Brad DeLong's recent entry, A Framework for the Economic Analysis of Technological Revolutions, where he and a raft of commentators discuss the impact of nanotechnology. DeLong uses an analysis of the cotton revolution in Britain as the basis for predicting the outcome of a realized nano-tech future.

The analysis falls short for a number of reasons.

First, DeLong focuses only on the industrialization of cotton manufacturing as a stand-in for the Industrial Revolution. The mechanization of cotton spinning and weaving was just the first step. It is like focusing on childhood to describe an adult's full life accomplishments.

Second, DeLong does not include the state of resource use and availability in his framework. The difference in the amount of untapped resources between now and 300 years ago is economically significant and needs to be addressed in this type of analysis. A discussion of resource availability would inevitably require inclusion of the pressures of population growth.

Third, there needs to be an awareness in his analysis that the production of goods now and 300 years ago is fundamentally different. The majority of production rationalization in the Industrial Revolution focussed on things that improved basic survival -- clothing, food, and the like. These days it seems that much of the production advances is geared to discretionary consumer devices and the demand for these devices is churned through willful obsolescence.