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SUMMARY:The (Political and Financial) Economics of Transformational Techno
 logy - Bill Janeway
DTSTART:20190605T170000Z
DTEND:20190605T181500Z
UID:TALK125164@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Fiona Gilsenan
DESCRIPTION:Over the past 250 years\, the world has been repeatedly recons
 tructed by successive transformational technologies\, as what were once ex
 periments at the frontier become the ocean in which we swim. Frontier expe
 riments necessarily proceed by trial and error and error and error. Conseq
 uently\, the investments that have proved transformational have required f
 unding from sources not concerned with immediately visible economic value:
  a mission-driven state and financial speculation. These have been the com
 plementary engines of: upstream scientific discovery and technical inventi
 on\; deployment of innovative networks\, from canals and railroads\, throu
 gh electricity grids and highways\, to the internet\; and quasi-Darwinian 
 emergence of novel applications in the new economic space thereby created.
     \n\nNow we are experiencing the disruptive maturation of the latest te
 chnological transformation\, the Digital Revolution. Like previous ones\, 
 the Digital Revolution has been shifting the distribution of power within 
 and across economic and political and social domains. In the west\, it has
  matured to challenge the authority of the state at multiple levels and ev
 en undermined the integrity of the political process on which that authori
 ty ultimately rests\, inevitably motivating a range of problematically eff
 ective counter-movements. At the same time\,  in China it is enabling an a
 lternative to representative democracy as the counter-weight to market cap
 italism: the "benevolent surveillance state." Globally\, the structures of
  political and social institutions are as much in play as are the competit
 ive conditions of markets.\n\nAbout the Speaker\nFor over 40 years Bill Ja
 neway has lived a double life as both an economic theorist and a practisin
 g venture capitalist. During that time he built and led the Warburg Pincus
  Technology Investment team that provided financial backing to a series of
  important tech companies and he remains actively involved with the compan
 y in various roles.\n\nAs an economist theorist\, Bill was a Marshall Scho
 lar at Cambridge and received his PhD in economics under the supervision o
 f John Maynard Keynes's leading student\, Richard Kahn (author of the foun
 dational paper on the 'multiplier'). He went on to found the Cambridge End
 owment for Research in Finance.  In recent years he has been a Teaching Vi
 sitor at Princeton and a Visiting Scholar in the Economics Faculty in Camb
 ridge. He is also a Fellow of Pembroke College. His widely-read book\, Doi
 ng Capitalism in the Innovation Economy\, is published by Cambridge Univer
 sity Press and is now in its second edition.\n\nFollow Bill Janeway on Twi
 tter @billjaneway.\n\nThis event is part of WOLFSON EXPLORES | Transformat
 ion |.
LOCATION:The Lee Hall\, Wolfson College
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