Technologies of the Future Are What’s Driving Trump’s Trade Policies
Now playing on your handheld devices and in more robust growth is the Fourth Industrial Revolution – mobile computing, intelligent and remarkably dexterous robots, and the gradual fusion of human intelligence, artificial intelligence and machines. It will profoundly alter how the economy grows and American politics.
The first three waves of industrialization – water power and steam to mechanize production, electric power to facilitate mass production, and electronics and information technology to automate production – were terribly dependent on massive investments in plant and equipment.
Robust economic expansions have been defined by consumers’ willingness to splurge on big-ticket items like cars and homes, and businesses’ appetite for grand projects – Fulton’s steamboat, railroads, auto factories and highways, and most recently, shale oil and pipelines.
All that is changing.
The economy is now on track to register 3% growth in 2018 for the first time in a dozen years but auto and home sales are flat and corporate investments in hard business assets – factories, machines and computers – are hardly rocketing.
Businesses have learned to use capital and human resources much more efficiently. Productive young professionals seem to be more interested in being near the hubs of intellectual activity-city cores-and buying new gadgets and streaming services than owning a home, big lawn and the latest hot car.
Businesses are dropping the college degree or certificate from technical school as a requirement for many positions. To the dismay of academics, kids seem to be learning as much that is useful in this new economy playing on their smartphones and laptops as they do in the classroom.
At the cutting edge, Google was launched with $25 million in 1999 and grew into a $23 billion enterprise in five years. Now finding that two-year colleges don’t impart the technology skills businesses require, Google is offering eight- and 12-month certificate programs through Coursera that connects graduates with employers like Bank of America, Walmart and GE Digital.
