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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and Simon Johnson

"Two bestselling authors overturn conventional wisdom about how economies work, revealing the untold story of who wins and who loses the rewards of prosperity, in a work that fundamentally transforms how we look at and understand the world"--

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Book Information

Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publish Date: 05/16/2023
Pages: 560
ISBN-13: 9781541702530
ISBN-10: 1541702530
Language: English

What We're Saying

June 28, 2023

AI is choking democracy while also providing the tools for repression and manipulation to both authoritarian and democratically elected governments. But it's not too late to change the future of digital technology. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

Awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson overturn conventional wisdom about how economies work--revealing the untold story of who wins and who loses the rewards of prosperity--in a work that fundamentally transforms how we look at and understand the world. Throughout history, technological change -- whether it takes 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. 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. To achieve the true potential of innovation, we need to ensure technology is creating new jobs and opportunities rather than marginalizing most people, through automated work and political passivity. We need to use the tremendous digital advances of the last half century to create useful and empowering tools, and seize back control from a small elite of hubristic, messianic tech leaders pursuing
their own interests. 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.

About the Authors

Daron Acemoglu, whoshared the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the gaps in prosperity between nations and research on how institutions affect economic progress, is Institute Professor of Economics at MIT, the university's highest faculty honor.

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Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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