The industrial revolution transformed the world entirely. Its most profound legacy, though, is not anything specific like electricity, motorized transport, or the computer, but the state of permanent technological revolution in which we now live, move, and have our being. There are some, it is true, like economist Robert Gordon, author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, who argue that we should not expect future innovations to match what we have experienced in the past. But like the fabled salt machine at the bottom of sea, the tech industries continue to churn out innovations – smart phones, driverless cars, Wikipedia, delivery drones, solar panels, camera-based surgery – that quickly and significantly affect the lives and expectations of us all.
For more than two centuries, this ongoing technological revolution has consistently done two things.
- It has eliminated jobs by replacing humans with machines
- It has created new jobs
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