Social change induced by technology

promotion and resistance

T. R. Lakshmanan

pp. 135-158

in: Nordal Åkerman (ed), The necessity of friction, Heidelberg, Physica, 1993

Abstract

Technological progress, offering on increase in output which is not commensurate with the increase in the costs necessary to generate it, is in the form of that rare thing in the economist's lexicon — a "free lunch". Countries or regions which take advantage of this "free lunch" through sustained technological progress over time, ratchet themselves to high levels of prosperity and modernize their social and economic structures. Notable example of such socio-technical transformation are Britain since 1775, United States from early Nineteenth Century, and Japan and Sweden in the last century or so.