The Mercatus Center’s Academic & Student Programs team (ASP) are the ones that make all this happen. ASP is currently accepting applications for various fellowships running through the 2022-2023 academic year (for students) and 2023 calendar year (for our early-career scholars).  ASP recruits, trains, and supports graduate students who have gone on to pursue careers in academia, government, and public policy. Additionally, ASP supports scholars pursuing research on the cutting edge of academia. Mercatus fellows have an opportunity to learn from and interact with an impressive collection of Mercatus faculty, affiliated scholars, and visitors.

ASP offers several different fellowship programs to suit every need. Our fellows explore and discuss the foundations of political economy and public policy and pursue research on pressing issues. For graduate students who follow this blog and are generally interested in the big questions surrounding innovation, we especially encourage you to consider the Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship which will be premiering its innovation study track for the 2022-2023 academic year. I usually am an instructor at the session on tech and innovation policy. 

Here are more details on all the academic fellowships that Mercatus currently offers. Please pass along this information to any students or early-career scholars who might be interested.

For Students at Any University and in Any Discipline:

• The Adam Smith Fellowship  is a one-year, competitive fellowship program for graduate students enrolled in PhD programs at any university and in any discipline including, but not limited to, economics, philosophy, political science, and sociology. Adam Smith Fellows receive a stipend and attend colloquia on the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political economy. It is a total award of up to $10,000 for the year. The application deadline is March 15, 2022.
• The Frédéric Bastiat Fellowship  is a one-year, competitive fellowship program for graduate students who are enrolled in master’s, juris doctoral, and doctoral programs from any university and in any discipline including, but not limited to, economics, law, political science, and public policy. Frédéric Bastiat Fellows receive a stipend and attend colloquia on political economy and public policy. It is a total award of up to $5,000 for the year. The application deadline is March 15, 2022.
• The Oskar Morgenstern Fellowship is a one-year, competitive fellowship program for students who are enrolled in PhD programs from any university and in any discipline with training in quantitative methods. Oskar Morgenstern Fellows receive a stipend and attend colloquia on utilizing quantitative and empirical techniques to explore key questions and themes advanced by the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political economy. It is a total award of up to $7,000 for the year. The application deadline is March 15, 2022.

For Those Considering or in the Early Stages of Graduate School:

• The Don Lavoie Fellowship is a competitive, renewable, and online fellowship program for advanced undergraduates, recent graduates considering graduate school, and early-stage graduate students. Fellowships are open to students from any discipline who are interested in studying key ideas in political economy and learning how to utilize these ideas in academic and policy research. It is a total award of up to $1,250 for the semester. The deadline to apply for the Don Lavoie Fellowship for the Fall 2021 semester is April 15, 2022.

For Early Career Scholars:

• The Mercatus Center’s James Buchanan Fellowship is awarded to scholars in any discipline who have recently graduated from their doctoral programs. The aim of this fellowship is to encourage early-career scholars to critically engage ideas in the political economy of Adam Smith and the Austrian, Virginia, and Bloomington schools of political economy. It is a total award of up to $15,000 for the year. The application deadline is April 15, 2022.

This is a compendium of readings on “ progress studies ,” or essays and books which generally make the case for technological innovation, dynamism, economic growth, and abundance. I will update this list as additional material of relevance is brought to my attention.   

[Last update: 10/11/22]

Recent Essays

• Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” a16z.com, October 16, 2023.
• Will Rinehart, “The Abundance Agenda,” The Exformation Newsletter, October 15, 2022.
• Sarah Constantin, “Unblocking Abundance: A Model for Activism,” Rough Diamonds, October 10, 2022.
• Derek Thompson, “The Forgotten Stage of Human Progress,” The Atlantic, May 11, 2022.
• Adam Thierer, “Where is ‘Progress Studies’ Going?” Progress Forum, April 23, 2022.
• Katherine Boyle, “The Case for American Seriousness,” Common Sense, April 18, 2022.
• William Rinehart, “Vetocracy, the Costs of Vetos and Inaction,” Center for Growth & Opportunity at Utah State University, March 24, 2022.
• James Pethokoukis, “Forget about Left Wing and Right Wing. How about an Up Wing America?” Faster Please, March 23, 2022.
• John W. Lettieri & Kenan Fikri, “The Case for Economic Dynamism and Why it Matters for the American Worker,” Economic Innovation Group, March 2022.
• Adam Kovacevich, “Saying YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) to “Civic Innovation,” Chamber of Progress, March 21, 2022.
• Eli Dourado, “Remove Barriers to Productivity,” City Journal, March 18, 2022.
• “A Case for Innovation and Optimism,” (A conversation with Jason Crawford), Discourse, March 2, 2022.
• Noah Smith, “A New Industrialist Roundup,” Noahpinion, February 3, 2022.
• James Pethokoukis, “When Will the Next Big Thing Arrive?” Faster Please, February 3, 2022.
• Alec Stapp & Caleb Watney,  “ Progress is a Policy Choice ,” Institute for Progress, January 20, 2022.
• Adam Thierer, “ How to Get the Future We Were Promised ,” Discourse, January 18, 2022.
• Katherine Boyle, “ Building American Dynamism ,” Future, January 14, 2022.  
• Derek Thompson, “ A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems ,” The Atlantic, January 12, 2022.
• Jason Crawford, “Progress, Humanism, Agency: An Intellectual Core for the Progress Movement,” Roots of Progress, January 11, 2022.
• Adam Thierer, “Defending Innovation Against Attacks from All Sides,” Discourse, November 9, 2021.
• Matthew Yglesias, “The Case for More Energy,” October 7, 2021.
• Jason Crawford, “ We need a new philosophy of progress ,” The Roots of Progress, August 23, 2021.
• Gale Pooley & Marian L. Tupy, “The Simon Abundance Index 2021,” Human Progress, April 22, 2021.
• Noah Smith, “ Techno-optimism for the 2020s ,” December 3, 2020. 
• Ezra Klein, “ Why We Can’t Build ,” Vox, April 22, 2020.
• Marc Andreesen, “ It’s Time to Build ,” Future, April 18, 2020.
• Eli Dourado, “ How do we move the needle on progress ?” September 26, 2019.
• José Luis Ricón, “ About the ‘Progress’ in Progress Studies ” September 6, 2019.
• Will Rinehart, “ Progress Studies: Some Initial Thoughts ,” August 30, 2019.
• Adam Thierer, “ Is There a Science of Progress ?” AIER, August 8, 2019.
• Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen, “ We Need a New Science of Progress ,” The Atlantic, July 30, 2019.
• Tyler Cowen, “ The Case for the Longer Term ,” Cato Unbound, January 9, 2019.
• Vinod Khosla, “ We Need Large Innovations ,” Medium, January 1, 2018.
• Adam Thierer, “ How Technology Expands the Horizons of Our Humanity ,” Medium, November 19, 2018. 
• Chelsea Follett, “Utopianism: One of the Biggest Obstacles to Progress,” Human Progress, August15, 2018.
• Eli Dourado, “ How Technological Innovation Can Massively Reduce the Cost of Living ,” PlainText, January 29, 2016.

Books

• J. Storrs Hall, Where Is My Flying Car ? (Stripe Press, 2021).
• Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom (New York: Harper, 2020).
• Andrew McAfee, More from Less (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).
• Ronald Bailey & Marian L. Tupy, Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (Cato Institute, 2020).
• Arthur M. Diamond Jr., Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals (San Francisco, CA: Stripe Press, 2018).
• Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018).
• Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (New York: Flatiron Books, 2018).
• Tim Harford, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017).
• Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017).
• Adam Thierer, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom , 2nd ed. (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2016).
• Calestous Juma, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).
• Joe Carlen, A Brief History of Entrepreneurship: The Pioneers, Profiteers, and Racketeers Who Shaped Our World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
• Robert Bryce, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong (New York: Public Affairs, 2014).
• Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).
• Larry Downes, The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces That Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
• Amar Bhidé, The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
• Robert Friedel, A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007).
• Benjamin M. Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth , (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).
• Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies (New York: The Free Press, 1998).
• David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some are So Poor (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1998).
• Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994).
• Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
• Nathan Rosenberg and L. E.. Birdzell, How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
• Samuel C. Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1976, 1994).

[Updated: March 2022]

I was speaking at a conference recently and discussing my life’s work, which for 30 years has been focused on the importance of innovation and intellectual battles over what we mean progress. I put together up a short list of some things I have written over the last few years on this topic and thought I would just re-post them here. I will try to keep this regularly updated, at least for a few years.

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE WE FACE:

• Defending Innovation Against Attacks from All Sides (November 2021)
• How to Get the Future We Were Promised (January 2022)
• The Radicalization of Modern Tech Criticism (April 2019)
• Is It ‘Techno-Chauvinist’ & ‘Anti-Humanist’ to Believe in the Transformative Potential of Technology? (September 2018)

HOW WE MUST RESPOND = “Rational Optimism” / Right to Earn a Living / Permissionless Innovation

• A Case for Innovation and Optimism (A conversation with Jason Crawford, March 2022)
• How To Defend a Culture of Innovation During the Technopanic (April 2019)
• Is This the End of Permissionless Innovation? (January 2021)
• How Technology Expands the Horizons of Our Humanity (November 2018)
• Deep Technologies & Moonshots: Should We Dare to Dream? (September 2018)
• The Right to Pursue Happiness, Earn a Living, and Innovate (September 2018)
• Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom (2016)

ADDITIONAL READING:

• Is There a Science of Progress?  (August 2019)
• Technological Innovation and Economic Growth: A Brief Report on the Evidence (March 2019)
• 5 Books that Shaped My Thinking on Innovation (April 2020)
• Innovation and the Trouble with the Precautionary Principle (April 2020)

NEW BOOK (tying together all the essays and papers listed above):

• Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments (2020)

I recently posted an essay over at The Bridge about “The Pacing Problem and the Future of Technology Regulation.” In it, I explain why the pacing problem—the notion that technological innovation is increasingly outpacing the ability of laws and regulations to keep up—“is becoming the great equalizer in debates over technological governance because it forces governments to rethink their approach to the regulation of many sectors and technologies.”

In this follow-up article, I wanted to expand upon some of the themes developed in that essay and discuss how they relate to two other important concepts: the “Collingridge Dilemma” and technological determinism. In doing so, I will build on material that is included in a forthcoming law review article I have co-authored with Jennifer Skees, Ryan Hagemann (“Soft Law for Hard Problems: The Governance of Emerging Technologies in an Uncertain Future”) as well as a book I am finishing up on the growth of “evasive entrepreneurialism” and “technological civil disobedience.”

Recapping the Nature of the Pacing Problem

First, let us quickly recap that nature of “the pacing problem.” I believe Larry Downes did the best job explaining the “problem” in his 2009 book on The Laws of Disruption. Downes argued that “technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally” and that this “law” was becoming “a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life.”

Downes was generally a cheerleader for such developments. For him, the pacing problem is more like the pacing benefit. But Downes is in the minority among most tech policy scholars in this regard. In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), discussions about the pacing problem and what to do about it are omnipresent and full of foreboding gloominess.

STS is a broad field of interdisciplinary studies unified by a concern with “the impacts and control of science and technology, with particular focus on the risks, benefits and opportunities that S&T may pose” to a wide range of values. STS studies incorporates many disciplines: legal and philosophical studies, sociology, anthropology, engineering, and others. In countless essays, papers, journal articles, and books, STS scholars lament the pacing problem and often insist something must be done, often without ever getting around to explaining what that something is.

Regardless of their field of study, there is broad recognition among these scholars that new technological, social, and political realities make the pacing problem a phenomenon worth studying.  In my Bridge essay, I identified three primary drivers of the pacing problem:

• Technological driver: The power of “combinatorial innovation,” which is driven by “Moore’s Law,” fuels a constant expansion of technological capabilities.
• Social driver: As citizens quickly assimilate new tools into their daily lives and then expect that even more and better tools will be delivered tomorrow.
• Political driver: Government has grown increasingly dysfunctional and unable to adapt to those technological and social changes.

The “Collingridge Dilemma”

Although they do not always refer to it by name, STS scholars regularly stress the so-called “Collingridge dilemma” in their work. The Collingridge dilemma refers to the extreme difficulty of putting proverbial genies back in their bottles once a given technology has reached a certain inflection point in society. The concept is named after David Collingridge, who wrote about the challenges of governing emerging technologies in his 1980 book, The Social Control of Technology .

“The social consequences of a technology cannot be predicted early in the life of the technology,” Collingridge argued. “By the time undesirable consequences are discovered, however, the technology is often so much part of the whole economics and social fabric that its control is extremely difficult.” He called this the “dilemma of control,” and asserted that, “When change is easy, the need for it cannot be foreseen; when the need for change is apparent, change has become expensive, difficult and time-consuming.”

In a sense, the “Collingridge dilemma” is simply a restatement of the pacing problem but with (1) greater stress on the social drivers behind the pacing problem and, (2) an implicit solution to “the problem” in the form of preemptive control of new technologies while they are still young and more manageable.

Specifically, for many STS scholars, Collingridge’s “dilemma” is preferably solved through the application of the Precautionary Principle. The contours of the Precautionary Principle are notoriously murky and ill-defined. Nonetheless, as I discussed a great length in my last book on the subject, the Precautionary Principle generally refers to the belief that new innovations should be curtailed or disallowed until their developers can prove that they will not cause any harm to individuals, groups, specific entities, cultural norms, or various existing laws, norms, or traditions.

You can see the logic of the Collingridge dilemma and the Precautionary Principle at work everywhere in STS scholarship today. Few scholars want to admit they favor the Precautionary Principle, however, so they often use different terminology. “Anticipatory governance” or “upstream governance” are the preferred terms of art these days.

For example, in a recent law review article about “Regulating Disruptive Innovation,” Nathan Cortez argues that “new technologies can benefit from decisive, well-timed regulation” or even “early regulatory interventions.” Similarly, writing in Slate in 2014, John Frank Weaver insisted we should regulate emerging tech like artificial intelligence “early and often” to “get out ahead of” various social and economic concerns.

In his last book, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping beyond Our Control, bioethicist Wendell Wallach also argued for new forms of upstream governance and defined it as a system that allow for “more control over the way that potentially harmful technologies are developed or introduced into the larger society. Upstream management is certainly better than introducing regulations downstream, after a technology is deeply entrenched, or something major has already gone wrong,” he argued. Wallach is basically just restating the Collingridge dilemma in this regard.

The problem with all these calls for the anticipatory or upstream governance solutions to the pacing problem and the Collingridge dilemma is that, like the Precautionary Principle more generally, the specific solutions are very incoherent or sometimes completely lacking. STS scholars almost always leave the reader hanging without offering a conclusion to their gloomy, pessimistic narratives about whatever technology or technological process it is they are critiquing. Critics are quick to issue bold calls-to-action, but rarely provide a detailed blueprint.

There are some exceptions. Some STS scholars have advocated for Precautionary Principle-minded legislation or agencies, like an “Artificial Intelligence Development Act,” a “National Algorithmic Technology Safety Administration” or a federal AI agency, such as a “Federal Robotics Commission.” Meanwhile, over the past decade, many STS scholars have pushed for national privacy and cybersecurity legislation, or expansive new forms of liability for technology companies. The regulatory authority sought in these cases would be squarely precautionary in character, aimed at addressing a wide array of hypothetical harms through permissioned-based rulemaking before those problems even materialize.

Technological Determinism?

Discussions about the pacing problem and the Collingridge dilemma have an air of technological determinism to them. Technological determinism generally refers to the notion that technology almost has a mind of its own and that it will plow forward without much resistance from society or governments. Here is a more scholarly definition from Sally Wyatt, who has explained how technological determinism is generally defined in a two-part fashion:

The first part is that technological developments take place outside society, independently of social, economic, and political forces. New or improved products or ways of making things arise from the activities of inventors, engineers, and designers following an internal, technical logic that has nothing to do with social relationships. The more crucial second part is that technological change causes or determines social change.

The opposite of technological determinism is usually referred to as “social constructivism,” which as Thomas Hughes notes, “presumes that social and cultural forces determine technical change.”

Ironically, among STS scholars, technological determinist reasoning is both (a) regularly on display, and (b) generally reviled. That is, many STS scholars speaking in deterministic tones about the inevitability of certain technological developments, but then they effortlessly shift into social constructivist mode when commenting on what they hope to do about it.

One of the most well-known technology critics of the past century was French philosopher Jacques Ellul. It is impossible to read his tracts and not find deterministic reasoning flying off every other page. He argued, for example, that technology is “self-perpetuating, all-persuasive, and inescapable,” and that it represents “an autonomous and uncontrollable force that dehumanized all that it touches.” Moreover, within the field of Marxist studies, technological determinism is ubiquitous. Of course, that goes back to Marx himself and his many ideological descendants, who held strongly deterministic views about the role industrial technology played in sharping history and socio-political systems. Plenty of other STS scholars remain hard-core social constructivist, however, and insist that dealing with the pacing problem and the Collingridge dilemma really just comes down to a matter of sheer social and political willpower.

Techno-determinist thinking is usually on display in more vivid terms among technological optimists. Reading the writings of futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Kevin Kelly, one cannot help but get the sense that they are pining for the day when we are all just assimilated into The Matrix. There is an air of utter futility associated with humanity’s efforts to resist the spread of various technological systems and processes. Philosopher Michael Sacasas refers to this mentality as “the Borg Complex,” which, he says, is often “exhibited by writers and pundits who explicitly assert or implicitly assume that resistance to technology is futile.”

The point I am trying to make here is that technological determinism is at work in all sorts of scholarship and punditry. Regardless of whether one subscribes to what Ian Barbour has labelled the warring viewpoints of “Technology as Liberator” or “Technology as a Threat,” very different people can hold strongly deterministic viewpoints.

Soft Determinism

The problem with all this talk about determinism—technological, social, political, or whatever—is that the lines are never quite as bright as some suggest. “Hard” determinism of any of these varieties simply cannot be correct. We have too many historical examples that run counter to both narratives.

Personally, I’ve always subscribed to what some refer to as “ soft technological determinism.” Technological historian Merritt Roe Smith defines “soft determinism” as the view “which holds that technological change drives social change but at the same time responds discriminatingly to social pressures,” as compared to “hard determinism,” which “perceives technological development as an autonomous force, completely independent of social constraints.”

Konstantinos Stylianou has offered a variant of soft determinism that zeroes in on better understanding the unique attributes of specific technologies and political systems when considering how difficult they may be to control. He argues that “there are indeed technologies so disruptive that by their very nature they cause a certain change regardless of other factors,” such as the Internet. Stylianou concludes that:

It seems reasonable to infer that the thrust behind technological progress is so powerful that it is almost impossible for traditional legislation to catch up. While designing flexible rules may be of help, it also appears that technology has already advanced to the degree that is able to bypass or manipulate legislation. As a result, the cat-and-mouse chase game between the law and technology will probably always tip in favor of technology. It may thus be a wise choice for the law to stop underestimating the dynamics of technology, and instead adapt to embrace it.

That may sound like just more hard deterministic thinking, but it represents a softer variety that holds that the special characteristics of some technologies are indeed altering our capacity to govern many newer sectors using traditional regulatory mechanisms. In my new law review article with Jennifer Skees and Ryan Hagemann, we conclude that this is the key factor motivating the gradual move away from “hard law” and toward “soft law” governance tools for a great many emerging technologies.

To be clear, this does not mean we are going to soon reach the proverbial “end of politics” or the “death of the nation-state” due to technology, or anything like that. As I point out in my forthcoming book, that sort of talk is silly. Some technology enthusiasts or libertarians use techno-determinist talk as if they are preaching a gospel of liberation theology—liberation from the state through technology emancipation, that is.

In reality, technology giveth and technology taketh away. Technology can empower people and institutions and help them challenge laws, regulations, and entire political systems. My forthcoming book documents how many “evasive entrepreneurs” are doing just that today, and with increasing regularity. But technology empowers government actors, too. In an unpublished 2009 manuscript entitled, “Does Technology Drive the Growth of Government?” my Mercatus Center colleague Tyler Cowen noted how growth of big government in the 20th century was greatly facilitated by various modern technologies (advanced transportation and communications networks, in particular). “Future technologies may either increase or decrease the role of government in society,” he noted, “but if history shows one thing, it is that we should not neglect technology in understanding the shift from an old political equilibrium to a new one.”

Thus, those who think that the pacing problem is a one-way ratchet to emancipation from state control need to realize that technology can be used for good and bad ends, and it can be used (and abused) by governments to expand their powers and limit our liberties. Similarly, those tech critics and STS scholars who lament how the pacing problem will undermine governments, democracy, or other institutions or values without radical interventions also are going too far. They need to recognize that while it is true many new technologies will march forward at a steady clip, it does not mean that society is powerless to bring some order to technological processes. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. And then we create still more tools to improve upon previous tools, and the process goes on and on.

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid put it best in this 2001 essay responding to “doom-and-gloom technofuturists”:

[T]echnological and social systems shape each other. The same is true on a larger scale. . . . Technology and society are constantly forming and reforming new dynamic equilibriums with far-reaching implications. The challenge . . . is to see beyond the hype and past the over-simplifications to the full import of these new sociotechnical formations.

So yes, the pacing problem is real, and it will continue to raise problems for social and political systems. But as Brown and Paul Duguid suggest, we’ll constantly adapt, form and reform new dynamic equilibriums, and then “muddle through,” just as we have so many times before.

Related Reading

• “The Pacing Problem and the Future of Technology Regulation”
• “Muddling Through: How We Learn to Cope with Technological Change”
• “A Short Response to Michael Sacasas on Advice for Tech Writers”
• “Are “Permissionless Innovation” and “Responsible Innovation” Compatible?”
• “Wendell Wallach on the Challenge of Engineering Better Technology Ethics”
• “Book Review: Calestous Juma’s “Innovation and Its Enemies’”
• “Evasive Entrepreneurialism and Technological Civil Disobedience: Basic Definitions”

Whatever you want to call them–autonomous vehicles, driverless cars, automated systems, unmanned systems, connected cars, piloteless vehicles, etc.–the life-saving potential of this new class of technologies has been shown to be potentially enormous. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and writing about these issues, and I have yet to see any study forecast the opposite (i.e., a net loss of lives due to these technologies.) While the estimated life savings vary, the numbers are uniformly positive across the board, and not just in terms of lives saved, but also for reductions in other injuries, property damage, and aggregate social costs associated with vehicular accidents more generally.

To highlight these important and consistent findings, I asked my research assistant Melody Calkins to help me compile a list of recent studies on this issue and summarize the key takeaways of each one regarding at least the potential for lives saved. The studies and findings are listed below in reverse chronological order of publication. I may try to add to this over time, so please feel free to shoot me suggested updates as they become available.

Needless to say, these findings would hopefully have some bearing on public policy toward these technologies. Namely, we should be taking steps to accelerate this transition and removing roadblocks to the driverless car revolution because we could be talking about the biggest public health success story of our lifetime if we get policy right here. Every day matters because each day we delay this transition is another day during which 90 people die in car crashes and more than 6,500 will be injured. And sadly, those numbers are going up, not down. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), auto crashes and the roadway death toll is climbing for the first time in decades. Meanwhile, the agency estimated that 94 percent of all crashes are attributable to human error. We have the potential to do something about this tragedy, but we have to get public policy right. Delay is not an option.

Accelerating the Future: The Economic Impact of the Emerging Passenger Economy (June 2017)

an Intel Report

• p. 23: “If we conservatively assume that just 5 percent of these accidents are avoided in the decade from 2035 to 2045 due to pilotless vehicles, 585,000 lives will be saved during that time.”

Implications of connected and Automated vehicles on the Safety and Operations of Roadway Networks: A Final Report (Oct 2016)

By The University of Texas at Austin Center for Transportation Research

Chapter 4, Safety Benefits of CAVs

See Table 4.7,4.8, 4.9 (p.95-97) Annual economic cost and functional-years lost savings estimates from safety benefits of CAV technologies

• p. 78: The most recently-available U.S. crash database (the 2013 National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) General Estimates System (GES) was used, and results suggest that advanced CAV technologies may reduce… functional human-years lost by nearly 2 million (per year, assuming a market penetration rate of 100%)
• p. 80: Lane Departure Warning (LDW) systems can reduce 47% of all lane-departure-related crashes, corresponding to 85,000 crashes annually
• p. 80: Backing-crash countermeasures (like backup collision intervention via automated braking) could prevent almost 65,000 backup crashes a year.
• p. 80: With an assumption of 100% deployment and 100% device availability (for Road departure crash warning (RDCW) technology), an annually reduction of 9,400 to 74,800 U.S. road-departure crashes was predicted.
• p. 81: V2V systems, such as FCW, blind spot warning (BSW), and lane change warning (LCW), can serve as primary crash countermeasures, reducing U.S. light-duty vehicle-involved crashes by 76%. They further estimated that V2I systems, such as curve speed warning (CSW), red light violation warning system (RLVW), and stop sign violation warning (SSVW), if deployed anywhere they could be useful, could address 25% of all light-duty-vehicle crashes in the U.S. 

Automated Vehicle Crash Rate Comparison using Naturalistic Data (Jan. 2016)

Commissioned by Google, Performed by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (Data adjusts for unreported crashes)

• Estimated crash rates for the Self-Driving Car Project were lower for all three crash levels… Additionally, the rate of less-severe crashes (Level 3) for the Self-Driving Car was lower at a statistically significant level (39)
• See Table 10 p.41 “Current data suggest that self-driving cars may have low rates of more-severe crashes (Level 1 and Level 2 crashes) when compared to national rates or to rates from naturalistic data sets.”
• “The data also suggest that less-severe events (Level 3 crashes) may happen at a significantly lower rate for self-driving cars… none of the vehicles operating in autonomous mode were deemed at fault” (p.41)

The Future of Motor Insurance: How Car Connectivity and ADAS are Impacting the Market (2016)

HERE and Swiss Re

• See p.15, Figure 9: Accident Reduction Rate by Selected Features
• Advanced ADAS (highway pilot) would reduce accidents on motorways by 45.4% and on other roads by 27.5%
• Sophisticated ADAS (lane keeping assistant, emergency braking assistant, night vision) would reduce accidents on motorways by 25.7% and on other roads by 27.5%

A Preliminary Analysis of Real-World Crashes Involving Self Driving Vehicles (Oct. 2015)

University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute

• p. 14: The most common outcome of crashes for both vehicle types was property damage only, but self-driving vehicles had this outcome 10% more often than conventional vehicles. Consequently, self-driving vehicles experienced injury-related crashes 10% less often than conventional vehicles. The overall severity of crashes involving self-driving vehicles was also lower than for conventional vehicles.
• p. 18: Four main findings:

1. The current best estimate is that self-driving vehicles have a higher crash rate per million miles traveled than conventional vehicles, and similar patterns were evident for injuries per million miles traveled and for injuries per crash.
2. The corresponding 95% confidence intervals overlap. Therefore, we currently cannot rule out, with a reasonable level of confidence, the possibility that the actual rates for self-driving vehicles are lower than for conventional vehicles.      
3. Self-driving vehicles were not at fault in any crashes they were involved in.
4. The overall severity of crash-related injuries involving self-driving vehicles has been lower than for conventional vehicles.

• Limitations of the study (stating that crash rates for self-driving vehicles are higher than conventional vehicles) are corrected for in the more recent 2016 Google Study (see above), to show that actually self-driving vehicles crash less.

Ten Ways Autonomous Driving Could Redefine the Automotive World (June 2015)

McKinsey Report

• Suggests that advanced ADAS and AVs could reduce accidents by up to 90%

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: The UK Economic Opportunity (Mar 2015)

KPMG

• p.2 & p.12: By 2030, connected and autonomous vehicles could save over 2,500 lives and prevent more than 25,000 serious accidents in the UK.

Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles (Oct. 2013)

Eno Center for Transportation

• p. 8, Table 2: Estimates of Annual Economic Benefits from AVs in the United States
• 10% market-penetration would mean 1,100 lives saved; 50% would be 9,600 lives; 90% would be 21,700 lives

The website ProCon.org has a new debate online laying out the different perspectives about the question: “Do violent video games contribute to youth violence?” It includes citations for a wide variety of studies that come down on both sides of the question. Simply put, there’s a study for everyone out there. Do you want to find a study suggesting that there’s a strong correlation between violently-themed media and aggression? You can find plenty. Or do you want to hear that there’s no correlation between these things? Well, there’s plenty of studies suggesting that, too.

As someone who briefly flirted with a degree in psychology, I find this an interesting intellectual debate. But here’s the thing I can’t get away from — lab studies by psychology professors and students are not the real-world. I am consistently shocked and disappointed at the lack of scrutiny these studies receive when they are little more than artificial constructions of reality.

So, how can we determine whether watching depictions of violence will turn us all into killing machines, rapists, robbers, or just plain ol’ desensitized thugs? Well, how about looking at the real world! Whatever lab experiments might suggest, the evidence of a link between depictions of violence in media and the real-world equivalent just does not show up in the data. The FBI produces ongoing Crime in the United States reports that document violent crimes trends. Here’s what the data tells us about overall violent crime, forcible rape, and juvenile violent crime rates over the past two decades: They have all fallen. Perhaps most impressively, the juvenile crime rate has fallen an astonishing 36% since 1995 (and the juvenile murder rate has plummeted by 62%).

Now, let me be perfectly clear about something. When analyzing such things it is vitally important to recall one of the first rules of statistical analysis: correlation does not necessarily equal causation. This works in both directions. Even if an increase in real-world violence was closely tracking depictions of violence on television or in video games, it wouldn’t necessarily mean there is a connection. But it would also be wrong to state that, on its own, an inverse correlation (with the trends moving in opposite directions) meant that there was absolutely no connection between these things.

At the margin, I believe that some media can have negative impacts on some people. Certainly, in heavy enough doses, watching non-stop depictions of sex or violence probably would have some sort of negative effect on some people — loss of sleep, if nothing else. Perhaps more.

Then again, it is impossible to ignore the real-world evidence being so starkly at odds with the “monkey see, monkey do” theories bandied about by some researchers or regulatory proponents. At a minimum, the real-world evidence should at least call into question the “world-is-going-to-hell” sort of generalizations made by proponents of increased media regulation, who all too often make casual inferences about the relationship between media exposure and various social indicators. Such a causal relationship is even more dubious today since all Americans, especially youngsters, are surrounded by a much wider variety of media than ever before. Even though television viewing has gone down slightly in recent years, it has been due to the rise of other media substitutes that command the attention of children, including the Internet, cell phones and video games. Overall, therefore, it appears that children are “consuming” as much, if not more, media than ever before. One would think that if depictions of violence in media really were leading to increased aggression among youth it would start showing up in some of these indicators at some point. But that’s just not occurring. [If you’re interested, I’ve discussed all these issues at much greater detail here, here, here, here, and here.]

Another argument I often hear is: ‘Well, the numbers would be even better if not for media violence!’ But there’s just no way to prove that one way or the other. Would the juvenile crime rate be down 46% instead of the 36% decrease we’ve actually since 1995? I don’t know. Nobody can know. But I certainly hope that media critics and regulatory proponents aren’t so foolish as to suggest that the crime rate would drop to zero if we just forced everybody to watch “Mary Poppins” all day long.

Finally, let’s keep in mind that, whatever the evidence suggests, there are many other ways society can deal with objectionable media content without resorting to government censorship. There are plenty of excellent parental control tools and methods out there today which give individuals and families, all of which have different needs and values, the ability to craft their own “household media standard.” There are also ways to put pressure on media providers, distributors, and advertisers to self-regulate content, or better control when and where it appears.  And educational and media literacy strategies can help assimilate youth into a media-saturated culture. To me, that’s the best approach. If you accept the fact that media — including violently-themed media — has always been with us and is never going away, then you understand the importance of talking to kids about these things in an open, understanding, and loving fashion. We should be doing this in schools, at home, and throughout society.

In the meantime, don’t buy into the hype about artificial lab studies, regardless of what they say. The kids are alright.

Additional Reading:

• Video Games, Violence, & Social “Science”: Another Day, Another Fight
• Does TV Cause Violence Against Women? PTC’s “Women in Peril” Report
• Why hasn’t violent media turned us into a nation of killers?
• Are All Video Games Violent?
• Do video games create cop killers?
• Let’s Consider the Facts Before We Call In Government to Regulate Video Games
• review: Kutner & Olson’s “Grand Theft Childhood”
• review: Dr. Kourosh Dini’s “Video Game Play & Addiction”
• Jenkins on new Pew report about “Teens, Video Games, and Civics”