-
The Computer Did It?: Technology and Inequality
- Dissent
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 61, Number 2, Spring 2014
- pp. 73-76
- 10.1353/dss.2014.0035
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Does technological change breed inequality? This notion, in some version or other, has become a staple explanation for our growing economic divide. It features prominently in the “meritocracy” defense of the 1 percent, which assumes (as Harvard economist Greg Mankiw put it recently) that “changes in technology have allowed a small number of highly educated and exceptionally talented individuals to command superstar incomes in ways that were not possible a generation ago.” It peppers the breathless prose of columnist Thomas Friedman, who makes a living mixing metaphors about our flat, smart, hyperconnected, seamless supply chain of a world.