13 Quotes by Edward Luce

The new economy requires consumers with spending power – just as the old one did. Yet much like the farmer who eats his seed corn, Big Data is gobbling up its source of future revenue.

By any numerical measure, humanity is becoming rapidly less poor. But between half and two-thirds of people in the West have been treading water – at best – for a generation. Tens of millions of Westerners will struggle to keep their heads above the surface over the coming decades. The spread of automation, including artificial intelligence and remote intelligence, which some call the fourth industrial revolution, is still in its early stages.

It is not just that people are staying physically put. They are also likelier to stay trapped in the same income group. America, in particular, which had traditionally shown the highest class mobility of any Western country, now has the lowest.

For those who still believe our age’s disruptions match what happened after 1870, ask yourself which you would first give up, your iPhone or the flush toilet? Laptop or antibiotics? If you have trouble answering those, ponder life without electricity. It is a measure of our solipsism that we take for granted what went before.