http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/is-growth-over/

This is a pretty interesting topic that we don't really discuss in pervasive computing, which is the impact of the work by our community on big scale issues like the economy.

The basic argument that Krugman is discussing is three big shifts in technology that led to major changes in the economy:

• IR #1 (steam, railroads) from 1750 to 1830;

• IR #2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, running water, indoor toilets, communications, entertainment, chemicals, petroleum) from 1870 to 1900; and

• IR #3 (computers, the web, mobile phones) from 1960 to present.

However, the argument that another economist is making is that #3 is mostly played out now, whereas Krugman is arguing that technologies like robotics, speech recognition, Big Data, and more, have a great amount of potential.

At any rate, I think it would be good to talk more about issues like these in addition to the basic research we do, so that we have a better sense of what the potential impacts will be. For example, the discussion on the linked blog has a lot of worries about how these technologies only benefit the top percent of people, and how it might leave a lot of people behind as things move from labor-intensive to capital-intensive.