كيف ينتهي التقدم: التكنولوجيا والابتكار ومصير الأمم

Nominated for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award. How does a millennium of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation, even collapse? In his book “How Progress Ends,” Karl Benedikt Frey challenges the widespread belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation has been the norm, and even today, progress and prosperity in the world's largest and most advanced economies - the United States and China - have not lived up to expectations. To understand why we cannot rely on any quantum leap driven by artificial intelligence, Fry offers a fascinating and interesting journey across the world, spanning the past thousand years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. By examining key historical moments—from the advent of the steam engine to the dawn of artificial intelligence—Fry shows how technological transformations have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. Fry explores why some of the leading technological powers of the past - such as Song Dynasty China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain - lost their innovative capacity, why some modern countries, such as Japan, experienced periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies such as the Soviet Union collapsed after brief periods of progress. Fry reveals a recurring tension in history: while decentralization encourages the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is essential to expanding their scope. When organizations are unable to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by striking a delicate balance between decentralization and bureaucracy can countries innovate and grow in the long term—outcomes that have troubling implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today. Through a rich narrative that combines history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.