>Rod Hay wrote: > >>I don't doubt that these things are happening at least marginally, but does >>this constitute a "revolution" similar in importance as the industrial >>revolution in the 19th century or the corporate revolution in the 20th >>century. > >Computers are over 50 years old now; they're no longer some new kid on the >technological block. Also, radical and ceaseless technological change is as >old as capitalism; to argue that there's some qualitatively new aspect to >new technologies would require that you prove the rate of technical change >has accelerated. Why is the tech revo all that much more revolutionary than >the telegraph, the steamship, the telephone, or radio? > >Doug Because it requires new forms of property relations? Just as the British agricultural revolution could not be accomplished without the enclosure of the common lands and the destruction of feudal property relations in the countryside, and just as J.P. Morgan could not have created the Gilded Age oligopolies without the creation of limited liability, so the <blank> will not <blank> unless <blank>. I'm just asking. I don't know the answer. Unlike many who post here, I do not have the key to the riddle of history in my pocket... Brad DeLong -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." --J.M. Keynes -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley; Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives. Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones (510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes http://econ161.berkeley.edu/ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
