Posts Tagged ‘paradigms’
“There is often a decades-long time lag between the development of powerful new technologies and their widespread deployment”*…
Jerry Neumann explores the relevance of Carlota Perez‘s thinking (her concept of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts and theory of great surges, which built on Schumpeter’s work on Kondratieff waves) to the socio-economic moment in which we find ourselves…
I’ve been in the technology business for more than thirty years and for most of that time it’s felt like constant change. Is this the way innovation progresses, a never-ending stream of new things?
If you look at the history of technological innovation over the course of decades or centuries, not just years, it looks completely different. It looks like innovation comes in waves: great surges of technological development followed by quieter periods of adaptation.
The past 240 years have seen four of these great surges and the first half of a fifth…
Economist Carlota Perez in her 2002 book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital puts forward a theory that addresses the causes of these successive cycles and tries to explain why each cycle has a similar trajectory of growth and crisis. Her answers lie not just in technological change, but in the social, institutional, and financial aspects of our society itself…
Perez’ theory divides each cycle into two main parts: the installation period and the deployment period. Installation is from irruption to the crisis, and deployment is after the crisis. These are the ying and the yang of the cycle. Some of the differences between the two periods we’ve already mentioned—creative destruction vs. creative construction, financial capital vs. production capital, the battle of the new paradigm with the old vs. acceptance of the new TEP, etc…
We like theory because it tells us why, but more than that, a good theory is predictive. If Perez’ theory is correct, it should allow us to predict what will happen next in the current technological cycle…
A crisp distillation of Perez’s thinking and a provocative consideration of its possible meaning for our times: “The Age of Deployment,” from @ganeumann.
* Carlota Perez (@CarlotaPrzPerez)
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As we ride the waves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1901, 11 years after the suicide of Vincent Van Gogh (and as his vision and its impact flowered in its “Deployment Age”) a large retrospective of his work (71 paintings) was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. It captured the excitement of André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck— and thus contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.
“The idea that there might be limits to growth is for many people impossible to imagine”*…
At some level, we all know that nothing lasts forever…
In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources…
The report, authored by Donella Meadows and colleagues (working for Jay Forrester and the Club of Rome), was controversial from its release, with many pundits (often with sponsorship of mining, chemical, and petroleum companies)suggesting that the report’s logic’s flawed. But as scientists like Graham Turner of CSIRO observed in “A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality” just after after the turn of the century (summarized and updated here), the MIT team’s projections were alarmingly on track. A new study suggests that the LtG projections are holding still…
The analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms as measured by global revenue.The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.
The study represents the first time a top analyst working within a mainstream global corporate entity has taken the ‘limits to growth’ model seriously. Its author, Gaya Herrington, is Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG in the United States. However, she decided to undertake the research as a personal project to understand how well the MIT model stood the test of time.
The study itself is not affiliated or conducted on behalf of KPMG, and does not necessarily reflect the views of KPMG. Herrington performed the research as an extension of her Masters thesis at Harvard University in her capacity as an advisor to the Club of Rome. However, she is quoted explaining her project on the KPMG website as follows:
“Given the unappealing prospect of collapse, I was curious to see which scenarios were aligning most closely with empirical data today. After all, the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s, and by now we’d have several decades of empirical data which would make a comparison meaningful. But to my surprise I could not find recent attempts for this. So I decided to do it myself.”
Titled ‘Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data’, the study attempts to assess how MIT’s ‘World3’ model stacks up against new empirical data. Previous studies that attempted to do this found that the model’s worst-case scenarios accurately reflected real-world developments. However, the last study of this nature [Graham Turner’s update, as above] was completed in 2014.
Herrington’s new analysis examines data across 10 key variables, namely population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint. She found that the latest data most closely aligns with two particular scenarios, ‘BAU2’ (business-as-usual) and ‘CT’ (comprehensive technology).
“BAU2 and CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now,” the study concludes. “Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible. Even when paired with unprecedented technological development and adoption, business as usual as modelled by LtG would inevitably lead to declines in industrial capital, agricultural output, and welfare levels within this century.”
Study author Gaya Herrington told Motherboard that in the MIT World3 models, collapse “does not mean that humanity will cease to exist,” but rather that “economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline, which will hurt food production and standards of living… In terms of timing, the BAU2 scenario shows a steep decline to set in around 2040.”…
“MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.” The headline notwithstanding, The MIT team’s study didn’t so much make predictions as it played out a systems dynamics model in order to identify issues that might emerge. And like any model, theirs was rooted in assumptions that could/should have eroded over the last 50 years… which makes the fact that “reality” seems to be tracing the contours thatchy sketched even more notable. Time to revisit those assumptions… Bracing– but important– reading.
[Image above: source]
* Donella Meadows
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As we get serious, we might send systemic birthday greetings to Thomas Samuel Kuhn; he died on this date in 1996. A physicist, historian, and philosopher of science, Kuhn believed that scientific knowledge didn’t advance in a linear, continuous way, but via periodic “paradigm shifts.” Karl Popper had approached the same territory in his development of the principle of “falsification” (to paraphrase, a theory isn’t false until it’s proven true; it’s true until it’s proven false). But while Popper worked as a logician, Kuhn worked as a historian. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions made his case; and while he had– and has— his detractors, Kuhn’s work has been deeply influential in both academic and popular circles (indeed, the phrase “paradigm shift” has become an English-language staple).
“What man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conception experience has taught him to see.”
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
“Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness…. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”*…
Mental models can be helpful, but they can also obscure as much as they reveal…
“The era of big government is over,” then-US President Bill Clinton proclaimed in 1996. But President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar spending plans are suggesting precisely the opposite. Behind the politicians stand the policy gurus, eager to put their names on – as the fashionable phrase goes – a new “policy paradigm.”
Paradigm-peddlers have not yet settled on a single label for the post-pandemic era, but frothy ideas abound. Countries should “build back better,” but only after a “great reset.” Economic growth used to be a pretty good thing on its own; these days, it is unmentionable in polite company unless it is “inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.” (I can see why, but must all three adjectives always be strung together?)
…
Harvard University’s Dani Rodrik was right to argue recently that we should beware of economists bearing policy paradigms. Such frameworks are supposed to organize thinking, but more often than not they substitute for it.
Consider a paradigm that the pandemic is supposed to have killed: neoliberalism. Neoliberal once meant a particular approach to free-market economics. Applying the description to leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan made some sense. But in current parlance, the term also applies to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and the social democrats who have governed Chile for 24 of the last 30 years – in fact, to anyone who thinks markets have some role to play in human affairs.
Through repeated, careless use, neoliberal has now become one of those words that, as George Orwell said, “are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader.”
But meaningless is not the same as useless. If a speaker at an academic seminar, policy conference, or cocktail party tars someone as a neoliberal, two messages are immediately clear: the speaker is good, and the target is bad, unconcerned with the plight of the downtrodden. Tarring someone with this particular epithet is virtue-signaling par excellence. It marks the speaker as a member of a progressive tribe concerned about the world’s poor.
The right has its own ideological identity markers. In the debate about Obamacare and health insurance in the United States, or about vouchers for school funding anywhere, anyone claiming to support “freedom of choice” is not just making a point, but also sending a signal.
Both freedom and choice have multiple meanings that philosophers have been debating at least since classical Greek times: freedom to or freedom from? Choice to do what? Is someone with little money or education really “free to choose,” as the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman used to say? In fact, today’s freedom-of-choice advocates probably do not want to pursue those ancient and endless debates; they are simply signaling their membership in the ideological free-market tribe.
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As the world seeks to ensure recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, simplistic political and economic ideologies will not lead to effective policymaking. Rodrik rightly pines for economic thinking that is unbeholden to cliché or to narrow identity politics. As he says, “The right answer to any policy question in economics is, ‘It depends.’” Circumstances matter, and the devil is in the details.
I want the same thing as Rodrik, but you can’t always get what you want. Because nowadays (at least outside Trumpian circles) identities based on race or religion are unacceptable, ideologies have become the last refuge of the identity-seeking and politically savvy scoundrel, and new economic paradigms the weapon of choice…
In the old joke, a man walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, “Doctor, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken.” The doctor says, “Why don’t you bring him to me?” And the man replies, “I would, but I need the eggs.”
Political ideologies can be crazy, and those who peddle them often behave like chickens. But how we crave those eggs…
Simplistic political and economic ideologies that serve as identity markers will not lead to effective policymaking; but something in human psychology makes many crave them anyway: “The Perils of Paradigm Economics,” from Andrés Velasco (@AndresVelasco).
[image above: source]
* George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
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As we acknowledge nuance, we might send qualified birthday greetings to Sidney James Webb; he was born on this date in 1859. An economist, he was an early member of the Fabian Society (joining, like George Bernard Shaw, three months after its founding). He co-founded the London School of Economics (where Andrés Velasco is currently Dean of the School of Public Policy), and wrote the original, pro-nationalisation Clause IV for the British Labour Party.
A committed socialist, Webb and his wife Beatrice were staunch supporters of the Soviet Union and its communist program. Ignoring the mounting evidence of atrocities in the USSR in favor of their commitment to the concept of collectivism, they wrote Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? (1935) and The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942), both positive assessments of Stalin’s regime. The Trotskyist historian Al Richardson later described Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? as “pure Soviet propaganda at its most mendacious.”
“We are charmed by neatness”*…
In the spirit of our earlier examination of Knolling (“To Knoll It Is To Love It…“)…
… from Austin Radcliffe…
* Ovid
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As we get things lined up, we might spare a thought for for an enemy of ordered neatness (at least, of the complacent intellectual kind), Thomas Samuel Kuhn; he died on this date in 1996. A physicist, historian, and philosopher of science , Kuhn believed that scientific knowledge didn’t advance in a linear, continuous way, but via periodic “paradigm shifts.” Karl Popper had approached the same territory in his development of the principle of “falsification” (to paraphrase, a theory isn’t false until it’s proven true; it’s true until it’s proven false). But while Popper worked as a logician, Kuhn worked as a historian. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions made his case; and while he had– and has— his detractors, Kuhn’s work has been deeply influential in both academic and popular circles (indeed, the phrase “paradigm shift” has become an English-language staple).
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