Why The Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive

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Why is it that current cutting edge digital innovations do not yield the same economic gains as breakthrough inventions of the past? Do we just have to wait longer to see the benefits? Are the benefits of technological advances just being calculated incorrectly? Why do you think the payoff from technology is so elusive?

Your smartphone allows you to get almost instantaneous answers to the most obscure questions. It also allows you to waste hours scrolling through Facebook or looking for the latest deals on Amazon. But for several years, economists have asked why all that technical wizardry seems to be having so little impact on the economy. The issue surfaced again recently, when the government reported disappointingly slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of productivity growth from 2011 to 2015 was the slowest since the five-year period ending in 1982.
 
Easy. You're not creating a new industry, you're offsetting an existing ones. Do you wonder why economists are saying that the pc market is drying up? It's because people are using/buying smartphones instead and they don't need a big pc or even a laptop.
There are ground breaking new technologies like the automobile, then there's the laptop shrinking to a smartphone. The original already existed, it's function is duplicated so it's not groundbreaking. Asking about productivity increases is silly. The fundamental question has to be asked, how does it improve your life **in a way that wasn't possible before** (the last part is what they're missing).
 
Because rich people and corporations horde the money that was made off of most of these advances... Previous inventions like electricity, automobile, etc allowed more physical work to be accomplished. Tech just makes things we like more likeable. Information is useless if it is not used. Just having the information out on the web is the same as the books in a library, you have to actually injest and apply the information to see a benefit. In USA about the only real things we make are weapons, food, and illegitimate children. The rest is basically licensed to 3rd parties for manufacture in other countries.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Easy. You're not creating a new industry, you're offsetting an existing ones. Do you wonder why economists are saying that the pc market is drying up? It's because people are using/buying smartphones instead and they don't need a big pc or even a laptop.
There are ground breaking new technologies like the automobile, then there's the laptop shrinking to a smartphone. The original already existed, it's function is duplicated so it's not groundbreaking. Asking about productivity increases is silly. The fundamental question has to be asked, how does it improve your life **in a way that wasn't possible before** (the last part is what they're missing).
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Exactly. There have been no groundbreaking innovations in the tech sector in a long time that fundamentally changed or improved peoples' lives. I think the opposite has been happening in recent history. The tech that I see being released these days I simply have no use for, so I simply shrug it off, while the manufacturing of existing technology seems to be getting worse.
 
Nothing new, just old ideas rehashed and perfected (or made better).
Think real hard about the last big thing invented since the automobile, plane, PC and sliced bread. Nothing? Yep, nothing.
 
DrLobotomy said:
Because rich people and corporations horde the money that was made off of most of these advances... Previous inventions like electricity, automobile, etc allowed more physical work to be accomplished. Tech just makes things we like more likeable. Information is useless if it is not used. Just having the information out on the web is the same as the books in a library, you have to actually injest and apply the information to see a benefit. In USA about the only real things we make are weapons, food, and illegitimate children. The rest is basically licensed to 3rd parties for manufacture in other countries.
Click to expand...
Or when a software company with 55 employees gets bought out for $19 billion dollars?

How do 55 people share $19 billion? | ZDNet
 
the-one1 said:
Nothing new, just old ideas rehashed and perfected (or made better).
Think real hard about the last big thing invented since the automobile, plane, PC and sliced bread. Nothing? Yep, nothing.
Click to expand...

I actually thing the refrigerator had the biggest impact on societal changes. My opinion of course
 
Exactly

Things like cars / planes / trains / computers / phones changed the way businesses operate.

You'd need something truly revolutionary like artificial intelligence / free clean energy / teleportation / anti-gravity to make a meaningful impact on our economy at this point.

smartphones and VR headsets are merely evolutionary improvements on preexisting tech.
 
I believe some of this is also due to these things being grossly overvalued.
 
The answer is pretty simple. The technology is not currently being applied to things that make money.

AS noted in the article, it's being applied in large gobs to medical care, mostly to increase regulatory burdens overall, and at least temporarily, reduce efficiency as the industry attempts to comply. The other primary application of technology at the moment is to display ads. There is not unlimited advertising dollars, so how much growth do you expect? The cool tech right now is automation, robotics, big data, and AI. The only one solidly entrenched in productive industry is big data, and that is mostly permitting industry to persist despite declining revenues. AI is out there if you consider algorithmic trading AI I guess, but that gets lumped into the savings rate, not GDP. Robotics is in a development phase. The real consumed product is very much refined versions of last gen stuff. The next gen product is still being refined into a compelling product despite being very cool and leaps and bounds more generally capable. Automation in general is a double edged sword. Do more with less, wind up with less spending. Most of the serious economy wide moves on that front are in customer support. An area where you reduce overhead rather than increase revenues, and once again usually in the face of declining revenues.

You make new economic value by growing something and selling it, harvesting something form the environment and selling it. Everything else is shuffling shit around and trying to get your share of dollars already in existence, or engaging in fractional reserve lending. The vast portion of ledger dollars made by fractional reserve lending is not spent on manufactured goods, or services. So what does anyone expect?
 
This will be true until we finally hit the point when automation becomes much more independent and doesn't need the same level of human control.

Think autonomous driving cars, restaurants with completely automated kitchens, large farms with few or even no workers in the fields, etc.
 
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