Will what was on display:
* reduce infant or child mortality?
* reduce maternal mortality?
* increase average life spans (by, say, double-digit percentages)?
* increase health or quality of life such that people at the end of their lives are more mobile, and perhaps have less onerous medical conditions?
* produce more food in the same amount of land?
* produce more food with fewer inputs (energy, labour, fertilizer, water)?
* produce more manufactured things with fewer inputs (energy, labour, metals)?
* allow for faster transportation with more efficiency?
It's all very well to invent something, but in what ways does it improve people's lives:
> Fortunately Gordon indicates that it is not an end to innovation, but a decline in the usefulness of future inventions that is taking place. Documenting the impressive rise in standards of living between 1920 and 1970, with rising TFP, he claimed that it will be more difficult than before to replicate such improvements in advanced countries like the United States. In the earlier period, the American standard of living doubled every 35 years; in the future this doubling (for most people) may take a century or more. Moreover, the newer innovations do not seem to be benefitting all segments of society, which in turn reflects rising inequality in the advanced countries.
> Gordon’s thesis raises many questions: Is he correct in saying that the era of rising labor productivity associated with innovation and technological change over? Will the digital economy imply a new rise in the standard of living? From a development perspective, what implications does his thesis have for middle- and low-income countries?
* https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/developmenttalk/declining-pac...