Episode Details

Every time a technology makes something cheap, it makes something else scarce. Money never flows to the abundance. It flows to the new bottleneck. When writing made remembering cheap, reading got expensive. Today, artificial intelligence makes intelligence cheap. What gets expensive when generating answers costs nothing?

Featuring: Melvin Kranzberg, Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, Karl Benz, Robert Solow, Herbert Simon, Robert Allen

Watch on YouTube

Read the full post

Brought to you by:

Trends.vc: Discover new markets and opportunities.

HeadsUp: Know when your competitors move. Before your customers do.

Multi: Turn any content into a YouTube video.

Chapters:

(00:00) A dentist's hands and 24 general purpose technologies
(01:05) Clay tablets make remembering cheap and reading expensive
(02:06) The printing press shifts risk from labor to capital
(03:01) Engels' pause and the factory motor
(04:51) Synthetic fertilizer trades a land limit for an energy limit
(06:32) Robert Solow and the productivity paradox
(08:06) Cheap intelligence makes picking the right answer scarce

Where to find Dru:

I write an essay daily. Get them free
Follow me on X
Watch my video essays on YouTube
Follow Dru's Notes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.

Click here to view the episode transcript.