Name: The Second Machine Age
ISBN: 9780393239355

The Second Machine Age

A revolution is under way. In recent years, Google's autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM's Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies -- with hardware, software, and networks at their core -- will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human. In The Second Machine Age MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee -- two thinkers at the forefront of their field -- reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives. Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds, from lawyers to truck drivers, will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or die. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar. Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity.

What Hacker News says

benatkinApr 2023

> You will be unemployed or in a UBI or your parents' basement eating Ramen, and that job will be done by an MIT gold medalist or a Math Olympiad medalist.

Along these lines I recommend the book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

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pieterpMar 2017

The Second Machine Age

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enjalotFeb 2017

This problem has been weighing heavily on my mind since reading The Second Machine Age. The first thing I've read that gives me some hope for finding a solution is Rushkoff's "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus"

I highly recommend reading both books, because more perspective is needed to think abouy this than just "what machines can and cant automate"

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JoachimSDec 2016

I can recommend the book The Second Machine Age that discuss this topic thoroughly: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technol...

There is also a (imho) great SF short story by Marshall Brain about this: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

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SharpSightLabsNov 2016

1. Race Against the Machine by Brynjolfsson and McAfee

2. The Second Machine Age by Brynjolfsson and McAfee

3. The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford

4. Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford

5. Average is Over by Tyler Cowen -specifically, the parts about labor market bifurcation and man-machine pairs

Brynjolfsson and McAfee are MIT economists. Top notch. Cowen is also an excellent economist at George Mason.

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tnorgaardOct 2015

Good questions you raise, nhaehnle.

First of, I don't try to pretend to be a scholar in economics, so please bare with me.

That a capital system contains people/entities that accumulate wealth is exactly why I finished off with the Thomas Piketty comment. His very interesting book, Capital in the 21st Century, argues that our current system favours capital owners and we should tax capital, not income.

About labour being displaced, I can recommend Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, however it does not contain silver bullets. :-)

I can only theorize on what Stephen Hawkings meant with his answer, but to me it didn't look like a general critic of capital, but more the system we have now.

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