
The third great wave - mpdaugherty
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21621156-first-two-industrial-revolutions-inflicted-plenty-pain-ultimately-benefited
======
benbreen
The basic premise of the article (that there are three distinct industrial
revolutions with "fallow" periods dividing them) seems to me to be very easy
to poke holes in. It's not as if some fundamental force of innovation switched
on in 1760 and then faded away in 1830, only to reappear forty years later, as
the graph in the article implies. Historians of globalization have been
thinking about this stuff in a different way for quite some time now (for
instance, Jan de Vries and his concept of a 17th and early 18th century
"Industrious Revolution" is quite influential and has a lot of merit in my
opinion).

It also isn't clear to me why the author(s) consider the automation of the
19th and 20th centuries, which they allow to have demolished entire industries
and ways of life, to have been less threatening than the present wave of
automation. Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that the people who write
and read the Economist were those who benefited from the disruptions of the
19th and 20th centuries--and are now in a position to rationalize away their
negatives--than with any qualitative shift in how innovation or automation is
taking place.

~~~
nabla9
Good point.

Industrialization in 19th and 20th centuries caused suffering in the
transition period (1st industrial revolution resulted decrease in average
height and drop in expected lifespan in Britain) and the public was able to
fully enjoy the benefits of the industrialization only after massive political
struggle that included violence (revolutions, unions, strikes,
assassinations). The end result was society with new laws and new systems for
wealth distribution.

Did living standards improve during the Industrial Revolution?
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic-
history-0)

If we look into history for cues, industrialization should be seen as two step
process:

1\. New technology brings new opportunities and makes economy more efficient.
It also changes power structures in the society and creates massive
imbalances.

2\. Dramatic technological changes are followed with equally dramatic changes
in society that either happen trough political struggle or violence.

------
thrownaway0000
The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that
these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past.

Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in
weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete.
Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary
commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.

With wars like the American Civil War and both World Wars, we saw total war
emerge. Mass production, mechanized logistics and air power were added to the
mix and effectively destroyed all traces of overt slavery and royalist
monarchy, wherever heavy weapons technologies saw wide implementation.

So what's next? Full Spectrum War sounds ominous, but even that seem like it's
probably just Total War's pocket watch dressed up as a calculator wrist
watch...

~~~
chroma
What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has
always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side
sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and
disengages.

There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully
automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology
advances and drives drone costs to the price of raw materials, the drain will
lessen while destructive capabilities grow.

These factors could drastically increase the amount of warfare in the world.
I'm not sure how probable this scenario is, but it worries me.

~~~
vinceguidry
> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-
> eligible men) and disengages.

That seems to me to be quite an oversimplification of what wins wars. Every
war tech has had edge cases that motivated adversaries managed to overcome.

For example, despite the Vietcong's gross disadvantage in terms of technology,
it's leaders managed to force over time the US's withdrawal. We didn't run out
of men. We ran out of political will. The battle over political will is vastly
different than the battle to save and destroy men. The Vietcong eventually
came to realize this and optimized their strategy around it, and none of our
horrific technological marvels could defeat that tailored strategy.

In fact, if you're just looking at body count, the North Vietnamese should
have lost before we withdrew. We optimized around body counts but were unable
to attain our military goals. These days, men won and lost are, if not the
least of our concerns, are definitely not the most.

~~~
chroma
I think you misunderstand me. The sides can have different thresholds for "too
many body bags." The american threshold was lower, because the americans
weren't fighting in defense of their homeland. Had the war been a purely
financial expense for the US, they would have stuck around for much longer.

~~~
vinceguidry
Body counts have nothing to do with it. There's no 'differing threshold', even
if it might look that way, if that's the only data you have available to you.

A democratic nation-state fights a war in a very different way than one
without such sophistication. The American political will to fight arises out
of its sense of justice and duty. We really believed we were fighting for
freedom. Until it became abundantly clear that we weren't, we were happy to
throw men and money into the meat grinder for years upon years.

A non-democratic nation fights for as long as the person directing the war
maintains his ability to do so. That is the key difference between a western
power and an emerging nation. We've got beliefs that can be orchestrated into
terrific displays of force, other nations have to coerce the means to project
force from the people somehow.

It's what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. As long as most
Americans believe that what we are doing there is right, we'll keep at it no
matter what. Oh we might pour more or less money into it, adjust our military
footprint, but we're going to keep fighting the good fight for as long as we
believe that it's the good fight. That belief is robust, it will resist
attempts to dislodge it, the same way that a person's irrational beliefs
aren't simply changed.

The Vietcong eventually came to realize this. They used their dwindling
resources to stage attacks, not where they were needed militarily, but where
they would be filmed. The culmination of this strategy was the Tet Offensive,
which was carefully orchestrated to look far more large-scale, at least on
cameras, than it was. It was an amazing feat, and it accomplished exactly what
it had set out to, to tip the balance of public opinion against the war.
Militarily, it was a failure, none of the attacks went anywhere and the
fighters faded back into the jungle as quickly as they emerged.

It wasn't anything like how many soldiers we lost that caused us to pull out.
It was the public perception of how the war was going, what we were doing
there, where it was going.

------
simonsarris
Humanity used to be optimistic about this moment, didn't it?

In 1900 people hoped their work would be replaced by robots. Today people fear
their work will be replaced by robots.

Hmm.

~~~
Chinjut
In fairness, even prior to 1900, quite a lot of people were upset at these
sorts of changes, at least when it was their particular livelihood on the
line; consider the historical Luddites, for example. Or the subculture behind
the tale of John Henry.

~~~
kissickas
When I was in elementary school, I distinctly remember an optimistic
perspective in response to automation of labor. Now, I highly doubt that
children are being taught that this is a good thing and it seems to be mostly
doom and gloom (although perhaps I'm just too separated from this point of
view, having no children myself).

What changed? Certainly people during the past industrial revolutions were not
all optimists, especially in the time before unions when labor was considered
almost 100% disposable. But in the last few decades, hasn't there been some
shift in what we expect out of this "new wave"?

I think about this almost daily, and all I can come up with is some sort of
improved welfare system that depends on a very cheap, automated production of
food. And I imagine we will have to shift (already!) back to single-earner
households as the economy just isn't made to provide so many jobs anymore. If
anyone could point me in the direction of some actually decent reading
material on the topic I would be grateful.

~~~
VLM
"some sort of improved welfare system"

Retirement is culturally new and also is no longer something you do right
before you die, but if you examine the numbers, soon a rather large fraction
of the population will be retired.

Much as childhood used to mean short manual labor on the farm or sweatshop
factory, but now means sitting in school for 20 years.

I find it highly likely that both ages will grow toward the middle, and much
as joining .mil and being a soldier is seen as a young person's game, or dare
I say being a software developer is seen as being a young persons game,
everyone will "get used to" the idea that you only work from age 30 to 40,
perhaps. Sit in school, maybe national service, raise your kids, until maybe
35, then retire at 45. If everyone (at least female) has kids in their 20s,
that means we wouldn't need much if any day care, and we'd be retired in time
to play with / supervise grandkids.

Culturally I bet we'd see a bifurcation of work. "real work" would be what
grunt labor still exists, stereotypical millwright work on robots at
industrial plants, and writing boring TPS reports and CRUD websites. AKA "the
grind". Retired work would be passive income lifestyle businesses and arts n
crafts. Personally I'd probably go full on FOSS development rather than
everything being the property of my employer. My grandmother would likely go
full on knitting, selling $400 sweaters similar to but better than the ones at
Nordstroms. My wife seems to enjoy traveling and as a FOSS guy all I need is a
place to charge my laptop and the occasional network connection so I'm good
with that. I would imagine no small number of people would get really into
religion, exercise, watching youtube videos...

------
DennisP
A lot of people are talking about "basic income" as a solution. Just give
everyone a fixed amount of money each month, without means-testing. Then maybe
the machines can make the world a utopia for everyone, instead of having a few
people at the top who own everything while the masses are desperate.

Personally I think we should pay for it, initially, with a carbon fee, and
kill two birds with one stone.

------
lotsofmangos
At some point you get a small amount of very rich people with a large pile of
very cheap stuff that they cannot sell as nobody else has any money and even
if they did, the marginal cost of producing the stuff is less than the cost of
running a market to sell it in.

~~~
CalRobert
What's to stop them from selling it to each other? Could we see a completely
stratified economy, with rich people selling each other the fruits of their
automated factories' labour?

~~~
VLM
You've described feudalism / serfdom with the sole exception that their
"factories" were staffed with what boils down to slaves rather than robots.

It wasn't a paradise for the psuedo-slaves, doesn't matter if you call them
serfs or not.

One interesting aspect to think about is if 0.1% of the population owns
everything and all they do is trade the output of their factories, they won't
have much use for almost all of the worlds land and no interest in almost all
of the worlds population. They'll really like the worlds resources until
technology makes that irrelevant due to solar or fusion or refining everything
out of the ocean or nano-assemblers or whatever.

By analogy, in plains grassland regions, for centuries your worth as a human
and a measure of your power was the number of horses you owned. Now, almost
nobody owns horses and nobody cares how many horses the hobbyists own other
than a small separate distinct subculture of horse people. I had a professor
and have a cousin who are horse people, its a respectable, time consuming,
mostly harmless, expensive hobby that no longer determines your worth as a
human being or worth as a leader or your power over other humans. Anyway the
analogy with capital is obvious. When you don't need capital anymore, its
worthless other than to tiny subcultures of hobbyists. Very soon, collecting
capital will be like collection kerosene lamps, or at most its like collecting
antique furniture. People who are into it will be deeply into it and hyper
competitive amongst themselves with all kinds of crazy ways to keep score and
dominate each other and 99% of the population simply won't care and won't
participate. Its vital to realize that most hobbies used to be someones
business model, their income stream, their way of life, the millstone around
their necks, the core of the economy. Now they're just something eccentric
people do instead of watching "Survivor" on the couch like a good American
would do. And thats the inevitable future of capitalism. As an eccentricity, I
think capitalism might be an OK hobby for the occasional weirdo in a post-
capitalist world.

Need to find a way to feed ourselves, organize ourselves, and trade human
services among ourselves without capital although with a currency of some
sort, because none of us will have any capital at all other than the weirdo
hobbyists still into that ancient stuff. So... self replicating solar powered
factories that make self contained solar powered hydroponics gardens, like a
futuristic makerbot squirting out a futuristic aerogarden, and I trade
bitcoins with friends on poker night or for arts/crafts or services.

To some extent you see this already. What does SV care about developers
outside SV? Oh nothing you say? Well then, its already happening. What do
neocons say about people who are permanently no longer part of todays economy?
They don't care at all? Well then. They're not evil, just don't care. Like
asking the horse people I know how important jet-ski's are to them, what do
you think they're going to say? Everyone else is cool with that, at least as
long as they still have bread and circuses and a roof of some sort over their
heads, and none of that is going to require capital anymore, which is good,
because none of us will have capital anymore, either by choice or not.

~~~
CalRobert
Interesting writeup. I worry that the transition may be more violent. Will
those who are driven to have everything be happy if anyone else has anything?
I don't know. What makes some people who have tens of millions hunger for
billions? I only posed the question because I'm curious what other people's
thoughts were; I think we need a fundamental shift in how we allocate
resources when the production of resources is relatively decoupled from
labour, which in some regards it already is.

Incidentally, if you find subcultures that place a high degree of value on the
horse interesting, you might like this:

[http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dublins-teenage-horse-
thugs](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dublins-teenage-horse-thugs)

------
dredmorbius
A better breakdown of economic waves / technological transitions comes from
Robert Ayres, see his "Technological Transformations and Long Waves", February
1989:

[http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/RR-89-001....](http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/RR-89-001.pdf)

Ayres defines _five_ technological transformations. The period of most
significant change came with the third, spanning roughly 1870-1890 (with
further refinement of major inventions since). I'd argue that the rate of
transformation has slowed since.

1\. ~1775: cotton textiles, iron, and steam.

2\. ~1825: railroads and steamships, telegraph.

3\. 1870-1890: steel, coal-tar chemistry & dyes, petroleum, sewing machines &
bicycles, internal combustion engines, electrical light & power, telephone,
automobiles, photography & cinema.

4\. 1930-1950: Petrochemicals, synthetics, plastics, pharmaceuticals,
communications -- radio, TV, microwaves, solid-state electronics & computers,
aircraft & transportation.

5\. 1975-present: Ill-defined. Slowing innovation, growing economy, declining
industrial activity in the US, growing prevalence of computers.

Note that Ayres was writing in 1989, immediately prior to the emergence of the
Internet and World Wide Web. Though these have revolutionalized _information
access_ and communications, their overall influence on everyday life has been
less profound.

~~~
rjtavares
> Note that Ayres was writing in 1989, immediately prior to the emergence of
> the Internet and World Wide Web. Though these have revolutionalized
> information access and communications, their overall influence on everyday
> life has been less profound.

Couldn't disagree more. The impact of computers was huge but it was mainly in
making more efficient the stuff that we were already doing (that's why all the
big players benefited from it). What we're witnessing with the Internet since
the 2000s is a paradigm shift that can wipe out entire industries (for example
with digital distribution, peer to peer and sharing economy).

~~~
dredmorbius
Yes, the scale at which _some_ industries are performed is changing,
especially those based entirely on information access (e.g., travel agents).

But that's often even larger single-point monopoly point of control:
Craigslist, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Banking would be another instance.

What's changed is that while there are still tremendous economies of scale,
the holder of that control point has far less security in their tenancy.

Yes, the changes for those directly involved in these firms -- founders,
financiers, and the relatively small numbers of employees -- are fairly large.

But at the level of everyday life, the benefits are still pretty slim.

------
Animats
This is a poor article about an important subject. A more useful way to look
at it is to make lists of jobs humans can do, and those which machines can do
better. Over time, the second column grows. The first column, not so much.

What's different this time is that computers are so general purpose, and so
cheap. If a computer can do it at all, it can do it more cheaply than a human.

~~~
snowwrestler
I think this type of analysis is blind to new jobs that neither humans nor
robots are doing now.

For example, right now only humans can do complex computer programming,
whereas machines do most farming.

But if you went back to the time when quite a few people were employed as
farmers, they would have no concept of what computer programming is, or how an
economy could value and reward such skills.

They wouldn't know to put it in either column, so they too would feel terror
at the idea of machines taking their jobs, because they could not possibly
know about the new industries that drive job growth today.

Likewise, I would not bet against the possibility that new industries and jobs
will be made possible in the future by automation that is being built today.

I'll hazard one guess: personalized genetic consulting. Genetics are
incredibly complex, incredibly powerful, and highly personal. Given the right
advances in computing technology, biotech automation, and energy, it could be
possible to employ millions of people as a new kind of service provider--one
who analyzes your personal genetics and crafts highly personalized plans to
optimize your health. Basically, a biological analog to our modern concept of
a financial advisor (which is itself a fairly recent development for most
people).

edit: clarification

~~~
dllthomas
There is a contextual difference, at least, between _betting on_ there not
being new opportunities available, and trying to avoid _relying on_ new
opportunities being consistently available. Even so, an interesting post -
upvoted.

------
netcan
I'm not really on board with either the doomsayers or their reassuring
don't-be-a-luddite adversaries.

OTOH, It think statements like _" capitalism itself may be under threat"_ are
not necessarily nonsensical. Our world is changing incredibly fast. People in
their 30s went to school without computers. People in their 40s started work
without computers. People in their teens have grown up using the internet as a
semi-integrated part of their brain.

That's slightly hyperbolic I suppose, but it isn't nonsensical. The impact of
technology on labour markets is profound in a way that genuinely challenges
primary cultural institutions, like the concept of _your profession_. If you
are a social media manager in 2014 what will you be doing in 2044?

Who TF knows where cultural institutions need to go to keep up with the
changing realities of this world. Capitalism, representative democracy,
education, family. These are all institutions that will need to find a way to
survive.

------
davidw
Ah... wave of industrliazation. I was hoping to read something about Fishbone
:-)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska#Third_wave_ska](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska#Third_wave_ska)

~~~
edkennedy
and here I was hoping to read something about coffee!
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Coffee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Coffee)

------
GotAnyMegadeth
> Moore’s law is now approaching the end of its working life.

That has been said many times before...

------
mercer
Apologies for asking a question unrelated to the message of the article, but
I'm a bit confused by the use of 'discomfited' in the first sentence. From my
understanding, 'discomforted' seems more accurate, and is a more commonly used
word anyways.

Do I misunderstand the difference between discomfit and discomfort, or did
they use the wrong word?

EDIT: I suppose it might just be a matter of wanting to come across
sophisticated. At a later point the article uses 'insoluble' where
'unsolvable' would've been perfectly fine and probably easier to understand
for most people.

~~~
Totoradio
I couldn't find the author name on the page, but this choice of words seems to
indicate that (s)he has a French background. "Insoluble" and "Déconfit" are
french words, and "Insoluble" is a relatively common word.

~~~
WillEngler
The author's name is Ryan Avent. From his personal site, it looks like he's
from the states and he got his MSc in London. As for discomfit and insoluble,
those words strike me as being in line with the Economist's style.

