Lord Byron was a Luddite. The Romantic poet’s only speech in the House of Lords defended the followers of Ned Ludd, who were smashing the mechanical looms in England during the early 1800s because they feared the machines would put people out of work. Back then, some believed that technology would create unemployment. They were wrong. The industrial revolution made England richer and increased the total number of people in work, including in the fabric and clothing industries.

Byron’s daughter Ada, Countess of Lovelace, was more prescient. On a trip through the English Midlands, she admired how punch cards instructed the looms to produce beautiful patterns, and envisaged how such cards could enable the numerical calculator being designed by her friend Charles Babbage to process not just numbers but words, music, patterns and anything else that could be encoded in symbols — a computer, in other words.

Today’s pessimists predict that these computers will put people out of work. These latter-day Luddites are also wrong. Technology can be disruptive. It can eliminate jobs, from weavers to buggy-whip makers. But 200 years of data show it improves productivity and increases wealth, leading to more demand and new types of jobs.