The world is always evolving ...  How ?

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Technical progress radically transforms the way our societies are shaped. Our jobs, and our use of machines at work have evolved and deeply modify the foundations of Western economies.

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In the section, you will find two articles that will successively evoke the concepts of Second Machine Age and secular stagnation. The third one will give you an overview on the evolutions of work these last decades. If you are interested in the French politics, carefully read our last article.

 

While the First Machine Age – or Industrial Revolution – remits to the automation of horsepower and manual labor, the Second Machine Age refers to the automation of knowledge work, thanks to predictive data analysis, the Internet of things and machine learning. Brynjolfsson and McAfee’ main thesis is that the Second Machine Age, contrary to the first one, is the age when software driven machines and humans are substitutes (and not complements, as they used to be). 

 

Growth rates in Western industrialized economies tend to level down. The example of the Euro zone is striking: economic growth has not exceeded 2% since 2008. Of course, this situation takes roots in cyclical factors, but the role of structural parameters must not be neglected. Some, like Robert Gordon, argue that depression might have become the normal condition of the economy, introducing the concept of secular stagnation.

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Many interesting topics to discover!