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As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution
Author(s): Chris Freeman (Author)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
- Publication Date: 3 Oct. 2002
- Edition: Revised ed.
- Language: English
- Print length: 426 pages
- ISBN-10: 0199251053
- ISBN-13: 9780199251056
Book Description
The Internet and mobile telephones have made everyone more aware than ever of the computer revolution and its effects on the economy and society. 'As Time Goes By' puts this revolution in the perspective of previous waves of technical change: steam-powered mechanization, electrification, and motorization. It argues for a theory of reasoned economic history which assigns a central place to these successive technological revolutions.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Review from previous edition This major contribution to economic history is the most impressive and convincing attempt I know to apply the concept of the 'long waves', a basic rhythm of historical development in the era of capitalism, to the entire stretch from eighteenth-century Lancashire to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. It is also a call for economic history to escape from the handcuffs of narrow retrospective econometrics to the freedom of its vocation: understanding and explaining secular historical transformations. ― Eric Hobsbawm FBA, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Emeritus Professor of Social and Economic History, Birkbeck College; Author of The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991
. . . a true story has to make sense, to be plausible and persuasive. Cleverness is less useful than sense and sensibility. The inability to see this, to avoid showing off, has been the death of more than one pyrotechnic schema. This book is testimony to knowledge and good sense. Such virtues are rare and that much more valuable. ―
David Landes, Professor of History and Economics, Harvard University, Emeritus; Author of The Wealth and Poverty of NationsThis book is a thought-provoking work that is valuable for more than its detailed account of the technological revolutions that shape our economy today. By directing our attention to a perspective outside the current wave, it shapes our thinking about events inside the current wave. ―
Academy of Management Review, 27(2)About the Author
Chris Freeman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and was the founder and former Director of SPRU (1966-81). SPRU has become one of the leading world centres for research on technical change. After war-time service in the Manchester Regiment and experience in market research, Chris Freeman became a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (1959-66), and later a Visiting Professor at the University of Limburg, Maastricht. Francisco Louçã is a Portuguese Member of Parliament, serving in the Economic and Budgetary Commission. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Lisbon, under the supervision of Chris Freeman. His thesis, entitled Turbulence in Economics has since been published in both English and Portuguese (Edward Elgar/Afrontamento, 1997).
