Regarding the ‘demand cycle’, I thinkTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez is relevant here. Basically technological progress goes through two broad phases of installation and deployment, each with two parts. Installation seems to relate to your 1 and 2 above, while deployment is #3, and it seems to me where progress has stalled. When the progress we have made and the demand we’ve created for that progress is deployed in a way that seems arbitrary or lackluster, the problem goes from stagnation (agent-less) to strangulation (agent-driven).
Perez frames the deployment period as a golden age of synergy that leads to maturity, where the cycle starts over. If that golden age is poorly distributed, then maturity looks less like well-earned growth and more like ossification. Related is the literature on the psychological effects of unfulfilled desire, including being unable to complete things, the inability to acquire, realize gains, pull things in and compose with them.
To take two examples from above, Apple and climate change have both successfully injected demand across the cycle, rather than just frontloading it and letting the chips fall. Apple’s deployment as a firm is much more ‘orderly’ than climate change (a broad movement), whose deployment ranges from dematerialization to anti-natalism to summits with world leaders. Satisfying our desire for Apple products is pretty straightforward, while satisfying our desire to prevent the worst of climate change is much more complicated.
Regarding the ‘demand cycle’, I thinkTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez is relevant here. Basically technological progress goes through two broad phases of installation and deployment, each with two parts. Installation seems to relate to your 1 and 2 above, while deployment is #3, and it seems to me where progress has stalled. When the progress we have made and the demand we’ve created for that progress is deployed in a way that seems arbitrary or lackluster, the problem goes from stagnation (agent-less) to strangulation (agent-driven).
Perez frames the deployment period as a golden age of synergy that leads to maturity, where the cycle starts over. If that golden age is poorly distributed, then maturity looks less like well-earned growth and more like ossification. Related is the literature on the psychological effects of unfulfilled desire, including being unable to complete things, the inability to acquire, realize gains, pull things in and compose with them.
To take two examples from above, Apple and climate change have both successfully injected demand across the cycle, rather than just frontloading it and letting the chips fall. Apple’s deployment as a firm is much more ‘orderly’ than climate change (a broad movement), whose deployment ranges from dematerialization to anti-natalism to summits with world leaders. Satisfying our desire for Apple products is pretty straightforward, while satisfying our desire to prevent the worst of climate change is much more complicated.