Cyberpunk has always been my favorite sci-fi genre. Dystopian worlds ruled by transnational corporations, extreme inequality, corrupt governments, ecological collapse, biased media, constant surveillance, and omnipresent AI. Sound familiar?
I used to think cyberpunk was fiction. Now, I’m not so sure. But the most cyberpunk thing I’ve read this year wasn’t a Cyberpunk 2077 fan-fiction—it was a non-fiction book by Nobel Prize winning MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.”
Technology Doesn’t Automatically Mean Progress
We like to believe that technological innovation means growth in prosperity. The book argues otherwise. The authors provide compelling evidence across over a thousand years of human history that the so-called “productivity bandwagon”, meaning that technological progress always improves everyone’s prosperity, is not always the case. Unless actively directed towards augmenting the skills of workers or creating new tasks, technology tends to increase inequality, worsen labor conditions, and eliminate jobs.
The scary part is that this is not an accident—it’s a choice. And history shows that unless workers, consumers, and governments push back, innovation naturally benefits those who control it, not society as a whole. The book lists many examples, but I’ve singled out two that hit me particularly.
1️⃣ Automation is not always good. We’ve seen this before - machines displacing low-skilled workers without creating meaningful alternatives. But what’s worse is “so-so automation”—technology that replaces workers but doesn’t improve products, efficiency, or customer experience. Think: AI chatbots, self-checkout kiosks, or automated call centers displace workers without offering any alternative for them. These “so-so automations” also do not bring any measurable improvements for customers. Just think of the last time you’ve tried to solve your issues via a chatbot!
2️⃣ Worker surveillance and control. From Amazon warehouses tracking every movement of their staff to AI-driven productivity scoring, we are seeing technology used not to enhance productivity, but to squeeze every last drop of effort from workers. It’s not progress—it’s coercion. I don’t see how this helps to bring prosperity for the society and economy as a whole.
Tech Tycoons and the Monopoly on Progress
The key argument of the book is that tech billionaires don’t just build companies - they shape narratives. The most powerful one? All technology is good and inevitable, and they alone know what’s best for society. It’s the ultimate power move: convince the world that questioning their monopoly over innovation is anti-progress.
And the result? Skyrocketing inequality in the West, monopolies locking out competitors, and the erosion of workers’ rights - all under the banner of “progress.”
We are living in Cyberpunk dystopia
The book got me reflecting on the political and technological narratives, pursued by different countries. The U.S. under its new leadership, with tech-bros in charge, and inequality at all-time highs, seems determined to run straight into a dystopian future.
China, with its social credit system, Great Firewall, and AI-powered authoritarianism, is already there. These two different ways of adapting the same technology - social media and AI, demonstrate quite clearly that there is nothing inevitable in the technological progress.
Meanwhile, Europe is often criticized for over-regulation, carbon taxes, and trying to break up Big Tech monopolies. But after reading this book, you might start seeing Europe differently. It seems to be the only major power actually paying attention to inequality, freedom, and the human cost of innovation.
An unexpected ray of hope
Towards the end of the book, the authors make a surprising example of how pushback by society and governments can alter the path of technological development - climate change. There was nothing inevitable about the development of climate technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. Instead, it was scientific research, grassroots climate activists and politicians, that formed the awareness of the problem, convinced the society that the threat is real, and then pushed for developing climate technologies.
There was and still is widespread opposition to the climate change narrative, but it won enough support to develop new technologies at scale. These technologies created whole new industries and benefited workers across all income and education levels. At the same time, they delivering the lowest cost energy at zero health risk.
But the climate change problem has an advantage over automation and AI. It is easy to measure its scope - the amount of CO2 equivalent emitted or reduced, the healthcare spending on treating climate and pollution-related health problems, and the insurance costs of increased
The choice we make
The timing could not have been better. At least for me. Reading the book just right after Trump became the US president and Musk leveraging X to spread his vision of what is right, gave it a feel not of a social science book, but rather a chronicle. It is a “must-read“ for everyone, even if you are not an economist or consider yourself outside of politics. Because “Power and Progress” poses one of the most critical questions of our time: Will we shape technology, or will the few tech-titans of technology shape us? We can make a choice, or the choice will be made for us.