Mokyr: History offers little guidance for understanding the modern technological age
Joel Mokyr · a16z Podcast | Knowledge Builds Technology and Technology Builds Knowledge -- with Joel Mokyr · Jan 2, 2019 · at 13:06
Joel Mokyr, economic historian and author, shares a contrarian perspective on the utility of historical analysis when discussing tech innovation on the a16z Podcast.
0:00 / 0:09exact quote · 9.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I am not really a great believer in the hypothesis that there's an awful lot we can learn from history about our own age, because our own age is so different in so many ways”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Joel Mokyr
Mokyr: Industrial Revolution succeeded despite state institutions, not because of them
“The national institutions probably play a relatively secondary role. Quite frankly, you know, if you put a gun to my head, I would say what happened, happened despite the best efforts of these states, not thanks to them.”
Mokyr: Climate change can only be solved through technology, not politics
“Climate change cannot be solved by any means except technology, because a political solution is clearly not going to happen.”
Mokyr: Resistance to genetically modified organisms is baseless and fabricated
“The evidence does not support that there's any danger. This whole notion about frankenfoods is completely made up”
Mokyr: Every major modern technological advance originated from informal knowledge networks
“Out of that came our modern world. Out of that came every technological advance that made a big difference in electricity, in textiles, in steel, in, you know, in transportation, in medicine, you name it. It came all out of those interactions.”
Mokyr: Growth is understated and inflation overstated due to zero-cost digital goods
“We are mis-measuring growth, or to put it slightly different, we're over-measuring inflation, because that, those two things boil down to the same thing, and we've known this for a long time, but it turns out the process is getting worse and worse, simply beca…”
Mokyr: European Progress Was Driven by Fragmentation and Intellectual Competition
“What made progress possible in this market for ideas is that it was a competitive market, and one thing economists know, competitive markets, by and large, work better than uncompetitive markets, and what is critical in understanding About the European system …”