Reading this post is like walking into the middle of an old family dispute and thinking you've heard all of it. This is just one wrinkle of a much larger and older discussion that's been ongoing in various forms for at least the past 240 years, going back to Adam Smith, though the modern concern with economic growth dates largely to the Great Depression and post-World War II period.
The model here is looking at the question of economic growth (which is distinct from the question of distribution, though not unrelated), and of a simplified economy in which only mutually exclusive goods and services can be offered.
The conclusion (under artificially but not un-usefully simplified terms) is that even with continued growth in efficiency of goods provision, services are ultimately constrained by the requirement of time as the ultimate input.
It's possible to quibble in various ways about the model, but it's essentially correct. A services-based economy is limited by the element of time in both production and consumption. Media already has the problem of there being only so many consumption-hours per day, and people are already consuming more than 24 hours of media per day through the mode of multitasking.
A key problem, of course, being that multi-tasking reduces the total capability to incorporate any given media stream.
Going more broadly:
There's the question of what accounts for economic growth. The traditional economic answer is "technology", though that answer itself is flawed and raises the question of what technology is, and more specifically, how different types of technology operate and act, as well as what kinds of production or services they enable, and how.
Robert J. Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth looks at this, in detail, though imperfectly.
One of the book's better points is that the innovations of 1870 - 1950, generally, addressed very fundamental human needs: food, housing, clothing, transportation, and safety. With tremendous impacts on these: food and diet (both quantity and quality), health, work and productivity, communications, and transport.
The innovations of 1950-2015 have been far less fundamental. They've been concentrated in information and communications, which yes, have changed and improved tremendously, but they don't address needs and capabilities at the base of human wants. A term not used anywhere in Gordon's book is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, among several disappointing deficiencies. The 1870-1950 innovations largely addressed the base of the pyramid. The 1950-2015 innovations have largely addressed the higher elements. This isn't entirely useless, but it's not foundational. And Maslow's Hierarchy cannot be built from the top down.
The discussion's been going on for a long time. Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Shumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Solow, and more. My sense is that mainstream economics has rather lost the thread, though it does some work of interest. Gordon's book stumbles over the truth then picks itself up and walks on. It does however point to several factors, including education, which don't account for growth. In that, it's useful.
The model here is looking at the question of economic growth (which is distinct from the question of distribution, though not unrelated), and of a simplified economy in which only mutually exclusive goods and services can be offered.
The conclusion (under artificially but not un-usefully simplified terms) is that even with continued growth in efficiency of goods provision, services are ultimately constrained by the requirement of time as the ultimate input.
It's possible to quibble in various ways about the model, but it's essentially correct. A services-based economy is limited by the element of time in both production and consumption. Media already has the problem of there being only so many consumption-hours per day, and people are already consuming more than 24 hours of media per day through the mode of multitasking.
A key problem, of course, being that multi-tasking reduces the total capability to incorporate any given media stream.
Going more broadly:
There's the question of what accounts for economic growth. The traditional economic answer is "technology", though that answer itself is flawed and raises the question of what technology is, and more specifically, how different types of technology operate and act, as well as what kinds of production or services they enable, and how.
Robert J. Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth looks at this, in detail, though imperfectly.
One of the book's better points is that the innovations of 1870 - 1950, generally, addressed very fundamental human needs: food, housing, clothing, transportation, and safety. With tremendous impacts on these: food and diet (both quantity and quality), health, work and productivity, communications, and transport.
The innovations of 1950-2015 have been far less fundamental. They've been concentrated in information and communications, which yes, have changed and improved tremendously, but they don't address needs and capabilities at the base of human wants. A term not used anywhere in Gordon's book is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, among several disappointing deficiencies. The 1870-1950 innovations largely addressed the base of the pyramid. The 1950-2015 innovations have largely addressed the higher elements. This isn't entirely useless, but it's not foundational. And Maslow's Hierarchy cannot be built from the top down.
The discussion's been going on for a long time. Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Shumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Solow, and more. My sense is that mainstream economics has rather lost the thread, though it does some work of interest. Gordon's book stumbles over the truth then picks itself up and walks on. It does however point to several factors, including education, which don't account for growth. In that, it's useful.