At the beginning of the 21st century, technological progress foreshadows a labor market that bifurcates along a fundamental divide: rewarding those whose productivity is enhanced by computers and smart software, but leaving behind the many who are competing against the algorithms. Average, some say, is over; expecting a slowly grinding workforce adjustment to follow suit.
The study of the social consequences from the Industrial Revolution offers an opportunity to contemplate how society may respond to widespread economic upheaval. The emergence of powerful machinery and the factory displaced swathes of manual labor and craft occupations. The subsequent half century, termed "Engel’s pause" after a scathing analysis of Karl Marx's coauthor, was a period of stagnant wages in the midst of an unprecedented rise in output per worker. Yet while it imposed deep economic hardship on large parts of the society that had to live through it, in hindsight, the Industrial Revolution is the starting point of a monumental advance in global welfare whose revocation is undesirable even to its harshest critics.
This course invites its participants to learn from a comparison of the Industrial Revolution with different scenarios for the rise of smart technologies. Grounded in a thorough analysis of the economic and social contortions past and forecasted, we investigate which policy adjustments our shared social responsibility may or may not be calling for.
- Enseignant·e: Johannes Fritz