[chrisdbaldwin]

The scale of software tool utility is pretty much unparalleled by traditional tools. Traditional tools such as livestock and machines require breeding, mining... some sort of "manufacturing" process. Okay, software has manufacturing cost too, but typically only once to create, and once to maintain. Imagine if you could dynamically spawn livestock without the overhead of mining, breeding, and trading. The jobs that software has/will eat are, imo, beyond current human comprehension.

[evgen]

Electrification was far more significant and far-reaching, occurred on a similarly quick timescale, and led to a massive boom in productivity across the board. If you want to predict how software and the computerization of everything will pan out then electrification is a better example to consider.

[nugget]

The revolutions that occurred in electrification (up to and including sophisticated home appliances), mass production (clothing, food, shelter), and transportation (from horses to cars) brought a lot more people into the workforce and into the same connected market economy. Prior to these inventions, people were spread out and almost entirely disconnected from a shared economy: in the 1870s about 75% of American families were rural and very time-intensively grew/raised most of what they needed to survive themselves. Over the next hundred or so years a bunch of wonderful inventions moved everyone together into the same very tightly-connected market economy, and reduced non-leisure time commitments at home by 80%+ (notably allowing women to join and remain in the workforce in greater numbers). There is a strong argument that this connective effort is what led to massive GDP growth - that these were a series of "one trick" ponies, by definition - and that while there are amazing inventions on the horizon, no doubt, they will have much more impact on quality of life than on traditional GDP and productivity, at least in terms of Wall Street's expectations. Even if autonomous robots come and reduce non-leisure domestic commitments to absolute zero, it wouldn't be nearly as impactful as the advancements that we've already experienced, from a productivity standpoint. I tend to agree that "it's different this time" is one of the most dangerous phrases in the English language but at some point, maybe it's true.