ABSTRACT
Technologists and economists both think about the future sometimes, but they each have blind spots. Technologists think about specific future technologies, which they may foresee in some detail. Unfortunately, technologists then mostly use amateur intuitions about the social world to predict the broader social implications of these technologies. This makes it hard for technologists to identify the technologies which will have the largest social impact. Economists, in contrast, have a professional understanding of the social world, and are well positioned to analyse the social implications of specific technologies. Using simple mathematical models based on powerful general concepts, economists could go well beyond simple trend projections. Unfortunately, economists mostly rely on amateur intuitions about the feasibility of future technologies. Substantial technical innovations often seem to them like science fiction and too silly to take seriously. Economists’ future projections thus usually ignore specific future technologies.
