“The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation” by Carl Benedikt Frey
This is a book worth reading.
How the history of technological revolutions can help us better understand economic and political polarization in the age of automation the technology trap is a sweeping account of the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. As Carl benedikt Frey shows, the industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of Mechanization were devastating. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the lab or share of Income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends broadly mirror those in our current age of automation. But, just as the industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. The technology trap demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present.
Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford. He is also a fellow at Mansfield College, the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford, and Lund University’s Department of Economic History. His book The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation (Princeton) was named a Financial Times Book of the Year. His scholarly work has been used by President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, the Bank of England, the World Bank, as well as featured in popular media, including Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Frey has also written for The Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and Foreign Affairs.
11 May 2025
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