whereas my grandmother would have been at sea if returned to her girlhood home, I would miss relatively little if suddenly placed in the home I grew up in. It takes longer and is less comfortable to fly from Boston to Washington or London than it was 40 years ago. There are more highways now but much more traffic congestion as well. Life expectancy has continued to increase, though at about half the pace it did during my grandmother’s day. But the most important transformation—child death being an extraordinary event—had already happened by the time I was born.
Pointers from both Mark Thoma and Tyler Cowen.
If you compare 1900 to 1960, you can point to a few innovations that transformed America. The car, radio and television, and household appliances like refrigerators and vacuum cleaners.
Has there been comparable transformation since 1960? I would say that there has, but the improvements have been distributed differently and are not embedded as much in tangible goods.
Take air travel. The main reason that flying takes longer and is less comfortable (for Larry) is that air travel is no longer a luxury. Many more people can afford to fly. As for me, I would say that air travel is more comfortable. I’ll take no-smoking flights, noise-canceling headphones, and on-board WIFI over more legroom any day. For that matter, if you want extra legroom, you can pay for it–you still end up flying for less money than you did 40 years ago.
I think it is easy to forget what computer and communications technology have done. Traveling overseas is remarkably easier now. My wife and I had a vacation in Croatia a couple years ago that we could never have planned and executed in the days before TripAdvisor and GPS. More recently, when we were in Israel, we got around easily by bus, because my daughter could use Google Maps to find bus routes and she had an app telling her when the buses were coming.
Forty years ago, the only affordable long-distance communication tool was snail mail. I don’t know about Larry, but for me going back to that would not be so simple.
YouTube is another service that we take for granted but which has a broad, significant impact. For example, one of my favorite hobbies is folk dancing. It has been dramatically transformed by YouTube. Session leaders find out about new dances much more quickly. As a dancer, when you don’t pick up a dance the first time it is taught, you can go to YouTube and get a review.
Another subtle difference is in the nature of work. Forty years ago, a much higher percentage of jobs were dangerous, physically demanding, and unpleasant.
Forty years ago, people were buying Pintos and Vegas, and you would be lucky if one of those cars lasted five years. Nowadays, our cars last 15 years, and even then the only reason to buy a new one is to take advantage of new features like backup cameras and satellite radio.
I think that the main difference between today’s innovations and those of the first half of the twentieth century is in the distribution of benefits. Within the United States, the benefits of globalization and the Internet may be less widespread than were the benefits of the automobile and the television. But from a world perspective, contemporary innovations may have broader impact than previous innovations. As of 1970, the durable goods that were enjoyed by the American middle class were accessible only to a thin upper layer of consumers in poor countries. The penetration of smart phones in those countries is very much higher. Because of globalization, many people in China and India can participate as producers and consumers in the world economy.
I remember when I was kid in the mid 70s it was a HUGE event when ‘Gone With The Wind’ was broadcast — once! — on TV:
http://www.tvworthwatching.com/post/THISDAYINTVHISTORY201211077.aspx
Even the availability VHS rental tapes was a cultural watershed. And flying — yes, definitely — I flew on a commercial jet exactly once before I was an adult and then only because my wealthy grandparents paid for it. My family drove everywhere, including halfway across the country to ski in Colorado (we were not poor by any means, but flying the whole family was much too expensive). Now a round-trip airline ticket to Denver can be had for $200 while a one-day, adult lift ticket at Aspen Mountain is $150. Seriously. In the 60s and 70s, the cars were unreliable, dangerous, and inefficient. Food and beer were lousy. The handful of channels of broadcast TV were filled with dreck. I had a home dark room. The amount of work it took to produce a few B&W prints is amazing now (and doing color was vastly harder still). I found a 1963 ad for developing and printing a 20 exposure roll of Kodacolor for $3.49. That’s $27 in 2015 dollars. And it doesn’t include the initial cost of the film. You could buy a decent compact digital camera now for the cost of shooting and developing 2-3 rolls of film in the early 60s. And that camera will replace (and vastly improve upon) your low-res, no-sound 8mm movie camera (and, again, with no cost for film and processing). You couldn’t pay me enough to go back.
I’m not surprised, though, that wealthy people like Summers might feel nostalgic for a time when class distinctions were much sharper and middle class people were priced out of flying and many other activities enjoyed by the rich.
Summers is likely wrong about his grandmother vs himself. He imagines his grandmother would have been “at sea” on a return to her childhood home from a comparative point in her life (Summers is 61). I seriously doubt that is true- what is probably true is that Summers would have been “at sea” in his grandmother’s childhood, and he mistakes this personal point of view for her’s.
Take air travel. The main reason that flying takes longer and is less comfortable (for Larry) is that air travel is no longer a luxury. Many more people can afford to fly.
Yes but is the rate of “democratization” of technology any different from 1980-2015 than say 1930-1965? Passengers miles in the U.S. went from 85 million to 1.052 billion from 1930 to 1940, a growth rate of about 25% a year. (See Dan Bogart’s chapter in the “Routledge Handbook of Modern Economic History”). And it’s not a war effect, the growth rate in subsequent decades blows today’s growth out of the water as well. Ryanair is cool, but it’s nothing at all like what we saw in the days of high productivity growth, wifi or not. And that’s along with substantially higher rates of growth in speed.
That seems like pretty weak evidence to make an argument that declining productivity growth is not a real phenomenon, and I remain perplexed that anti-stagnationists think it’s convincing, since the numbers clearly reinforce a view that the growth rate in number of passengers is declining, substantially.
“Yes but is the rate of “democratization” of technology any different from 1980-2015 than say 1930-1965? ”
I think it is. What’s lead the time now between a new product being introduced and its becoming affordable to the masses? In fact, hasn’t that time pretty much vanished (almost anybody who wants to prioritize it, can afford an iPhone 6).
Observe that in the developing world (for complex reasons) some *recent* technologies are being adopted more rapidly than older ones.
There are substantial numbers of households in the developing world, notably India and Africa, that have cellular phones but do not have grid electricity. (Leading to a lot of work in the clean cookstove community to add phone charging TEGs to stoves….)
Why? Partly because wireless telecom is much easier to deploy than say grid electricity or water or sewer systems.
But also probably because in part, telecom is fundamentally different. The poor already have *some* (often miserable) story for energy, food, water, sanitation. They almost by definition don’t already have some story for telematic communications.
And for comparison, I would be pretty much at loose ends in *my own house* of merely 20 years ago. (It’s been a 99th percentile house in its features that whole time….)
Great topic, in which I find myself (unusually) in complete disagreement with our host. Just to focus on flying – in the early 1970’s I used to fly from the east coast to Chicago for $50, sometimes half that much on student discount. I frequently arrived at the airport 15 minutes before my flight, had lots of legroom and of course less crowded seats. I could use ear plugs for the noise, and it was a wonderful time to spend a few hours reading. I used to really enjoy flying (and in the 70’s I was a poor student). Flying is much nastier now and for many flights not really cheaper. (Side note – in the 70’s, a regular middle class family could afford a private airplane if they were interested, and in certain parts of the country that was fairly common. Gone, gone, gone.)
Summer’s grandmother saw the iceboxes, horses, steamships, outhouses, of her early childhood succeeded by automobiles, airplane travel, central heat, hot water, washing machines, refrigerators, paved intercity roads, radio and television, movies (and talkies) of the 50’s and 60’s. We’ve seen nothing like that. Sure, computers, internet, wi-fi and especially cell phones are very nice, and they do make a big difference, but nothing like the changes of the first 2/3 of the twentieth century.
My wife just flew round trip from Chicago to San Diego for $59 on Spirit. And the need to get to the airport early now has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with non market interference.
Don’t disagree regarding the non-market interference, but of course without non-market inteference those long-ago fares would have been cheaper as well.
Well $50 in the early 1970s is nearly $300 today. I just flew to Chicago from the east coast for slightly over $300 and had plenty of legroom, so not much different. The reason that you have to arrive a hour plus ahead of time is entirely due to government security theater. It has nothing to do with technology.
I wonder what his basis is for claiming that it takes longer fly from Boston to Washington or London than it was 40 years ago.
Unless he’s referring to the Concorde, which was ultra-expensive and not available for a Boston-Washington or Boston-London flight in any event, I highly doubt the actual flight time is longer now. If he’s referring to the additional time due to security theater, that’s not really a reflection of technological progress or lack thereof. You can easily get direct flights for any of these routes, so the hub-and-spoke system isn’t the issue. Anybody know what he’s talking about?
I will put up with the TSA when the new Porcine Airways begins carrying.
Nobody flies anymore, it’s too crowded. But seriously, some penneration doesn’t feel like progress…but enough about the TSA.
The technological changes in the first half of the 20th century were unique. A new energy source (oil), new power method (electricity) with the accompanying technology to exploit those new methods were unprecedented in human history. Not to mention, that nasty free market/capitalism to bring it all rapidly to an increasing amount of the population. A good adventure through the changes is ‘The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950’ (1952), by Frederick Allen Lewis. A new work covering the next 50 years would have many wonders, but not as transformative in the physical. The following 15 would also have wonders, if the smear of time were block off.
But a lot of the transformations in recent years have been happening in the infrastructure. Advances in power electronics have permitted new, more efficient and affordable uses to electric motors. But it doesn’t appear so transformative as dropping in the windings, stator, etc. In fact, the new technology often uses the old motors, just replacing the guts of the motor controller box on the bulkhead. And also appearing in the electronics of electric vehicles instead of in a controller box the size of the battery.
I suppose, ironically, whereas the automobile permitted escape from the farm, at least more often, and when autos came on the market extra earnings in good years went to buying a car or truck instead of painting the barn in the past, today the technology permits individuals to remain on the farm but still engage the wider world in real time. It’s like the world expanded due to technology, but no longer requires one to endure that, reportedly worse, flight anymore to take advantage of it.
The author of The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950 is Frederick Lewis Allen, not Frederick Allen Lewis. He is also the author of the classic Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s.
I think there’s been a lot of progress in the last 40 years, but the most substantial changes have come in finding new ways to refine technologies that have already existed, whereas the century before that was mostly about creating new technologies that were categorically different than what was previously there.
The latter seems to be more useful for creating jobs and raising income. The former more useful for creating comfort and ease of use.