Ep. 275: Joel Mokyr Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

Michael Covel's Trend Following

Michael Covel

Business, Investing

4.6 • 732 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2014

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University. He focuses on technological progress, and how it affects growth. From Mokyr's perspective, we haven't seen anything yet. He's not trying to predict what will happen next; he's just confident and ready that big things will continue to happen.

The topic is technology.

In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:

Define technology
The notion of playing God with technology
How technology and economic growth are intertwined
Why screwing up is part of technology
The acceleration of technology
New ways of measuring growth
Anesthesia and antibiotics as technologies and imagining new technologies as revolutionary as them
Moving from a wheat and steel economy into an information economy
The factory, the separation between firm and household, and the Industrial Revolution
The death of distance
Why technology is often not reflected in the GDP
Solving the language barrier through technology
Why the global acceptance of the English language is driven by technology
Why innovation isn't natural to us
The declining respect of the writings of previous generations
Why the median age will continue to increase
Why we are moving into a mass-customization society
Changes in material science
The best way to think about the future

Jump in!

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I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show.

To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/

You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/

Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast

My social media platforms:
Twitter: @covel
Facebook: @trendfollowing
LinkedIn: @covel
Instagram: @mikecovel

Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive.
0:10.9	Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings.
0:21.1	I am your host, Michael Covel.
0:24.0	Not filtered, raw, honest.
0:27.3	That's my passion.
0:33.5	I follow Mark Andresen on Twitter.
0:36.7	Mark, one of the founders of Netscape, going back to the Mosaic browser.
0:42.0	I love his thinking.
0:43.6	I want to have him on my podcast at some point in the future.
0:47.5	This summer, he tweeted about a professor, Joel Mokier, at Northwestern.
0:53.1	And Andresen said that he was one of his heroes. Joel Mokier was oneern. And Andresen said that he was one of his heroes.
0:56.9	Joel Mokier was one of Mark Andresen's heroes.
0:59.0	That intrigued me.
1:01.0	Joel Mokier is a economic historian at Northwestern University.
1:06.7	His big thing is technology, technological progress, how it affects growth.
1:15.3	And from Joel's perspective, we've not seen anything yet.
1:19.3	Yes, I understand that many will say the quality of life for some, perhaps they would argue for many, has dropped.
1:26.6	A technology has not helped in the growth
1:30.5	statistics. It doesn't show up in the economic statistics. Joel has a different perspective.
1:38.4	And once again, from his perspective, we've not seen anything yet when it comes to technology. And what I really like about
1:46.0	Joel, he's not trying to predict what will come next. He knows he can't. But he's ready and he's
1:53.6	confident that big things will continue to happen. A fun, interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy.
	...

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