Activity

In the first half of 2018, as stock market indexes (especially the tech-heavy NASDAQ) blew through historical highs, a total of six companies, all usually lumped in the category of the “tech”—or, more broadly, the “Internet”—sector, generated a full 99 percent of the S&P 500 index’s gains for the y…

[...] In 2007, only one of what are now called the “Big Tech” firms made the list (Microsoft); today, the top seven slots are occupied by such firms, the first five nominally u.s. companies, the other two, Chinese. Apple entered the list in the last quarter of 2009, as the “recovery” began, its mar…

The argument I make in Smart Machines and Service Work takes a different tack altogether. I make the case that there are three primary reasons for the relatively insignificant impact new forms of automation are having on labor productivity growth rates in the world’s advanced economies. First, the …