The Net isn't
as Important as we Think
Born
in
Is
it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the
internet?
When
we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that
happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I
can now Google and find the exact location of this restaurant on the
edge of
The
internet may have significantly changed the working patterns of people like you
and me, but we are in a tiny minority. For most people, its effect is more
about keeping in touch with friends and looking up things here and there.
Economists have found very little evidence that since the internet
revolution productivity has grown.
And
the washing machine was more transformative?
By
liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as
domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely
revolutionised the structure of society. As women have become active in the
labour market they have acquired a different status at home – they can credibly
threaten their partners that if they don't treat them well they will leave them
and make an independent living. And this had huge economic consequences. Rather
than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more
productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.
The
washing machine is just one element here. Other factors have contributed to the
liberation of women – feminism, the pill and so on.
Yes,
but feminism couldn't have been implemented unless there was this technological
basis for a society where women went out and worked. Of course it's not just
the washing machine, it's piped water, electricity,
irons and so on.
Do
we tend to overestimate the importance of communications revolutions?
Not
always. The invention of the printing press was one of the most important
events in human history. But we overestimate the internet and ignore its
downsides. There's now so much information out there that you don't actually
have time to digest it.
In
another chapter of the book, I talk about the American economist Herbert Simon,
who argued that our problem now is that we have limited decision-making
capability rather than too little information. If you try to find something on
the internet, it's a deluge. And in terms of productivity, the internet has its
drawbacks – for example, it makes it a lot easier to bunk off work.
But
what about the sheer speed at which it allows us to do things?
That
is exaggerated too. Before the invention of the telegraph in the late 19th
century, it took two to three weeks to carry a message across the
Does
it matter that we overestimate the internet's importance?
On one level, no. If I think the Sun goes round the Earth, it's not going to affect how
I do my grocery shopping or teach economics. But where it does matter is that a
lot of people have come to accept a policy action or business decision on the
grounds that this is something driven by technological changes rather than by
active human decisions. So anyone who is against total globalisation is a
modern luddite.
This
idea that the internet is driving globalisation has enabled business leaders
and politicians to get away with decisions made for their own self-interest,
because people have been too ready to accept that things have to be like this.
Do
we fundamentally misunderstand the nature of capitalism, as the title of your
book implies?
Let
me start by saying that I am an advocate of capitalism. To paraphrase Winston
Churchill, I think it's the worst economic system except for all the others. So
I'm not an anti-captialist, or anarchist. I want
capitalism to work. But the version of capitalism that we have practised in the
past two or three decades is a very extreme free-market version which, contrary
to the claims of many economists, is not the only or best way to run things.
There are many different ways and in the book I show that countries that have
run capitalism differently, even if they practise free-market capitalism today,
have done much better.
William
Skidelsky, The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright-idea-ha-joon-chang