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No, AI Isn’t a Revolution. But the Internet Is.
According to scholar Carlota Perez, one of tech’s most revered theorists, society regularly goes through technology-driven “revolutions.” These structural cycles can take fifty years or more, and are defined by core technologies which shape life as we know it. Her list of previous cycles include the Industrial Revolution; The Age of Steam and Railways; The Age of Steel, Electricity and Heavy Engineering; and The Age of Oil, the Automobile, and Mass Production.*
Back in the early 2000s, Perez has identified the Internet (more formally, ICT, or “information communications technologies”) as the dominant technological force driving our current age. Perez’s framing has been a favorite of pundits ever since — and has played a central role in the debate as to whether a much-hyped “Next Big Thing” — crypto, the metaverse, quantum computing — is merely a feature of an ongoing revolution, or the starting gun to an entirely new age.
Given the extraordinarily high volume of hype and investment in AI over the past few years, it’s fair to ask: Does Perez’s framing indicate we are embarking on a new age that supplants the Internet — are we entering “The Age of AI?”
It’s an important question, because as Perez and many others have noted, how we invest in, regulate, and incorporate new technologies differs dramatically depending…
