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Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

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Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#11

Post by forgingahead »

richieb wrote: post #7
forgingahead wrote: post #5

While this is highly embarrassing for Krugman (even if he will never admit it!), he is far from the only person who has fallen for this: Expertise in one area does NOT make you an expert in all. This year especially should drive that point home. It's best to only make bold statements when you are sure, and when you do so, put your money where your mouth is ("Skin in the game", as Nassim Taleb says). And most definite…

I think he does admit his mistakes: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/mistakes/

"Two mistakes" -- that is a satirical blog post right?

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#12

Post by addicted »

forgingahead wrote: post #11
richieb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he does admit his mistakes: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/mistakes/

"Two mistakes" -- that is a satirical blog post right?

Big, Professional mistakes

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#13

Post by forgingahead »

richieb wrote: post #10
mtgx wrote: post #2

> The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's. Every time I read on…

Krugman often reviews his past predictions and admits when he is wrong: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31524-ten-years-later-...

Then why does he keep making them? And getting paid to make them? Generally if you are hired to do something, and fail at it multiple times, you are fired, and in the case of potentially moving markets and affecting livelihoods, you should be banned from ever saying anything again!

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#14

Post by sgwealti »

Paul Krugman responded to this a few years ago: http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-inte...

The article the economic impact of the internet quote came from wasn't a scholarly article or his normal column, it was a fun, let's make some provocative predictions type article.

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#15

Post by misiti3780 »

Fitting I'm currently re-reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" and there is a chapter on expertise:

From the book:

When do judgments reflect true expertise?

An environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice. (aka not economics)

When both these conditions are satisfied, intuitions are likely to be skilled.

Intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.

If the environment is sufficiently regular and if the judge has had a chance to learn its regularities, the associative machinery will recognize situations and generate quick and accurate predictions and decisions. You can trust someone’s intuitions if these conditions are met.

When evaluating expert intuition you should always consider whether there was an adequate opportunity to learn the cues, even in a regular environment.

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#16

Post by tptacek »

forgingahead wrote: post #13
richieb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krugman often reviews his past predictions and admits when he is wrong: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31524-ten-years-later-...

Then why does he keep making them? And getting paid to make them? Generally if you are hired to do something, and fail at it multiple times, you are fired, and in the case of potentially moving markets and affecting livelihoods, you should be banned from ever saying anything again!

That's not what he's paid to do.

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#18

Post by drzaiusapelord »

adamnemecek wrote: post #6

Also "Why the web won't be a nirvana" http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...

>What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading.

Except he's correct. The web has become a disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theory bonanza. Finding good information still takes legwork, 22 years after this article was written.

Also to be fair to Cliff, this article was written well before sites like wikipedia had prominence. So yes, back then putting something in a search engine was asking for trouble. The results were very poor because the content was very poor.

>What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact.

Thus the rise of social media.

I think this essay was unusually prophetic and insightful in many ways.

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#19

Post by rplst8 »

mempko wrote: post #9

While he is wrong about the impact of the internet economically. He isn't wrong that technology progress has been disappointing. When you grow up believing you will be driving flying cars and seeing robots help you around the house, how else are you supposed to feel? It is only now that computing power has started to enable old AI techniques such as neural nets, which were once impractical are now starting to be reas…

> We have invented the most important tool in the history of humanity and it's being used by billions of people to look at Facebook instead of say, solving real problems like climate change.

I think this is a mis-characterization. The Internet is used for all sorts of "good" causes. I think we just take for granted the ease with which it allows teams of scientists and researchers to connect, communicate, and share research.

Re: Krugman: Internet’s Economic Impact No Greater Than Fax Machine (1998)

#20

Post by RodericDay »

I much prefer Ha-Joon Chang's "the washing machine changed the world more than the internet" [0], which I think fares a lot better than Krugman's claims.

> When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago. Of course, the internet is great – I can now google and find the exact location of this restaurant on the edge of Liverpool or whatever. But when you look at the impact of this on the economy, it's mainly in the area of leisure.

> By liberating women from household work and helping to abolish professions such as domestic service, the washing machine and other household goods completely revolutionised the structure of society. As women have become active in the labour market they have acquired a different status at home – they can credibly threaten their partners that if they don't treat them well they will leave them and make an independent living. And this had huge economic consequences. Rather than spend their time washing clothes, women could go out and do more productive things. Basically, it has doubled the workforce.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/aug/29/my-bright...

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