New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

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Nov 19, 2025

Carl Benedikt Frey, Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute, delves into the dynamics of technology and societal growth. He challenges the myth of perpetual progress, highlighting how historical contexts influence paths to prosperity. Frey investigates why some nations flourish while others stagnate, examining factors like bureaucratic constraints in China and innovation spurts in Europe and America. He warns of potential stagnation in the U.S. and China, emphasizing that AI's promise hinges on fostering competition and adaptability.

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INSIGHT

Progress Isn’t Inevitable

Progress is not inevitable; history shows long stretches of stagnation before breakthroughs.
Understanding progress requires studying how technology and institutions interact across life cycles.

ANECDOTE

Song Bureaucracy Drew In Talent

The Song Dynasty built a strong centralized bureaucracy that attracted top talent through exams.
That system channeled thinkers into state roles and suppressed independent scientific exploration.

INSIGHT

Fragmentation Fueled European Innovation

European political fragmentation created space for mobility of skills and ideas.
Fragmentation plus cultural unity let innovations diffuse across competing states.

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In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies--the United States and China--have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

By examining key historical moments--from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI--Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past--such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain--ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term--findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.

Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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