, linear process, but in reality it is far from regular, a fact that does not escape economists themselves. yet over the past two centuries the market, demographics and technical progress have produced wealth, work, and better living standards for steadily increasing masses of people. this has come about through a series of social, individual and collective travails that have made the process non - linear, yet not random. in what follows i will discuss the theme of change, in particular the rapid and constant change now associated with technological developments, and the multiple interactions between the legacy of the global financial crisis and new challenges. an increasingly important issue in the debate is the impact of new technologies on jobs and on the skills required to seize the opportunities and govern the risks of the digital revolution. from industrial revolution to sustainable development the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century gave rise to the “ first machine age ” ( the second is the age we are now living in, as described by erik brynjolfsson and andrew mcafee ). 1 innovation and automation have gradually transformed material production, in e. brynjolfsson and a. mcafee, the second machine age : work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies, new york, w. w. norton & company, 2014. bis central bankers ’ speeches agriculture and industry alike, and especially in manufacturing. the new opportunities created over the course of this extraordinary period of human history have more than offset the jobs destroyed by the new general purpose technologies : the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, electric power. in why the west rules – for now, 2 the anglo - american historian ian morris develops an index of social development based on energy use, civil organisation, military capability and information technology. brynjolfsson and mcafee observe that his index points to an astonishing conclusion : none of the crucial innovations antedating the industrial revolution – the domestication of livestock, the development of agriculture, the foundation of cities, the rise of philosophy and the great religions, the invention of writing, the introduction of numbers – had anything like the importance for socio - economic development of the exceptional discontinuity of the late eighteenth century. this break was accompanied by the growth of world population from 800 million in 1750 to over 1. 5 billion in 1900, 2. 5 billion in 1950, 3 billion fifty years ago and over 7 billion today. it was precisely the postwar exponential demographic acceleration – the “ population explosion ” – that prompted discussion on

essential. even raising the rate of growth in productivity requires well - targeted investments in new technology, to be sure, but also in intangible infrastructures that can generate increasing returns over the medium - to - long term. if there is a lack of investment due to the high cost of capital in some countries, doubts about demand, or uncertainty over the state and continuity of “ structural reforms, ” it is the responsibility of the political system and economic policy – and of those in leading positions in society, in the information industry and in training and education – to act with resolution, foresight and singleness of purpose to remove these impediments. in italy, in particular, given an economy and a society that have been practically stalled since well before the onset of the financial crisis, there is great potential for improvement, by removing constraints and rigidity, accelerating the adoption of new technology, closing the gap that separates many industries from the productivity frontier, and refurbishing infrastructures, including the most traditional ones. in the search for a new model of development, or at least a return to balanced, sustainable economic growth, we can start from acemoglu and robinson ’ s observation on how important it is to maintain a pluralist society and renew our political and economic institutions in a more inclusive direction. 32 specifically, it is not enough to set out reasonable objectives if the conditions for attaining them are lacking. in some cases, these conditions are unlikely to present themselves. the objective of bringing manufacturing value added back up from its current 15 - 16 per cent of gdp to 20 per cent by 2020, as it was a decade and more ago, proposed quite emphatically in the european commission ’ s strategy for the next few years 33, will run into evident historical and methodological obstacles. on the one hand it is most likely, owing notably to the spread of automation, that value added will be derived increasingly from sectors outside manufacturing. as in the case of agriculture, this does not necessarily reduce its importance for a nation ’ s economy or a society ’ s value system. but it does spotlight the risk of overstating its potential to create jobs. on the other hand, the spread of new technologies is making even the very definitions of economic sectors obsolete. e. brynjolfsson, a. mcafee and m. spence, “ new world order : labor, capital, and ideas in the power law economy ”, foreign affairs, july - august 2014. imf