Power and Progress review – why the tech-equals-progress narrative must be challenged

In an important new book, US economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson propose ways in which digital technology can be repurposed for human flourishing as well as private profit

Those who cannot remember the past," wrote the American philosopher George Santayana in 1905, are condemned to repeat it." And now, 118 years later, here come two American economists with the same message, only with added salience, for they are addressing a world in which a small number of giant corporations are busy peddling a narrative that says, basically, that what is good for them is also good for the world.

That this narrative is self-serving is obvious, as is its implied message: that they should be allowed to get on with their habits of creative destruction" (to use Joseph Schumpeter's famous phrase) without being troubled by regulation. Accordingly, any government that flirts with the idea of reining in corporate power should remember that it would then be standing in the way of progress": for it is technology that drives history and anything that obstructs it is doomed to be roadkill.

Power and Progress: Our Thousand Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson is published by John Murray Press (25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply