Is the Next Economy Taking Shape?

The computer-driven digital economy has delivered more than twenty years of sustained productivity growth, but the breakneck rate of progress in computer chip technology and the pace of innovation in the IT sector may eventually hit a wall in terms of its ability to deliver productivity growth by the year 2020. In this article, ITIF President Rob Atkinson argues the United States needs to be preparing now for what it will do when the computer-driven new economy loses momentum. Just as the United States is now reaping the benefits of research investments made in the 1960s and 1970s into semiconductors and computer networking (the Internet), the U.S. must now be laying the groundwork for new general purpose technologies that will sustain productivity and economic growth well into the future.