Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PB) - C-format

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award. A bold new interpretation of why technology has all too often benefited elites – and how we must reshape the path of innovation to create true shared prosperity. Throughout history, technological change - whether in the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today's artificial intelligence - has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest. The reality, though, is that technology is shaped by what powerful people want and believe, generating riches, social respect, cultural prominence, and further political voice for those already powerful. For most of the rest of us there is the illusion of progress, while digital technologies and artificial intelligence increase inequality and undermine democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson debunk modern techno-optimism through a dazzling, original account of how technological choices have changed the course of history. From vivid stories of how the economic surplus of the Middle Ages was appropriated by an ecclesiastical elite to build cathedrals while the peasants starved, to the making of vast fortunes from digital technologies today as millions are pushed towards poverty, we see how the path of technology is determined and who influences its trajectory. With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for building a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the understanding and vision to reimagine and reshape the path of technology and create true shared prosperity.