Narrator: In 1842, a Royal Commission in England descended into the coal mines to investigate the state of child labor. They heard the testimony of Sarah Gooder, an eight-year-old girl who worked as a "trapper," spending twelve hours a day in complete darkness, opening and closing a ventilation door, too scared to even sing. They heard from ten-year-old David Pyrah, who had been lamed by falling equipment while working in tunnels only half a yard high. These children were casualties of the Industrial Revolution, a period of unprecedented technological advancement that, for nearly a century, brought not widespread prosperity but longer hours, stagnant wages, and unimaginable misery for the majority. How could an era of such profound progress lead to such deep suffering?

In their groundbreaking book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson confront this paradox. They argue that the fruits of innovation are never distributed automatically. Drawing on a millennium of history, they reveal that whether technology creates a more equitable world or deepens inequality is not a matter of fate, but a matter of choice—a choice dictated by power.

Narrator: The dominant narrative of our time is one of techno-optimism: the belief that technological advancement inherently leads to a better world for everyone. Acemoglu and Johnson dismantle this myth, arguing that for most of history, the opposite has been true. The "productivity bandwagon"—the idea that efficiency gains automatically translate into higher wages and better lives—is often a fantasy.

A stark illustration of this is the early British Industrial Revolution. In textile manufacturing, new machines improved productivity by over 300 times, yet the real wages of workers remained stagnant for nearly a century. Instead of prosperity, workers faced longer hours, brutal factory discipline, and a loss of autonomy. Skilled artisans found their livelihoods destroyed by automation. In 1811, these displaced workers, known as the Luddites, began smashing the very machines that were impoverishing them. In a passionate speech to the House of Lords, the poet Lord Byron defended them, arguing that the "maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor" were more important than "the enrichment of a few individuals." His plea was ignored. The government made machine-breaking a capital offense, siding decisively with capital over labor. This historical pattern reveals a crucial truth: technology's impact is not determined by the machine itself, but by the power structures that decide how its gains are distributed.

Narrator: If progress is a choice, who gets to choose? The authors argue that the direction of technology is overwhelmingly shaped by the "vision" of those with social and political power. This "persuasion power" allows elites to set agendas and champion ideas that serve their own interests, often at great cost to others.

A powerful, and tragic, example is the story of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the celebrated builder of the Suez Canal. Riding a wave of immense credibility and charisma, Lesseps embarked on his next great vision: a sea-level canal through the treacherous jungles of Panama. At the 1879 Paris Congress, he dismissed expert warnings about the mountainous terrain and rampant tropical diseases. His vision was so persuasive that he raised vast sums of money from small French investors and secured political backing. But his vision was a trap. Blinded by hubris, Lesseps ignored the reality on the ground. Thousands of workers, primarily from the Caribbean, died from malaria and yellow fever in horrific conditions. The project collapsed into a colossal financial and human disaster. Lesseps’s story is a cautionary tale of how a compelling but flawed vision, when wielded by a powerful figure, can override rational assessment and lead to catastrophe, imposing its costs on the voiceless.

Narrator: If elite-driven progress often leads to misery, how has widespread prosperity ever been achieved? The book points to the mid-20th century in the Western world as a rare period of broadly shared growth. This era, however, was not an accident. It was the result of a "contested path," where countervailing powers—chiefly organized labor and a more interventionist government—forced a redirection of technology.

In the decades after World War II, strong unions ensured that productivity gains were shared with workers through higher wages and better benefits. This forced companies to innovate in ways that complemented labor rather than simply replacing it. For example, when General Motors installed a new automated drill in 1960, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union successfully argued in arbitration that operating the new machine was a new, more complex task that required additional training and higher pay. This set a crucial precedent. Instead of just cutting costs by firing workers, companies were incentivized to invest in "human-complementary" technologies that created new, higher-skilled tasks. This period demonstrates that shared prosperity is not a gift from benevolent elites, but the hard-won outcome of a struggle to ensure that the benefits of technology are distributed equitably.

Narrator: Beginning around 1980, the era of shared prosperity came to an abrupt end. Median wages stagnated, inequality skyrocketed, and the labor share of national income plummeted. The authors argue that this "digital damage" was driven by a fundamental shift in both ideology and the direction of technology.

The intellectual foundation was the "shareholder value revolution," championed by economists like Milton Friedman, who argued that the sole social responsibility of business is to increase profits. This doctrine gave corporations a powerful mandate to cut costs, and labor was the primary target. Simultaneously, the political climate turned against unions, exemplified by President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 decision to fire striking air traffic controllers, a move that signaled a new era of corporate power. This new vision steered digital technology—from personal computers to industrial robots—overwhelmingly towards one goal: automation. Unlike the post-war era, the focus was not on creating new tasks for workers, but on eliminating them. The result was the hollowing out of the middle class, as well-paying blue-collar and clerical jobs disappeared, pushing millions into lower-wage service work.

Narrator: The current trajectory of Artificial Intelligence, the authors warn, is amplifying the digital damage. The dominant "AI illusion" promotes a vision of inevitable progress driven by machine intelligence, justifying a focus on automation, data collection, and surveillance. This path, however, often leads to "so-so automation"—technologies that displace workers without delivering significant productivity gains—while creating powerful new tools for control.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the business model of social media. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube are not designed to foster democratic discourse, but to maximize user engagement for targeted advertising. Their algorithms achieve this by promoting emotionally charged content, which often includes misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories. The devastating real-world consequences were seen in Myanmar, where Facebook was used to incite a genocide against the Rohingya minority. In democracies, this same model fuels polarization and erodes trust, as seen in the lead-up to the January 6th insurrection in the US. This profit-driven direction of AI is actively undermining the democratic processes needed to challenge its own negative effects.

Narrator: The future is not yet written. Acemoglu and Johnson argue that technology can be redirected, and they offer a historical blueprint: the American Progressive Era. In the late 19th century, "robber barons" wielded unchecked corporate power, creating extreme inequality and political corruption. In response, a broad social movement emerged with a three-pronged strategy.

First, they changed the narrative through muckraking journalism. Ida Tarbell’s exposé on Standard Oil and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle revealed corporate abuses to a shocked public. Second, they built countervailing power through grassroots activism and labor organizing, with figures like Mother Jones leading marches to protest child labor. Third, they translated this pressure into concrete policy solutions. This led to landmark antitrust laws to break up monopolies, food and drug safety regulations, a ban on corporate political donations, and the expansion of democracy through the direct election of senators and women's suffrage. This historical success shows that a combination of narrative change, organized social power, and smart policy can successfully rein in concentrated power and steer progress toward the common good.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Power and Progress is that technology is not destiny. Its path is a choice, and for the past thousand years, that choice has been the subject of a relentless struggle between the powerful few and the broader public. The current direction of digital technology and AI—prioritizing automation, surveillance, and engagement-driven profit—is not inevitable. It is the result of a specific set of ideas and power imbalances that have dismantled the foundations of shared prosperity.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge. We are told to be mesmerized by tech billionaires and to accept their vision of the future as our own. But history shows that true progress—the kind that benefits all of society—has only ever been achieved when ordinary people organize, challenge dominant narratives, and demand a seat at the decision-making table. The question, then, is not what technology will do to us, but what we will choose to do with technology. Will we continue down a path that benefits the few, or will we fight to redirect it toward a more prosperous and democratic future for all?