A grande estagnação

Directamente relacionado com a música da Deolinda:

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But the big setback for society, according to Mr Cowen, is the end of the exploitation of the major innovations of the last two centuries. The 1700s and 1800s yielded revolutionary innovations in industry, chemistry, and electricity. Rich countries spent the 1800s and 1900s figuring out how to exploit those innovations to their fullest, and as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, these experiments were producing products that utterly changed the way people lived. During the lifetime of those born in the 1930s and 1940s, household technology changed fantastically: refrigerators, laundry machines, dishwashers, radios, televisions, electric light, air conditioning, cheap automobiles, and so on. But with a few exceptions (among them computers, on which more later) today's households don't look that much different from their 1970s counterparts. Products have improved, but the development of revolutionary new technologies has slowed substantially. The progress of technology has plateaued.


Mr Cowen supports this assertion by referencing counts of major innovations, by tracking patents, and by asking readers to trust their own experience. Growth is slowing because economies have already gotten most of the innovative benefit out of previous big leaps and are now squeezing out more marginal gains. If we think on many of the big innovations of recent decades, in health care or finance say, we find that they either have primarily private benefits or produce benefits of questionable value.

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Sim, relacionado com a Deolinda e uma forma de pensarmos um pouco para além de Portugal e dos problemas específicos que temos por cá, e até do papel que a internet e a TI's podem ter no nosso futuro enquanto mundo ocidental.
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