Carlota Pérez: "The socio-political form we give to technologies will define whether we enter a golden age"
“We are in the middle of the digital revolution, an interval period that will last at least twenty or thirty years; after these years we can live a golden age”. Carlota Pérez, expert in the socioeconomic impact of the technological change, summarized with these words her vision of the current situation in the world, in a conference at the Sala de Graus of the Faculty of Economics and Business on April 7. Pérez, who believes in a hopeful horizon for humanity based on new technologies, talked about the new directions for a better future and highlighted specific measurements that should be taken, such as updating governments, increasing taxes on capital gains and erasing work taxes and creating a Marshall plan for all countries who are behind -compared to the others.
“We are in the middle of the digital revolution, an interval period that will last at least twenty or thirty years; after these years we can live a golden age”. Carlota Pérez, expert in the socioeconomic impact of the technological change, summarized with these words her vision of the current situation in the world, in a conference at the Sala de Graus of the Faculty of Economics and Business on April 7. Pérez, who believes in a hopeful horizon for humanity based on new technologies, talked about the new directions for a better future and highlighted specific measurements that should be taken, such as updating governments, increasing taxes on capital gains and erasing work taxes and creating a Marshall plan for all countries who are behind -compared to the others.
With the aim of “using history to get inspired for the future”, Pérez said that there are several technological revolutions or waves in the history of humanity. Each of them has three stages: a setting stage, in which the financial capitalism destroys the previous one; an interval time relay, in which there is a crush of economic bubbles; and last, a prosperity period. We would now be in the interval relay, a hard time like the thirties in the 20th century. But there can be a possibility of having a “golden age”, such as the post Second World War period.
However, “with these technologies we can also go to hell”, says Carlota Pérez. “The sociopolitical form we give to technology will define whether we enter a golden age”, she said, and continued her speech with some useful guidelines. According to the researcher, the two new future directions could be the smart growth and the global development. Afterwards, she listed some specific measurements that should be taken, such as favoring service economy instead of product economy, promoting renewable energies, rent instead of sale, and launching a Marshall plan for those countries that need it. Pérez stressed that, in order to carry these changes out, supranational institutions should promote them and there should also be a socio-institutional innovation. Regarding this, she asked “Where are the leaders?” and told the audience that people need “daring” leaders who understand the situation and the necessary changes.
Carlota Pérez, who came invited at the UB by the Barcelona Entrepreneurship Institute (BIE) as part of the European project Business Ecosystem for Tradition and Innovation (TRINNO), she is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, Professor of Technology and Socio-Economic Development at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance (University of Technology, Estonia) and Honorary Professor at the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex (UK). Revoluciones tecnológicas y capital financiero: la dinámica de las burbujas financieras y las épocas de bonanza (2004) is one of her distinguished works. Her works have contributed to the current understanding of the relations between the technological and institutional changes, between the finance world and technological diffusion and between technology and the economic development.
She has been advisor and lecturer, working for several public and private organizations, big corporations and governments in Latin America, North America and Europe, as well as for the European Union, OECD, United Nations and several multi-lateral agencies.