Why social scientists must include technological change in their analyses

For some, New Year’s Eve is a time for revelry. For others it is a time for sober reflection, not just about the quality of the scotch that you are sipping, but also, as it weaves its magic, about lesser things — like explicitly including the effects of technology on human behaviour and on societies.

To the best of my knowledge, the only thinker to have done this in his analysis of societies was Karl Marx, the 19th century German philosopher. It was he who foresaw that the unending quest for profits would lead to socially detrimental outcomes because of the commercially persistent endeavour by companies to cut costs via improvements in technology. He said that this

would lead to massive unemployment and massive inequality.

It is clear that Marx was absolutely right about this one thing at least, never mind that he was wrong about many others. Both have happened now.

It is therefore strange that economic analysis refuses to integrate technological change into its methods and insights. Indeed, despite the overwhelming evidence that technology changes the behaviour of economic agents, it is happy to treat technology as a constant that doesn’t change even while it's changing so rapidly.

Nor is it just economics that has this problem. All other social sciences have it, too. Whether it is sociology or political science or psychology or anything else that can be described as a social science, it is technology-blind.

The consequences of the failure to explicitly account for technological change for social and economic policy are there for all to see. Everyone gets mostly everything wrong most of the time. Then it becomes a game of catch-up that causes more confusion and errors.

So here is a suggestion for social scientists: please include technological change explicitly in your analysis. Specifically, if an attempt is being made to explain the behaviour of groups, including groups that govern, it is critically important to figure out the impact of technological innovation on the behaviour of not only the units that comprise the group but of the groups themselves.

The most visible example of this sort of change in behaviour because of new technology is the military. But the effect of technological change on non-military groups and individuals is no less important. In fact, if anything it is even more important.

It is generally observed that social and economic behaviour are very largely moulded by the technologies in use. Yet, it is hard to find research that analyses this. Psychologists have been trying to do it but with a very limited vision. So they don’t seem to have any great insights to offer, either. Two very large issues are of great importance for this century in this context. One is learning. The other is violence.

What effect are the new technologies going to have on the economics of learning? What effect are they going to have on the human propensity for gratuitous violence?

We simply don’t know, not because the past is not a guide — it is — but because after Marx no one has made an attempt to integrate technological change into social analysis. As a result, even as technology is changing our lives rapidly — artificial intelligence for instance — we have no coherent analysis or theory to help us grapple with the problems that are largely endogenous.

It must be hoped that given the criticality of rapid technological change, some university somewhere will devote itself to examining the future with a view to making suitable adjustments to the present. As Marx might have said, social scientists unite, you have nothing to lose but your ignorance.