Immersed in anxieties about automation, surveillance, and alienation, Gordon’s view can seem absurd. But powerful
confirmation comes from the natural sciences, where discoveries across a range of disciplines, from physics to neuroscience, have been wrested slower than expected, demanding unprecedented levels of funding and manpower. As early as 2007,
surveys found that team-based research was becoming more prevalent in essentially all science and engineering fields, especially among high-impact papers. This trend has strengthened continuously ever since. In short, scientific innovation—inextricably linked with technological progress—is probably becoming more difficult, and at the very least, more expensive. Whether the intractability is due to a profligate government-led model, as Terence Kealey
famously claimed, or to something inherent to knowledge itself is uncertain. What is obvious, however, is that the resulting paucity of investment prospects would decrease demand for the swelling pool of surplus capital, lowering interest rates. Money is cheap because it is less obvious what can productively be done with it.