How should we think about new and
Optimists like to point out that technology has been the greatest force for human welfare in the history of the species. They’re right. Before the Industrial Revolution, societies like the Roman Empire in the 1st century A.D. or Sung China in 1000 A.D. were as rich as people could get. But after fossil fuels, steam engines, electricity and other modern technologies arrived, prosperity in advanced countries rose far beyond anything that had been imaginable before:
