Whither the evolution of the contemporary social fabric? New technologies and old socio-economic trends

Giovanni Dosi and Maria Enrica Virgillito

LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: The reflections which follow build on two interrelated questions, namely, first, whether we are witnessing another "industrial revolution", and second, what is the impact of technological transformations upon the current dynamics of the socio-economic fabric, especially with respect to employment, income distribution, working conditions and labour relations. We argue that the processes of innovation and diffusion of what we could call "intelligent automation" are likely to change, or more likely reinforce, the patterns of distribution of income and power, which have been there well before the arrival of the technologies we are concerned about: some are indeed intrinsic features of capitalism since its inception, while others are features of the last thirtyforty years. First, we shall offer a fresco of such tendencies which certainly preceded any potential "Fourth Industrial Revolution" but are going to be amplified by the latter. Second, we discuss the features of such possible new techno-economic paradigms. Third, we examine the relationships between technology, productivity and growth, and the ensuing impact on jobs, division of labour, distribution of knowledge, power, and control. Finally, we address some policy implications.

Keywords: Social fabric; technology; macroeconomic development; division of labour; knowledge; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2019-02.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Whither the evolution of the contemporary social fabric? New technologies and old socio‐economic trends (2019)
Working Paper: Whither the evolution of the contemporary social fabric? New technologies and old socio-economic trends (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2019/02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LEM Papers Series from Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).