a16z Podcast: Knowledge Builds Technology and Technology Builds Knowledge -- with Joel Mokyr

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Nov 27, 2016

In this discussion, Joel Mokyr, a Northwestern professor specializing in economic history and technological innovation, delves into the roots of the Industrial Revolution and its similarities to today's tech advancements. He highlights how a competitive marketplace of ideas fueled historical progress, emphasizing the importance of skepticism and communication. Mokyr draws intriguing parallels between the Republic of Letters and today's digital networks, advocating for interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle major challenges like climate change, while warning against the stagnation that can arise from resisting innovation.

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INSIGHT

Knowledge-Technolog y Feedback Loop

Knowledge and technology form a reinforcing loop where each enables advances in the other.
The steam engine required new scientific concepts (vacuum, atmosphere) that only emerged in Europe’s contested intellectual climate.

INSIGHT

Contest Ideas, Not Authorities

The Age of Enlightenment replaced deference to ancient authorities with contestability and skepticism.
The Royal Society’s slogan in nullius verba captures the shift to evidence-based inquiry.

ANECDOTE

Republic Of Letters Network

The Republic of Letters was a virtual, transnational network of correspondence and published work.
Trust arose because peers would vet and pay attention to survived claims, creating reputational incentives.

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The Industrial Revolution (and period between 1500-1700) was an unprecedented age of technology and economic progress — not unlike today’s, in fact — where we took “quantum leaps” forward in tech by taming electricity, making cheaper steel and refining iron cheaply, automating fiber looms, pumping water out of coal mines, figuring out how to measure longitude at sea, improving the quality of food, preventing smallpox, … even bleaching underwear.

But what really triggered the Industrial Revolution? Why did it take place in Europe and spread beyond? It has to do with a competitive, open market of ideas — a transnational “Republic of Letters”, not unlike the early days of the blogosphere. And the conditions that created it (virtual networks, open access science, weak ties, and so on) are the very conditions we may need to sustain growth and prosperity even today, argues Joel Mokyr, professor of economics and history at Northwestern and author of the new book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.

Despite fears of what new tech may bring, the alternative to not innovating is stagnation — “not doing it is worse”, argues Mokyr in this episode of the a16z Podcast. So how do we then measure that growth? How does this all play out internationally, and institutionally? And what happens when we bring shared focus to big problems, like climate change? If there’s one pattern that continues to play out throughout history to today, it’s that “Knowledge builds technology and technology builds knowledge.”

image: Library of Congress

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