The Autonomous Revolution

CHAPTER FOUR

PRODUCTIVITY WITHOUT PROSPERITY

The Emerging Era of Non-Monetizable Productivity

TO UNDERSTAND WHERE WE ARE GOING, we need to revisit the events of the past and see them through the lens of our new understanding of social phase change. Consider the Industrial Revolution, which has given us numerous general-purpose technologies, among them the steam and internal combustion engines, electricity, wired and wireless communications, and computers—technologies that have found their way into every corner of our lives and transformed our society in fundamental ways.

Those inventions raised worker productivity and drove economic growth. They lifted millions out of poverty and created a vibrant middle class. They also had displacement effects ...