcare and to practice and enable deep medicine.

In , he invented, patented, and licensed an augmented reality surgical navigational tool. After returning to Berlin , she headed a junior research group and was appointed an assistant professor in She relocated her lab to the University of British Columbia in She co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles in high impact journals including the Journal of Controlled Release, Small, Nature Reviews Materials, and Theranostics.

Her research focuses on inflammatory and genetic diseases of human epithelia, the development of novel therapeutic approaches and tissue engineering of complex, human-based organ models aiming for valid and predictive test systems for preclinical and fundamental research.

She is also a classically trained pianist, with a Masters degree in piano performance. The robust and most relevant facts about technological progress have to do with its pace, prerequisites, and problems:. Source: Comin and Mestieri Putin is not the first Russian leader to understand the importance of breakthrough general purpose technologies. Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

We are weaker than capitalism, not only on the world scale, but also within the country. Only when the country has been electrified, and industry, agriculture and transport have been placed on the technical basis of modern large-scale industry, only then shall we be fully victorious. We have a plan which gives us estimates of materials and finances covering a long period, not less than a decade. We must fulfill this plan at all costs, and the period of its fulfillment must be reduced.

Today, the most serious practitioner of Soviet-style planning is the Chinese Communist Party. The plan is to transform the Chinese economy and dominate global manufacturing by China has neither the entrepreneurial nimbleness of America nor the capable public finance systems of Western Europe, but it is putting a lot of money into digital dominance.

The question is whether this will be enough. The last two decades witnessed the rise of China as an economic power; the next 10 years will decide whether it will eventually become a superpower. Since then, there are no official references to it. But the real advantage of the U.