34 Quotes by Erik Brynjolfsson

G.D.P. is not a measure of how much value is produced for consumers. Everybody should recognize that G.D.P. is not a welfare metric.

Technology is always creating jobs. It's always destroying jobs.

The heart of science is measurement.

Because the process of innovation often relies heavily on the combining and recombining of previous innovations, the broader and deeper the pool of accessible ideas and individuals, the more opportunities there are for innovation.

Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny

Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power-the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments-what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.

But the broader lesson of the first Industrial Revolution is more like the Indy 500 than John Henry: economic progress comes from constant innovation in which people race with machines. Human and machine collaborate together in a race to produce more, to capture markets, and to beat other teams of humans and machines.

What can we do to create shared prosperity? The answer is not to try to slow down technology. Instead of racing against the machine, we need to learn to race with the machine.

Computers get better faster than anything else ever. A child's PlayStation today is more powerful than a military supercomputer from 1996.