General Purpose Technologies Quotes

“This survey of transforming [general-purpose technologies] illustrates why we argue that one cannot explain the long-run growth record of the West, or the world, without understanding technology. Further, one cannot properly understand technology when it is formulated merely as a scalar in a production function. Instead, one must comprehend each technology’s characteristics and channels of structural impacts. Along with the masses of incremental changes in technology that are important sources of economic growth from year to year, every once in a while comes a new GPT that causes major structural adjustments and changes in our way of life, as well as rejuvenating the growth process by presenting a whole new research programme for finding improvements in, and applications for, the new GPT.”
― Richard G. Lipsey, Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth