Last Wednesday evening the House of Lords held a 90-minute
debate on a Deloitte research paper, published last summer,
entitled Technology and people: The great job-creating machine (
http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/finance/articles/technology-and-people.html).
Written by myself and my colleagues, Debapratim De and Alex Cole,
the paper examining census data for England and Wales since 1871 to
track the relationship between technological innovation and the
destruction and creation of jobs.
Though limited in scope and focussing on lessons from the past,
the conclusions of our report run counter to today's prevailing
mood of pessimism about the effects of technology.
Last week's House of Lord's debate was tabled by Lord
Borwick, a Conservative peer with extensive experience in
automotive and low-carbon technologies. In opening the debate
Lord Borwick observed that fears about the job destroying
properties of technology were not new. He noted how, in 1589,
