Description:

**This event is open to McCormick PhD students only**

Technology and Work: Is the Long-run Getting Shorter?

Speaker: Joel Mokyr
Robert H. Strotz Professor of Economics
Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

One of the most hotly debated questions of our time is whether modern technology will alter or eliminate the nature of work and jobs as we know them. While scholars realize that such debates have raged over centuries, with machines never truly eliminating work, many have raised the possibility that “this time it is different.” Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will rephrase the argument in a new form. Using economic history, Mokyr re-thinks the foundational assumptions of this debate to argue that even if it is different this time, it may not be how most people believe — technology will present more of a blessing than a threat.