Paul Krugman-Charlie Stross Interview At WorldCon: Flying Cars, Technology And The Economy

A Nobel prize winner at a science fiction convention? Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently sat down with science fiction novelist Charlie Stross at the WorldCon festival in Montreal. (Hat tip to BoingBoing.)

The subject was technology, the economy and even why the great innovations of the last 20 years haven't lead to a Jetsons-like utopia. At one point, Krugman jokingly laments our society's failure to develop flying cars.

Krugman took a cynical view of how the IT revolution have changed the basic mechanisms of our economy. In other words, despite the rise of the Internet and the personal computer, we're still dealing with the same classic boom-and-bust cycles.

Here's Krugman:

"In some ways, I still have the sense that the transformation in the quality of life that I thought would be happening by now, it has not really happened. Lot's and lot's of changes and consequences. If I can veer off into something I allegedly know something about, what's amazing about, in case you haven't heard, we have a global economic crisis. What's amazing about it is how much it's traditional."

Listen to an MP3 of the interview here.

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