Innovationpessimism

　　創(chuàng)新悲觀論

　　Hasthe ideas machine broken down?

　　思維機(jī)器出故障了嗎?

　　Theidea that innovation and new technology have stopped driving growth is gettingincreasing attention. But it is not well founded

　　創(chuàng)新和新技術(shù)已經(jīng)不再推動增長的觀點正在引發(fā)越來越多的注意力，但這種想法是沒有根據(jù)的。

　　Jan12th 2023 | from the print edition

　　BOOMtimes are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once againadorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is thedemand for fancy vacation homes in resort towns like Lake Tahoe, a sign offortunes being amassed. The Bay Area was the birthplace of the semiconductorindustry and the computer and internet companies that have grown up in itswake. Its wizards provided many of the marvels that make the world feelfuturistic, from touch-screen phones to the instantaneous searching of greatlibraries to the power to pilot a drone thousands of miles away. The revival inits business activity since 2010 suggests progress is motoring on.

　　硅谷再現(xiàn)繁榮。101公路沿線的辦公園區(qū)再次貼滿了信心十足的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司標(biāo)志，隨著對太浩湖等旅游城鎮(zhèn)中度假屋需求的增加，租金在飛漲，財富在累積。灣區(qū)是半導(dǎo)體產(chǎn)業(yè)以及隨之發(fā)展起來的計算機(jī)和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司的誕生地。從觸屏手機(jī)到對大型圖書館的即時搜索再到操控數(shù)千英里之外的無人機(jī)的能力，這里的天才帶來了許多奇跡，讓世界產(chǎn)生了進(jìn)入未來的感覺。2011年以來，這里的商業(yè)活動在復(fù)興。它告訴人們，進(jìn)步正在隆隆向前。

　　Soit may come as a surprise that some in Silicon Valley think the place isstagnant, and that the rate of innovation has been slackening for decades.Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, an internet payment company, and the first outsideinvestor in Facebook, a social network, says that innovation in America is somewhere between dire straits and dead.Engineers in all sorts of areas share similar feelings of disappointment. And asmall but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of theinnovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past.

　　因此，當(dāng)某些硅谷人士認(rèn)為這里已經(jīng)已經(jīng)停滯不前，而且創(chuàng)新的速率幾十年來一直在放緩時，你可能會感到驚訝。在線支付公司PayPal的創(chuàng)始人之一、社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)臉譜的第一位外部投資人皮特泰爾認(rèn)為，在美國，創(chuàng)新正處于困境與死亡之間的某個地方。各領(lǐng)域的工程師有著相同的失望情緒。有人認(rèn)為，相比過去，當(dāng)代創(chuàng)新的經(jīng)濟(jì)影響力可能顯得黯然失色。持這種觀點的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家雖然只是一小部分，但人數(shù)正在增加。

　　Some suspect that the rich world s economicdoldrums may be rooted in a long-term technological stasis. In a 2011 e-bookTyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, argued that the financialcrisis was masking a deeper and more disturbing Great Stagnation. It wasthis which explained why growth in rich-world real incomes and employment hadlong been slowing and, since 2000, had hardly risen at all . Thevarious motors of 20th-century growthsome technological,some nothad played themselves out, and new technologies were not going tohave the same invigorating effect on the economies of the future. For all itsflat-screen dazzle and high-bandwidth pizzazz, it seemed the world had run outof ideas.

　　有人懷疑，富國的經(jīng)濟(jì)低迷可能根植于長期的技術(shù)停頓。喬治梅森大學(xué)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家泰勒柯文在2011年出版的一本電子書中指出，金融危機(jī)正在掩蓋一次更深層次而且是更令人不安的大停滯。正是這種觀點解釋了為什么富國的實際收入和就業(yè)率一直在放緩并且自2000年以來幾乎沒有增長的原因。20世紀(jì)增長的各種引擎有些是技術(shù)方面的，有些不是已經(jīng)熄火，而且新技術(shù)不會給未來經(jīng)濟(jì)帶來相同的激勵效應(yīng)。盡管超薄顯示器和高速寬帶令人目不暇接，但世界似乎已經(jīng)耗盡了靈感。

　　Glide path

　　滑行道

　　The argument that the world is on a technological plateau runs alongthree lines. The first comes from growth statistics. Economists divide growthinto two different types, extensive and intensive. Extensive growth is a matter of adding more and/or better labour,capital and resources. These are the sort of gains that countries saw fromadding women to the labour force in greater numbers and increasing workers education.And, as Mr Cowen notes, this sort of growth is subject to diminishing returns:the first addition will be used where it can do most good, the tenth where itcan do the tenth-most good, and so on. If this were the only sort of growththere was, it would end up leaving incomes just above the subsistence level.

　　有關(guān)世界正處于技術(shù)巔峰的論調(diào)有三個方面的內(nèi)容。第一個方面的內(nèi)容來自增長的統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家把增長分為兩種類型：外延型和內(nèi)涵型。外延性增長是指投入更多的和/或更好的勞動力、資本和資源。此類增長的成果見于將更多的婦女投入勞動力市場以及提高工人的教育程度的國家。同時，正如柯文所言，此類增長受制于回報遞減：使用第一個增加量的地方能發(fā)揮其最大作用，使用第十個增加量地方能發(fā)揮其十分之一的作用，以此類推。若這是增長的唯一類型，其結(jié)果是令收入僅僅高于生存的層次。

　　Intensive growth is powered by the discovery of ever better ways touse workers and resources. This is the sort of growth that allows continuousimprovement in incomes and welfare, and enables an economy to grow even as itspopulation decreases. Economists label the all-purpose improvement factorresponsible for such growth technologythough it includes things like better laws and regulations as wellas technical advanceand measure it using a technique called growthaccounting. In this accounting, technology is the bit left over after calculating the effect on GDP of thingslike labour, capital and education. And at the moment, in the rich world, itlooks like there is less of it about. Emerging markets still manage fastgrowth, and should be able to do so for some time, because they are catching upwith technologies already used elsewhere. The rich world has no such engine topull it along, and it shows.

　　內(nèi)涵型增長受比以往更好的利用工人和資源的方式的發(fā)現(xiàn)所推動。正是此類增長實現(xiàn)了收入和福利的持續(xù)改善，并且讓經(jīng)濟(jì)體即便在人口減少的情況下也能實現(xiàn)增長。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家為帶來此類增長的提高因素貼上了技術(shù)的標(biāo)簽盡管除了技術(shù)進(jìn)步之外，還包括更完善的法律法規(guī)并且用增長核算這個專業(yè)術(shù)語作為衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。在這種核算體系中，在計算各種因素對GDP的影響時，技術(shù)被排在勞動力、資本和教育之后。從目前來看，富國的技術(shù)因素比原來要少。新興市場依舊在保持快速增長，并且應(yīng)當(dāng)能夠持續(xù)一段時間，這是因為新興市場正在追趕早已在其他地方得到應(yīng)用的技術(shù)。眾所周知，富國不具備這種帶動其前進(jìn)的引擎。

　　This is hardly unusual. For most of humanhistory, growth in output and overall economic welfare has been slow andhalting. Over the past two centuries, first in Britain, Europe and America,then elsewhere, it took off. In the 19th century growth in output per persona usefulgeneral measure of an economy s productivity, and a good guide to growth inincomesaccelerated steadily in Britain. By 1906 it was more than 1% a year.By the middle of the 20th century, real output per person in America wasgrowing at a scorching 2.5% a year, a pace at which productivity and incomesdouble once a generation . More than a century of increasinglypowerful and sophisticated machines were obviously a part of that story, as wasthe rising amount of fossil-fuel energy available to drive them.

　　這是非常正常的。在人類歷史的大部分時間里，產(chǎn)出和整體經(jīng)濟(jì)福利的增長一直在減慢并且逐漸趨向停滯。在過去的2個世紀(jì)中，先是英國、歐洲和美國，然后是其他地方，增長開始起飛。在19世紀(jì)時，人均產(chǎn)出增長一個有用的衡量經(jīng)濟(jì)體生產(chǎn)力的通用標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，并且是收入增長的有效指標(biāo)在英國呈穩(wěn)步加速狀態(tài)。到1906年，年均經(jīng)濟(jì)增長超過1%。到20世紀(jì)中葉，美國的人均實際產(chǎn)出以年均2.5%飛速增長，這種速度使生產(chǎn)力和收入在一代人的時間里實現(xiàn)了翻番。這個過程中一個顯而易見的事實是，各類機(jī)器在一個多世紀(jì)的時間里日漸強(qiáng)大和成熟起來，同時，對驅(qū)動機(jī)器的化石能源的使用量也在增加。

　　But in the 1970s America s growth in real output per person droppedfrom its post-second-world-war peak of over 3% a year to just over 2% a year.In the 2000s it tumbled below 1%. Output per worker per hour shows a similarpattern, according to Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University:it is pretty good for most of the 20th century, then slumps in the 1970s. Itbounced back between 1996 and 2004, but since 2004 the annual rate has fallento 1.33%, which is as low as it was from 1972 to 1996. Mr Gordon muses that thepast two centuries of economic growth might actually amount to just one big wave of dramaticchange rather than a new era of uninterrupted progress, and that the world isreturning to a regime in which growth is mostly of the extensive sort .

　　但是，到了20世紀(jì)70年代，美國的人均實際產(chǎn)出增長從二戰(zhàn)后巔峰時期的年均3%下降到年均略超2%。進(jìn)入21世紀(jì)后，增長暴跌到1%以下。據(jù)美國西北大學(xué)的羅伯特戈登測算，每小時的人均產(chǎn)出呈現(xiàn)出相同的模式：在20世紀(jì)的大部分時間里增長強(qiáng)勁，隨后，在70年代開始暴跌。在1996年-2004年間，每小時的人均產(chǎn)出出現(xiàn)反彈;不過，2004年后，年化增長率又跌至1.33%，這種增長速度之慢同1972年-1996年之間的情況如出一轍。戈登調(diào)侃道，過去兩個世紀(jì)的經(jīng)濟(jì)增長總量可能實際上只相當(dāng)于戲劇性變革的一個大浪，而不是一個新時代的不間斷的進(jìn)程，同時世界正在向增長主要是外延性的那種體制回歸。

　　Mr Gordon sees it as possible that there were only a few trulyfundamental innovationsthe ability to use power on a large scale, to keep housescomfortable regardless of outside temperature, to get from any A to any B, totalk to anyone you need toand that they have mostly been made. There will be more innovationbut it willnot change the way the world works in the way electricity, internal-combustionengines, plumbing, petrochemicals and the telephone have. Mr Cowen is morewilling to imagine big technological gains ahead, but he thinks there are nomore low-hanging fruit. Turning terabytes of genomic knowledge into medicalbenefit is a lot harder than discovering and mass producing antibiotics.

　　戈登認(rèn)為，造成這種情況的原因可能在于，只有少數(shù)幾個創(chuàng)新屬于真正的根本性創(chuàng)新大規(guī)模利用電力的能力、不管外面溫度如何都能保持房屋舒適的能力、從任意一個地方到達(dá)另外一個地方的能力、同你需要與其交談的人進(jìn)行交談的能力并且它們大都已經(jīng)被人們創(chuàng)造出來。將來會出現(xiàn)更多的創(chuàng)新但這不會改變世界對電力、內(nèi)燃機(jī)、排水管道、石化產(chǎn)品和電話的使用方式。柯文更愿意設(shè)想未來會出現(xiàn)巨大的技術(shù)進(jìn)步，不過，他認(rèn)為沒有多少容易實現(xiàn)的目標(biāo)。同發(fā)現(xiàn)并大批量生產(chǎn)抗生素相比，將萬億字節(jié)的基因知識轉(zhuǎn)化為醫(yī)學(xué)成要困難得多。

　　The pessimistssecond line of argument is based on how much invention is going on.Amid unconvincing appeals to the number of patents filed and databases of innovations puttogether quite subjectively, Mr Cowen cites interesting work by Charles Jones,an economist at Stanford University. In a 2002 paper Mr Jones studied thecontribution of different factors to growth in American per-capita incomes inthe period 1950-93. His work indicated that some 80% of income growth was dueto rising educational attainment and greater research intensity . Because neitherfactor can continue growing ceaselessly, in the absence of some new factorcoming into play growth is likely to slow.

　　悲觀論第二個方面的內(nèi)容基于發(fā)明會有多少。在難以令人信服的專利申請數(shù)量與加起來相當(dāng)主觀的創(chuàng)新數(shù)據(jù)庫之間，柯文引用了斯坦福大學(xué)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家查爾斯瓊斯的有趣研究成果。在2002年的一份報告中，瓊斯對美國人均國民收入在1950年-1993年間增長有所貢獻(xiàn)的不同因素進(jìn)行了研究。他的研究成果表明，大約80%的收入增長歸于教育程度的提高和科研密度的增強(qiáng)。由于這兩個因素都不能保持不間斷地增長，在缺少某些新因素起作用的情況下，增長可能會放緩。

　　Innovationpessimism

　　創(chuàng)新悲觀論

　　Hasthe ideas machine broken down?

　　思維機(jī)器出故障了嗎?

　　Theidea that innovation and new technology have stopped driving growth is gettingincreasing attention. But it is not well founded

　　創(chuàng)新和新技術(shù)已經(jīng)不再推動增長的觀點正在引發(fā)越來越多的注意力，但這種想法是沒有根據(jù)的。

　　Jan12th 2023 | from the print edition

　　BOOMtimes are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once againadorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is thedemand for fancy vacation homes in resort towns like Lake Tahoe, a sign offortunes being amassed. The Bay Area was the birthplace of the semiconductorindustry and the computer and internet companies that have grown up in itswake. Its wizards provided many of the marvels that make the world feelfuturistic, from touch-screen phones to the instantaneous searching of greatlibraries to the power to pilot a drone thousands of miles away. The revival inits business activity since 2010 suggests progress is motoring on.

　　硅谷再現(xiàn)繁榮。101公路沿線的辦公園區(qū)再次貼滿了信心十足的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司標(biāo)志，隨著對太浩湖等旅游城鎮(zhèn)中度假屋需求的增加，租金在飛漲，財富在累積。灣區(qū)是半導(dǎo)體產(chǎn)業(yè)以及隨之發(fā)展起來的計算機(jī)和互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司的誕生地。從觸屏手機(jī)到對大型圖書館的即時搜索再到操控數(shù)千英里之外的無人機(jī)的能力，這里的天才帶來了許多奇跡，讓世界產(chǎn)生了進(jìn)入未來的感覺。2011年以來，這里的商業(yè)活動在復(fù)興。它告訴人們，進(jìn)步正在隆隆向前。

　　Soit may come as a surprise that some in Silicon Valley think the place isstagnant, and that the rate of innovation has been slackening for decades.Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, an internet payment company, and the first outsideinvestor in Facebook, a social network, says that innovation in America is somewhere between dire straits and dead.Engineers in all sorts of areas share similar feelings of disappointment. And asmall but growing group of economists reckon the economic impact of theinnovations of today may pale in comparison with those of the past.

　　因此，當(dāng)某些硅谷人士認(rèn)為這里已經(jīng)已經(jīng)停滯不前，而且創(chuàng)新的速率幾十年來一直在放緩時，你可能會感到驚訝。在線支付公司PayPal的創(chuàng)始人之一、社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)臉譜的第一位外部投資人皮特泰爾認(rèn)為，在美國，創(chuàng)新正處于困境與死亡之間的某個地方。各領(lǐng)域的工程師有著相同的失望情緒。有人認(rèn)為，相比過去，當(dāng)代創(chuàng)新的經(jīng)濟(jì)影響力可能顯得黯然失色。持這種觀點的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家雖然只是一小部分，但人數(shù)正在增加。

　　Some suspect that the rich world s economicdoldrums may be rooted in a long-term technological stasis. In a 2011 e-bookTyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, argued that the financialcrisis was masking a deeper and more disturbing Great Stagnation. It wasthis which explained why growth in rich-world real incomes and employment hadlong been slowing and, since 2000, had hardly risen at all . Thevarious motors of 20th-century growthsome technological,some nothad played themselves out, and new technologies were not going tohave the same invigorating effect on the economies of the future. For all itsflat-screen dazzle and high-bandwidth pizzazz, it seemed the world had run outof ideas.

　　有人懷疑，富國的經(jīng)濟(jì)低迷可能根植于長期的技術(shù)停頓。喬治梅森大學(xué)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家泰勒柯文在2011年出版的一本電子書中指出，金融危機(jī)正在掩蓋一次更深層次而且是更令人不安的大停滯。正是這種觀點解釋了為什么富國的實際收入和就業(yè)率一直在放緩并且自2000年以來幾乎沒有增長的原因。20世紀(jì)增長的各種引擎有些是技術(shù)方面的，有些不是已經(jīng)熄火，而且新技術(shù)不會給未來經(jīng)濟(jì)帶來相同的激勵效應(yīng)。盡管超薄顯示器和高速寬帶令人目不暇接，但世界似乎已經(jīng)耗盡了靈感。

　　Glide path

　　滑行道

　　The argument that the world is on a technological plateau runs alongthree lines. The first comes from growth statistics. Economists divide growthinto two different types, extensive and intensive. Extensive growth is a matter of adding more and/or better labour,capital and resources. These are the sort of gains that countries saw fromadding women to the labour force in greater numbers and increasing workers education.And, as Mr Cowen notes, this sort of growth is subject to diminishing returns:the first addition will be used where it can do most good, the tenth where itcan do the tenth-most good, and so on. If this were the only sort of growththere was, it would end up leaving incomes just above the subsistence level.

　　有關(guān)世界正處于技術(shù)巔峰的論調(diào)有三個方面的內(nèi)容。第一個方面的內(nèi)容來自增長的統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家把增長分為兩種類型：外延型和內(nèi)涵型。外延性增長是指投入更多的和/或更好的勞動力、資本和資源。此類增長的成果見于將更多的婦女投入勞動力市場以及提高工人的教育程度的國家。同時，正如柯文所言，此類增長受制于回報遞減：使用第一個增加量的地方能發(fā)揮其最大作用，使用第十個增加量地方能發(fā)揮其十分之一的作用，以此類推。若這是增長的唯一類型，其結(jié)果是令收入僅僅高于生存的層次。

　　Intensive growth is powered by the discovery of ever better ways touse workers and resources. This is the sort of growth that allows continuousimprovement in incomes and welfare, and enables an economy to grow even as itspopulation decreases. Economists label the all-purpose improvement factorresponsible for such growth technologythough it includes things like better laws and regulations as wellas technical advanceand measure it using a technique called growthaccounting. In this accounting, technology is the bit left over after calculating the effect on GDP of thingslike labour, capital and education. And at the moment, in the rich world, itlooks like there is less of it about. Emerging markets still manage fastgrowth, and should be able to do so for some time, because they are catching upwith technologies already used elsewhere. The rich world has no such engine topull it along, and it shows.

　　內(nèi)涵型增長受比以往更好的利用工人和資源的方式的發(fā)現(xiàn)所推動。正是此類增長實現(xiàn)了收入和福利的持續(xù)改善，并且讓經(jīng)濟(jì)體即便在人口減少的情況下也能實現(xiàn)增長。經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家為帶來此類增長的提高因素貼上了技術(shù)的標(biāo)簽盡管除了技術(shù)進(jìn)步之外，還包括更完善的法律法規(guī)并且用增長核算這個專業(yè)術(shù)語作為衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。在這種核算體系中，在計算各種因素對GDP的影響時，技術(shù)被排在勞動力、資本和教育之后。從目前來看，富國的技術(shù)因素比原來要少。新興市場依舊在保持快速增長，并且應(yīng)當(dāng)能夠持續(xù)一段時間，這是因為新興市場正在追趕早已在其他地方得到應(yīng)用的技術(shù)。眾所周知，富國不具備這種帶動其前進(jìn)的引擎。

　　This is hardly unusual. For most of humanhistory, growth in output and overall economic welfare has been slow andhalting. Over the past two centuries, first in Britain, Europe and America,then elsewhere, it took off. In the 19th century growth in output per persona usefulgeneral measure of an economy s productivity, and a good guide to growth inincomesaccelerated steadily in Britain. By 1906 it was more than 1% a year.By the middle of the 20th century, real output per person in America wasgrowing at a scorching 2.5% a year, a pace at which productivity and incomesdouble once a generation . More than a century of increasinglypowerful and sophisticated machines were obviously a part of that story, as wasthe rising amount of fossil-fuel energy available to drive them.

　　這是非常正常的。在人類歷史的大部分時間里，產(chǎn)出和整體經(jīng)濟(jì)福利的增長一直在減慢并且逐漸趨向停滯。在過去的2個世紀(jì)中，先是英國、歐洲和美國，然后是其他地方，增長開始起飛。在19世紀(jì)時，人均產(chǎn)出增長一個有用的衡量經(jīng)濟(jì)體生產(chǎn)力的通用標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，并且是收入增長的有效指標(biāo)在英國呈穩(wěn)步加速狀態(tài)。到1906年，年均經(jīng)濟(jì)增長超過1%。到20世紀(jì)中葉，美國的人均實際產(chǎn)出以年均2.5%飛速增長，這種速度使生產(chǎn)力和收入在一代人的時間里實現(xiàn)了翻番。這個過程中一個顯而易見的事實是，各類機(jī)器在一個多世紀(jì)的時間里日漸強(qiáng)大和成熟起來，同時，對驅(qū)動機(jī)器的化石能源的使用量也在增加。

　　But in the 1970s America s growth in real output per person droppedfrom its post-second-world-war peak of over 3% a year to just over 2% a year.In the 2000s it tumbled below 1%. Output per worker per hour shows a similarpattern, according to Robert Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University:it is pretty good for most of the 20th century, then slumps in the 1970s. Itbounced back between 1996 and 2004, but since 2004 the annual rate has fallento 1.33%, which is as low as it was from 1972 to 1996. Mr Gordon muses that thepast two centuries of economic growth might actually amount to just one big wave of dramaticchange rather than a new era of uninterrupted progress, and that the world isreturning to a regime in which growth is mostly of the extensive sort .

　　但是，到了20世紀(jì)70年代，美國的人均實際產(chǎn)出增長從二戰(zhàn)后巔峰時期的年均3%下降到年均略超2%。進(jìn)入21世紀(jì)后，增長暴跌到1%以下。據(jù)美國西北大學(xué)的羅伯特戈登測算，每小時的人均產(chǎn)出呈現(xiàn)出相同的模式：在20世紀(jì)的大部分時間里增長強(qiáng)勁，隨后，在70年代開始暴跌。在1996年-2004年間，每小時的人均產(chǎn)出出現(xiàn)反彈;不過，2004年后，年化增長率又跌至1.33%，這種增長速度之慢同1972年-1996年之間的情況如出一轍。戈登調(diào)侃道，過去兩個世紀(jì)的經(jīng)濟(jì)增長總量可能實際上只相當(dāng)于戲劇性變革的一個大浪，而不是一個新時代的不間斷的進(jìn)程，同時世界正在向增長主要是外延性的那種體制回歸。

　　Mr Gordon sees it as possible that there were only a few trulyfundamental innovationsthe ability to use power on a large scale, to keep housescomfortable regardless of outside temperature, to get from any A to any B, totalk to anyone you need toand that they have mostly been made. There will be more innovationbut it willnot change the way the world works in the way electricity, internal-combustionengines, plumbing, petrochemicals and the telephone have. Mr Cowen is morewilling to imagine big technological gains ahead, but he thinks there are nomore low-hanging fruit. Turning terabytes of genomic knowledge into medicalbenefit is a lot harder than discovering and mass producing antibiotics.

　　戈登認(rèn)為，造成這種情況的原因可能在于，只有少數(shù)幾個創(chuàng)新屬于真正的根本性創(chuàng)新大規(guī)模利用電力的能力、不管外面溫度如何都能保持房屋舒適的能力、從任意一個地方到達(dá)另外一個地方的能力、同你需要與其交談的人進(jìn)行交談的能力并且它們大都已經(jīng)被人們創(chuàng)造出來。將來會出現(xiàn)更多的創(chuàng)新但這不會改變世界對電力、內(nèi)燃機(jī)、排水管道、石化產(chǎn)品和電話的使用方式?？挛母敢庠O(shè)想未來會出現(xiàn)巨大的技術(shù)進(jìn)步，不過，他認(rèn)為沒有多少容易實現(xiàn)的目標(biāo)。同發(fā)現(xiàn)并大批量生產(chǎn)抗生素相比，將萬億字節(jié)的基因知識轉(zhuǎn)化為醫(yī)學(xué)成要困難得多。

　　The pessimistssecond line of argument is based on how much invention is going on.Amid unconvincing appeals to the number of patents filed and databases of innovations puttogether quite subjectively, Mr Cowen cites interesting work by Charles Jones,an economist at Stanford University. In a 2002 paper Mr Jones studied thecontribution of different factors to growth in American per-capita incomes inthe period 1950-93. His work indicated that some 80% of income growth was dueto rising educational attainment and greater research intensity . Because neitherfactor can continue growing ceaselessly, in the absence of some new factorcoming into play growth is likely to slow.

　　悲觀論第二個方面的內(nèi)容基于發(fā)明會有多少。在難以令人信服的專利申請數(shù)量與加起來相當(dāng)主觀的創(chuàng)新數(shù)據(jù)庫之間，柯文引用了斯坦福大學(xué)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家查爾斯瓊斯的有趣研究成果。在2002年的一份報告中，瓊斯對美國人均國民收入在1950年-1993年間增長有所貢獻(xiàn)的不同因素進(jìn)行了研究。他的研究成果表明，大約80%的收入增長歸于教育程度的提高和科研密度的增強(qiáng)。由于這兩個因素都不能保持不間斷地增長，在缺少某些新因素起作用的情況下，增長可能會放緩。