Power and Progress

Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity

By: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

The bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers deliver a bold reinterpretation of economics and history that will fundamentally change how you see the world

A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

The wealth generated by technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages was captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. And throughout the world today, digital technologies and artificial intelligence undermine jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Power and Progress demonstrates that the path of technology was once—and may again be—brought under control. The tremendous computing advances of the last half century can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders.

With their breakthrough economic theory and manifesto for a better society, Acemoglu and Johnson provide the vision needed to reshape how we innovate and who really gains from technological advances.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (P)2023 PublicAffairs

Thought Provoking

Some questionable underlying assumptions about people but addressing a critical issue. Provided new insights if not compelling answers.

Interesting paradigm, riveting history, and "OK" Policy proposals

The history of narrative on the inevitability of "progress" is fascinating - especially the stories of the Suez vs Panama Canal. Their analysis of the risks of AI are sharper than their propods for how to keep society in control of the forces of AI rather than giving them over to the rich and powerful; the need to keep control.of AI is clear, but the mechanics to do so seem a little idealistic. Still an excellent read with a really compelling paradigm to analyze discussions of technology.

Good historical read

Not bad from a historical perspective, albeit with a Liberal slant. Overall worth a read or listen.

Critical Read

This is a critical read and I highly recommend this, for anyone, wanting to learn more about the future of technology and its affect on we the people.

A different take on Technology’s impact

In the style of Acemoglu an interesting view of the role of technology on the progress of society. A cynical but realistic perspective: who benefits from technology developments? You might not agree 100 % with their view but it is still very interesting.

Technology fatalist

Interesting anecdotes but lacking a powerful insight. Machine is the enemy of the uneducated so redirect technology from automation?

Not as great as "why nations fail", but not bad

I read why nations fail a few times and it's really an eye opener especially with brief history into how dictatorships form.

So I had hoped for something approaching that. Instead we got somewhat biased and sometimes plain wrong content.

For example when authors attempted to explain the nature of machine learning they went along the lines of "oh you throw a bunch of data into this machine and it gives you some mostly substandard results". When in reality it's more like a mock up of biological neurons with some differences but a lot of similarities. If biological neurons are like birds, then artificial neurons are like planes. They work in a very similar fashion.

That was never mentioned and uneducated reader will be mislead about the technical nature of ML.
'
Next comes deep mind Alpha go zero. The most fascinating thing about it was that it was one of first AI systems that had a much broader capability than any system before. It went from "narrow AI" quite a few steps towards "general AI".
Not only it was able to play Go, but it managed to also master countless other tasks - something no other system was ever able to do. All previous systems could only be made for a single purpose. Like chess engines. Or NPC agent or ECU in a car. These could only do one thing. Alpha go zero could do many things.

Obviously still VERY far from true general purpose, but nevertheless less that was it's defining feature.

Instead authors chose to spend time talking how narrow Alpha go is -if that's not misleading than what is?

Because I'm very familiar with these two subjects I was able to spot these mistakes. But with that I couldn't help but be more skeptical towards the rest of the content, which I wasn't familiar with and could learn a great deal.

However it's still a great book that draws inspiration from Yuval Noah Harari books and Daron Acemoglu previous Why Nations Fail book.

It's still a world class book. Just take with a grain of salt and it will provide a lot of food for thought.

Another note: as a left leaning centrist techno-optimist it was a bit of a challenge to take it, but I still did it and enjoyed challenging my views. But for someone right leaning book could be extremely hard to swallow unless you're ready to listen to another side.

Disconnected from reality

I couldn't finish this book, in full transparency. The audiobook quality is good, but the fundamental claims of the book don't stand up to reason or data, and the author does nothing to address critiques other than hand wave away "elites". I love books from divergent viewpoints, but come with data.

Pathetically weak

No insight, no novel conclusions, no substance. This would have made a short opinion piece for the uniformed. A waste of if time.

Severely undercooked policy vision

This book has a highly tendentious narrative about the effects of past technological development, and has a grossly over optimistic view of our ability to gauge which future technologies will have positive economic benefits that are shared widely
If you think that tech companies are too arrogant, the solution is not more arrogance