Anticipating Economic Change

The Free exchange blog on The Economist recently had the post "The illusion of stasis." commenting on techno-pessimism in other recent writing.  Largely about anticipating the extent or pace of economic transformation, the piece responds to skeptics who, for instance, do not believe that technologies like 3D printing or self-driving cars will be economic game changers.

I'm a big fan of co-evolutionary theories of change, which is why the issue of the co-evolutionary development of a broad landscape of issues lies at the heart of my Infinite Economy concept.  And for that reason I both appreciate and basically agree with the Free exchange author's critique of the current spate of techno-pessimism.  As they say in the post,

In general, a very good way to underestimate the potential impact of a new innovation is to consider its possible contributions all other things equal, that is, assuming that nothing in the economy changes to accommodate or complement the new discovery.

And this is where I have considerable empathy for all those currently looking at digital fabrication (most specifically, 3D printing of plastic) and concluding that most of the excited visions of the future built on extrapolating a future of MakerBot-type appliances are unrealistic hype. The history of economic and technological evolution and revolution shows that concepts and things are involved in oft times intricate interactions with infrastructure, other technologies, social biases, regulatory regimes, and structures like financing regimes. And the essence of co-evolution is that they continually impact each other.

Especially in a globalized, highly interconnected and interdependent world, single-issue or single-technology extrapolation is as bad as single point forecasting.

The Infinite Economy from Richard Lum