Alexander De Croo Quotes

We're living through the second Industrial Revolution.

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.

Disruption is a critical element of the evolution of technology - from the positive and negative aspects of disruption a typical pattern emerges, as new technologies come to market and subsequently take hold.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

Over a long period of time, technological change is something that has been important in reducing manufacturing employment - absolutely and as a share of jobs in the economy.

There is a fear of innovation because people are afraid of job loss.

Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.

I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.

In short, industrialism is over.

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.

There are three types of innovations that affect jobs and capital: empowering innovations, sustaining innovations and efficiency innovations.

A new era of production has begun. It's principles of organization are as different from those of the industrial era as those of the industrial era were different from the agricultural. The cybernation revolution has been brought about by the combination of the computer and the self-regulating machine. This results in a system of almost unlimited capacity which requires progressively less human labor. Cybernation is already reorganizing the economic and social system to meet its own needs .... As machines take over production from men, they absorb an increasing proportion of resources while men who are displaced become dependent on minimal and unrelated [to their work] governmental measures—unemployment insurance, social security, welfare payments.

The role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way that the role of the horse in agricultural production.

Displacement by technology has probably occurred since the invention of the shovel.

… post-industrial society

The introduction of machinery is turning into idleness thousands, faster than new industries are founded

Innovation - the heart of technological change - is fundamentally a learning process.

Every technological revolution takes about 50 years.

This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia.

Technology's always taken jobs out of the system, and what you hope is that technology's going to put those jobs back in, too. That's what we call productivity.

Mankind had the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and now this third one, the information revolution.

We didn't get agitated over the closure of blacksmiths when people stopped riding horses and started driving cars.