There are several voices arguing that since the approx 1950s the world is going through a technological stagnation (compared to previous two centuries), with technological progress increasingly slowing down. One of the good summaries of this debate and arguments I’ve read is in this blog post by Jason Crawford. Before I’ve read his summary, I’ve been mostly inclined to believe what he calls the quantitative case: that GDP and TFP growth has been slowing down since approx the 1970s (although he makes a good point that I would like to explore further some day about shift from manufacturing to services being a potential source of systematic underestimation of growth). However, after reading his “qualitative case”, I’ve actually updated to thinking the stagnation might not be there to such a large extent as I thought (contrary to his conclusion). Here is what makes me think so:
In his qualitative case, he categorizes technology/industry in six major categories:
Manufacturing & construction; Agriculture; Energy; Transportation; Information; Medicine.
He argues that in the past we have seen simultaneous revolutions (or disrupting innovations) in more of these categories, whereas since the 1970s we have seen the same level of disruptiveness only in one category – information, via computers, internet, smartphones, etc.. I don’t think we have actually seen less disruptive innovations than in the past – I think there are similarly disruptive technologies in most categories. Jason then goes on to describe what were the closest-to-being-disruptive innovations in each category since the 1970s but for some reason didn’t come to full fruition. I will comment on his views and suggest what could be the revolutionary technologies which makes me more optimistic about the current state of technological progress.
Recent disruptive technologies
Manufacturing: In materials, carbon nanotubes and other nanomaterials are still mostly a research project, and we still have no material to build a space elevator or a space pier. As for processes, atomically precise manufacturing is even more science-fiction than flying cars.
I would argue that perhaps robotization might be a big enough deal. It has been around for some time already, but maybe it is taking off in its most useful form just now. Anyway, robotization sounds like something that would be tracked by common (GDP and TFP) economic indicators, so if that was a big deal already, it would show up (suggesting it wasn’t and only hope left is that it will become a big deal in the future)
Agriculture:
Jason doesn’t talk about this category in his post, but here is my take: Green Revolution in general (and genetically modified crops in particular) might have substantial effects on food production and allowing population growth. This might have been missed by the per capita economic indicators, but perhaps would show in the total GDP statistics. As a counter-argument, data from Bloom et al. (2020) on crop yields show no disruptive growth, but rather constant diminishing returns – if green revolution (or genetically modified crops) were such a big deal, there would probably be some disruptive growth shown.
When looking at horizons, perhaps lab grown food (like cultured meat) will be revolutionary enough to significantly change how we create food (and how we treat animals), which perhaps will show in the economic indicators. Vertical farming could be another innovation with large impacts if scalable, although perhaps not as significant as lab grown food.
Energy: The most obvious stunted technology is nuclear power. In the 1950s, everyone expected a nuclear future. Today, nuclear supplies less than 20% of US electricity and only about 8% of its total energy (and about half those figures in the world at large). Arguably, we should have had nuclear homes, cars and batteries by now.
I agree that nuclear power is the biggest deal. It seems that the problem here is not the problem of invention (the technology itself is quite good) but a problem of distribution/uptake. Why there was (or still is) a problem of distribution/uptake of nuclear energy seems like an important question for progress studies scholars to take a look at.
Another group of technologies on the horizon that might be a big deal are renewable sources of energy. It’s not clear how much this will show up in economic indicators, but the main value it promises is significantly less environmental damage.
Transportation: In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Concorde took its first supersonic test flight. But they were not followed by a thriving space transportation industry or broadly available supersonic passenger travel. The last Apollo mission flew in 1972, a mere three years later. Concorde was only ever available as a luxury for the elite, was never highly profitable, and was shut down in 2003, after less than thirty years in service. Meanwhile, passenger travel speeds are unchanged over 50 years (actually slightly reduced). And of course, flying cars are still the stuff of science fiction. Self-driving cars may be just around the corner, but haven’t arrived yet.
I think expecting space transportation or supersonic passenger travel might be maybe too high expectations, compared to going from horses -> locomotives and then locomotives -> cars. When talking about passenger travel, the disruptive technology I would mention here that originated in the first half but was distributed in the second half of the 20th century is flying. It seems like air travel has taken off a lot and this seems a comparably large change to locomotives -> cars (in terms of increased mobility, even more in terms of speed). However, again, we would expect this type of technology to show in the standard economic indicators and given that these indicators still point to overall stagnation, perhaps flying was not so big a deal after all. Perhaps economic benefits from increased mobility have hit diminishing returns with cars and flying was this not that important. When talking about cargo, containerization in shipping which was mentioned elsewhere in Jason’s post seems like a big deal.
When looking at a horizon, I think self-driving cars and hyperloop are two potentially very disruptive technologies that will hopefully arrive soon. Again, the question of Why have self-driving cars not arrived yet? and How long will it take for hyperloop to be developed? seem interesting to me from a perspective of progress studies. Anyway, even when these technologies arrive, it’s questionable whether they will be reflected in economic indicators – if there are diminishing returns to economic benefits from mobility, hyperloop will not bring much value this way, even though it might be much faster than airplanes and perhaps more environmentally friendly. Self driving cars will perhaps free up people’s time which could be devoted to leisure or work and will cause more people to survive through decrease in car crashes – it’s not obvious this is going to show up.
Information
This is the category where Jason seems the only revolutions of the second half of 20th century which the other innovations are not comparable to (i.e. are less impactful): computers, internet and smartphones and other communication technologies which have completely transformed the information processing and communication.
Moreover, disruptive changes from progress in artificial intelligence seem to be on the horizon (if not happening already).
Medicine: Cancer and heart disease are still the top causes of death. Solving even one of these, the way we have mostly solved infectious disease and vitamin deficiencies, would have counted as a major breakthrough. Genetic engineering, again, has shown a few excellent early results, but hasn’t yet transformed medicine.
Life expectancy increased a lot since WW2, so we have to be doing something right. Perhaps this is driven by mitigating communicable diseases around the world a lot.
Anyway, looking at the horizon might also bring some more hope: perhaps we will see some progress in life extension (or anti-ageing) efforts; perhaps some progress in genetic medicine as mentioned, and if technologies allow it, maybe we will finally see some instances of personalized medicine. However, I don’t have any sense how far these innovations are.
Timescales: long term stagnation or short term dip?
To see whether we are in the stagnation, it’s useful to compare the same timescales. If we think about the recent history in terms of 3 industrial revolutions, it could be (as Jason suggests):
1st Industrial Revolution: from the 1700s through the mid-1800s (150 years)
2nd Industrial Revolution: from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s (100 years)
3rd Industrial Revolution: from the mid-1900s until now (70 years)
If we don’t assume that the length of these revolutions is systematically decreasing (e.g. because the invention and distribution cycles are getting shorter/more efficient), maybe we should wait a little bit before making judgements about stagnation, especially given that there are number of promising technologies on the horizon (as mentioned above).
Given that this period we look at (data often focusing on 1970-2010, i.e. 40 years) is pretty short from a historical point of view, we may also wonder whether this stagnation is not just an oscillation if we look at the bigger picture. Perhaps there were some oscillations like these in the previous industrial revolutions as well (I’m yet to find some data about this, if you know about some, please let me know), progress is rarely smooth.
Conclusion
Overall I’ve become less inclined to believe in technological stagnation after realizing what disruptive technologies has humanity recently created or is in the process of creating (btw doing a qualitative best case analysis might not be such a shaky approach as it might sound – it might actually be even more explanatory if we live in a power law world rather than Gaussian/linear world). Anyway, I guess the quantitative case still holds and it is more likely than not (let’s say 65 %) that we are experiencing slow down compared to 100 years ago. However, this slow down might be only common fluctuation (caused e.g. by more complexity involved in creating new disruptive technologies or cultural adaptation to some of those new technologies) before high rise due to new disruptive technologies coming to fruition. The slow down doesn’t seem to be so bad (we have created and continue creating new promising technologies) and has not been here for so long yet.