Decades of staggering cost declines - made possible at first through government-funded research, then by government-subsidized scale-up in the private sector - mean that renewables are now ready for prime time. We can argue about whether that was a mistake all day (I think it probably was), but it’s in the rearview mirror now.įortunately, after the stymying of nuclear, our scientists and engineers worked very very hard for a long time, and came up with safe, environmentally friendly technologies that are even better in most ways than nuclear: Wind and solar. The Industrial Revolution had been powered by a move from wood and animal power to coal and then oil, but the next transition - to nuclear - was stymied because people were too afraid of the risks. The oil shocks were political, but fundamentally the energy stagnation was technological. We compensated for this by innovating in digital technologies (“bits”), but these are somewhat less conducive to rapid productivity growth, so productivity stagnated ( this is the answer to the famous question of “WTF happened in 1971?” it was actually 1973, and it was the Oil Shock). And in the early 1970s, what had been a trend toward greater and greater energy use suddenly stopped, making it much harder to innovate in the physical realm: The energy revolutionĮnergy is fundamental to all physical technology - to move atoms around in real space, you need energy. So the jury is still out on whether that’s going to offer a productivity bonanza.īut despite these setbacks, stumbles, and headwinds, I’m still massively optimistic for the decade ahead.

Some still expect remote work to reshape our economy in positive ways, but some new research suggests that physically separating workers can reduce information sharing, and many companies are now demanding that workers return to their desks. Goldman Sachs, one of the early proponents of the Roaring Twenties thesis, is now forecasting anemic growth in the year ahead.Īlso, one of the most optimistic tech trends - the shift to remote work - might not be panning out as hoped.

After a great first quarter, labor productivity is now actually falling, due mostly to supply chain snarls disrupting production, but also possibly due to Covid variants and the uncertain and chaotic process of workers partially returning to the office. It’s still too early to tell whether we’ll get the Roaring Twenties that some have predicted. But it’s time to go back to my roots a little here. This isn’t because I’m less optimistic about technology, but because it’s very easy to get distracted by stuff like economic policy, social unrest, China’s economy, Covid, and so on. This blog started out a year ago as an explicitly techno-optimist blog, and I feel like I’ve gotten away from that a little bit.

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