Robert Gordon’s magisterial new book The Rise and Fall of American Growth is in sharp contrast to the technological optimism which bubbles out of Silicon Valley.  Briefly put – (the volume runs to 700 pages), the argument is that the years from 1870 to 1970 were what he calls “the special century’. Someone born under Disraeli who lived to see Edward Heath as Prime MInister would have seen horse drawn transport give way to automobiles and airplanes. Born when medical services were essentially useless, she would have seen cures for most infectious. diseases., and experienced  the introduction into homes of electric light, indoor plumbing and colour television.

Gordon characterises the last fifty years as  ‘dazzling but disappointing’.  We are dazzled because our attention is focussed on advances in entertainment, communications and information technology. The disappointment is partly statistical; productivity growth has slowed. And outside ICT there have been no advances in materials, or fuel technologies, or food production and distribution, comparable to those of the ‘special century’. Boeing’s first 747 flew in 1969, and today’s jumbo jets are recognisably similar.  The great blockbuster drugs have, it seems, already been discovered. While American productivity enjoyed a spurt in the 1990s as digital  innovations transformed our personal and business lives, the special century is unlikely to be repeated.  The headwinds which America will experience from its ageing population and inadequate educational system mean that little increase in living standards can be expected.

Confounding technological enthusiasts, the sceptical Gordon observes  that progress in introducing robotics into service activities is ‘glacially slow’.   Amazon employs product pickers, Delivery  drivers still mostly load and unload their trucks manually.  Sceptical of driverless cars, Gordon asks what commuters will actually do with the time they do not have to spend behind the wheel.

But the glass may be half full, not half empty. If not much seems to have happened, it is because we see that much is yet to come.   No great effort of imagination is required to visualise machines that unload casks of beer or stack supermarket shelves.  And if we trust robots to undertake surgery, why should they not offer pedicures or cut hair, as people become more expensive and machines cheaper.  Perhaps the future of technological progress is in the application of information technology to things which do not at first sight have much to do with information technology.

Such opportunities are of two kinds. Computers can now replace human operatives in well defined repetitive, tasks, even if these tasks are extremely complex.  Examples are the driverless car, the robotic hairdresser, (inane chat optional), the computerised conveyancier  the robo adviser as portfolio manager , and the digital doctor. Many traditional middle class occupations will be eliminated in this way. 

The more subtle, and perhaps more profound, development is the capacity of digital processing to aid the discovery of things that will form the basis of new technologies. Gene sequencing and big data are likely to shape the future of medicine. Progress in battery technology was achingly slow in the ‘special century’ but is now advancing by leaps and bounds thanks to the analytic capabilities in the hands of today’s researchers.If the world became wired in the ‘special century’ ,perhaps it becomes wireless in the next.

And do not underestimate the increase in  the speed of adoption of innovation. Ben Franklin discovered electricity in 1752 and Robert Trevithick’s car – the Puffing Devil – took to the roads of Camborne in 1801, but only towards the end of the special century  were electricity and automobiles available to most households.  The first smartphone was sold in 2007 and today 1.5 billion are in use.  The limits to productivity growth are set only by the limits to human inventiveness.