The Wiki Man

28 March 2009

A fortnightly column on technology and the web

Perhaps we should spend less time wondering about the future and more time in wonder at what we already have. Certainly that’s the message of the splendid Boston comedian Louis CK from his appearance on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien show (http://snipr.com/ebjvl; and, if you watch nothing else on YouTube this week, watch this).

But also give some thought to where your gratitude lies. On an economics blog this week a reader complained that ‘We are all making the mistake of paying tribute to “technology” for these wonderful achievements when really they have been brought to us by competitive free markets and globalisation.’

He’s right, isn’t he? It’s not the technology of the mobile phone that’s remarkable so much as the fact that we can all afford one. The first billion mobile phones took 20 years to sell worldwide. The second billion were sold in four years. The third billion were sold in two years. It’s not technology that is doing that — it’s markets.

The world’s elites have always had access to wonderful things. What’s new today is the speed at which the exclusive becomes near-universal. One reason it’s so hard to make a Bond film nowadays is because the kind of travel destinations and gadgetry that once made the films glamorous are now offered in shop windows on every provincial high street.

The economist was right. It’s free markets that are behind this miracle, not ‘technology’. Markets have had a rotten press recently, so let’s not rob them of the credit they deserve.