Introducing Changing Tides

A Substack about the tides of technological change, and who gets to decide which shores they reach

Welcome to Changing Tides, the Substack of the Technology and Industrialisation for Development (TIDE) Centre at the University of Oxford. This is a space where we intend to think carefully, and collectively, about one of the defining questions of our time: How can governments, civil society, trade unions, and private actors steer technological change to deliver inclusive prosperity?

We launch this effort in a time of extraordinary complexity. Developed nations that once championed free trade and open markets are now openly embracing industrial policy again. The language of policymakers around the globe has shifted from efficiency to resilience and geopolitical competition. The pressures of climate change, global decarbonisation, inequalities, and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) are forcing societies to rethink what they produce, how they produce it, and, most importantly, who benefits and who loses. Under those transformations, as things stand, many developing nations are not only left behind, but stand to be pushed further behind.

An Evolutionary Perspective on Development

There is something cyclical about this moment. As Ibn Khaldun wrote 700 years ago, ‘the past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.’ Since the first great wave of globalisation in the late nineteenth century — when steam, steel, and telegraph cables stitched the world together for the first time — the international economy has experienced recurring bouts of protectionism and economic nationalism, alongside unequal development and growth. These waves tend to be triggered by a recognisable set of pressures, most notably, the social disruption caused by global trade imbalances, macroeconomic vulnerabilities, unequal economic relationships, and shifts in geopolitical and geoeconomic power.

And yet, history’s rhythm should not lull us into a passive posture. Seeing the present as merely another cycle risks obscuring what is genuinely new about it. It is not the first time humans transitioned from one energy source to another (from whale oil to electricity, from horse carriages to cars, from coal to oil and gas), yet the speed and scope of climate change provide a novel challenge for humanity — with society facing a collective action challenge on a scale that we rarely had to address before. AI could also prove to be a major milestone in human technological history, and does not look like anything we have seen before — but is being developed amid tremendous inequities and serious risks.

One useful way to make sense of this moment, as the work of Carlota Perez has shown, is to think about economic development as displaying a distinctive pattern: that of technological waves. Each major wave, from the age of steam and railways to the era of steel and electricity, from the rise of mass production to the information revolution, reshapes what (and which) economies produce, how societies are organised, and what futures become imaginable (and for whom). Waves come and go rather indiscriminately, but those technological waves are often shaped by a handful of powerful actors and are leaving such a long-lasting footprint on society that they might be better treated as tides (which are shaped by the gravitational pull of powerful bodies). For governments, this means the challenge goes beyond navigating distinct technological waves, and includes navigating adjacent complex geopolitical and socio-economic dynamics.

To do so, we must view economic development as an evolutionary system: it is nonlinear, complex, context-dependent, adaptive, and path-creating. In such systems, past choices lock in certain technologies, institutions, and power structures, while simultaneously opening new possibilities that did not previously exist for those who are best able to adapt to changing conditions.

Unlike natural history, however, the history of economic development is not just a story of adaptation. Development, far from unilinear, is subject to reversals, interruptions, and deep contradictions. The very nature, direction, and consequences of technological evolution are, to a large extent, indeterminate. Yet, technological systems embody specific forms of power. The same technological wave can be deployed to degrade work or to reduce working time, to open up new development opportunities or to reinforce existing hierarchies, to expand the realm of freedom and prosperity or that of inequality and scarcity.

TIDE’s Intellectual Legacy

The question of the relationship between technological change and development has long been central to the field of development studies. Indeed, Ibn Khaldun (him again) provided a deep analytical explanation of how societies prosper and decline in cycles that are not only driven by economic forces but also by innovation, governance, social cohesion, and the ability to adapt.

Much later, in the 1950s, Raúl Prebisch, one of the founding fathers of development economics, recognised that developed and developing countries structurally differ in their capacity to control the engine and retain the gains of technological progress. More recently, Calestous Juma analysed the dynamics of evolutionary technological change in Africa as a process embedded in local institutions and political economy.

Debates emerged around the question of the choice of techniques and instruments: should developing countries adopt capital-intensive technologies or labour-intensive ones better suited to their factor endowments and employment needs? Should they adapt foreign technologies or could they develop technologies adapted to their own conditions and needs? Focus on manufacturing or services? How do different models of financing impact the processes of production and how the outcomes are distributed? What is the role of the state in this process?

The TIDE Centre is itself rooted in those long-standing debates, as its foundations are built on the pioneering work in the 1970s on the role of technology and industrialisation in development by economists based at what is now the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). Frances Stewart examined how technologies developed in the North were often mismatched with the needs of the South. Sanjaya Lall, for his part, argued that development was fundamentally about building technological capabilities.

More recently, Professor Xiaolan Fu, the founding director of TIDE’s institutional predecessor — the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD), initially named after Sanjaya Lall — extended this legacy, studying the mechanisms through which technology actually transfers across borders and firms. Fu’s research highlighted the conditions under which developing economies could become originators of new technological solutions adapted to their own contexts. Those questions remain at the core of what we do and the challenges we collectively face.

What to Expect from Changing Tides?

In this Substack, we will extend that intellectual effort and make it accessible to any curious reader. We will examine industrial policy, the geopolitics of technology, climate and the green transition, artificial intelligence, and the enduring challenge of creating the conditions for global prosperity.

This will be a collective effort. TIDE, more than a team, is a network, enriched by its senior advisors, i.e., experienced and distinguished practitioners with diverse geographical backgrounds and areas of expertise. Changing Tides will extensively build on that network through collective pieces bringing multiple voices into conversation, structured debates with competing positions on live policy questions.

Finally, at TIDE, we are also fond of analogies. You should therefore expect some unexpected development stories, seen through the lens of ant death spirals, the adaptive genius of curling, or Nintendo’s distinctive approach to innovation.

The tides are changing. We hope you will think alongside us about the shores they reach.