Edison relaunches appointments with the most prestigious figures in the international economy. Guest of Edison Open 4EXPO it's the professor Joel Mokyr, of the University of Chicago. Extremely eclectic figure, professor of Economics and Economic History, Art and Science, and counter-current intellectual who does not spare attacks on colleagues, guilty, according to him, of looking at the world through analytical instruments surpassed by reality.
Mokyr, during the conference "Is the scientific revolution something that belongs to the past?", focuses on the great changes that technological advances are bringing to all of our lives. Non-measurable benefits, which are not included in the calculation of GDP, "a parameter that adapts to interpreting a reality made up of steel and wheat". The professor debunks the arguments of economists convinced that the new generations will not be richer than their fathers and that economic growth has stopped in the XNUMXth century.
That things are not like this at all, Mokyr argues, history bears witness to. Just think of how slow growth was before the 800th century and how much new technical solutions have contributed to the leap forward in scientific knowledge. Like the improvement of optics, which allowed the creation of the microscope and the study of bacteria and cells, with evident repercussions in the medical field; Volta's invention of the battery that helped advance knowledge in chemistry; up to the prevailing digitization of society and quantum computers that process a huge number of data, whether it's molecular genetics, nanotechnology or medieval poetry, or smartphones and apps that make existence easier.
The constant interaction between science and technology, explains Mokyr, continues to improve the quality and expectancy of life. “The economy can find itself facing headwinds, – says the professor – but the wind that drives technology is like a tornado”, disruptive and unstoppable. And as the axiom dictates: where technology and science advance, the economy also grows. “Our time has created occupations that would have sounded grotesque to our grandparents: from computer security experts, to game designers, to animal psychologists, but we need to acknowledge the changes. It is the lack of imagination that induces pessimism”.
