The Technology Trap
by Carl Benedikt Frey · first published 2019
5mentions
3recommended by
4HN commenters
2020–2025first – last mentioned
75% recommend25% neutral
From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. As Carl Benedikt Frey shows, the Industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of mechanization were devastating for large swaths of the population. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the labor share of income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality sky
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I found that the book "The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation" by Carl Benedikt Frey offers a well constructed historical scenario where the current situation we are fits in. Going into a more polar and personal…
on “A New Macroeconomics?” ↗…it took about a century and the social unrest during that time (in Britain and other industrializing nations) provoked far-reaching, unintended consequences. If you are interested in this subject, The Technology Trap by Frey has an interesting comparison between the first and second industrial revolutions and the ongoing labor shifts in the modern era.
on “Why I am building permapeople.org” ↗The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself - Daniel J. Boorstin How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom - Matt Ridley The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation - Carl Benedikt Frey
on “Ask HN: Good Books on the History of Technology?” ↗The book "The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation" offers a well researched scenario with historical footing
on “A theory that “elite overproduction” leads to political instability (2020)” ↗The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed from society through labor exclusion is…a radical process. I read in a book titled The Technology Trap about how in the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk. That…
on “Our efforts, in part, define us” ↗