I have only read the sample chapter and it is an absolute cracker.
Very much agree with Paul Krugman when he says “Is he right? My answer is a definite maybe. But whether or not you end up agreeing with Gordon’s thesis, this is a book well worth reading — a magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life over the past six generations and careful economic analysis. Noneconomists may find some of the charts and tables heavy going, but Gordon never loses sight of the real people and real lives behind those charts. This book will challenge your views about the future; it will definitely transform how you see the past.”
In the last few years, Robert J. Gordon, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, has persistently argued against the trendy view of the moment that robots, AI and other ‘disruptive technologies’ are about to launch the global economy into a productivity boost never seen before. I have commented before on Gordon’s series of papersdeveloping this proposition.
And very recently, Gordon presented his arguments yet again at ASSA 2016 when he critiqued a paper by David Kotz and Deepankur Basu at an URPE session.
As Gordon says succinctly in that critique: “The evidence accumulates every quarter to support my view that the most important contributions to productivity of the digital revolution are in the past, not in the future. The reason that business firms are spending their money on share buy-backs instead of plant and equipment investment is that the current wave of innovation is not producing…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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