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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 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 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. These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape.… (more)
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The book shows that this evolution has deep consequences on the very fabric of society, in the amount ("bounty") and distribution ("spread") of economic outcomes. Left to its own devices, current technological progress increases production at a fast pace, but inequality of outcomes at an even faster pace, leading to grim prospects for middle-income jobs.
The authors, however, do not subscribe to the view that such a future is unavoidable (see Tyler Cowen's Average is over) and present an array of measure that enable the majority of us not to race against the machines (title of their previous book on the subject), but with them.
Overall, it is a deep, well-researched book. Readers of Race against the machine will not find lots of new elements, but the exposition of the material is better structured.
In my opinion, this book should be complemented by another one, dealing with how technology affects and is affected by culture (norms, representation, social relations) and not just economic outcomes.
The authors set out to give the lay of the land - and do so quite well - and then compare it to previous bursts of innovation
There's a lot of optimism about what the future of technology looks like. There's a lot of hard news for people whose job can be easily replaced by a machine. And there's a lot of advice for how we can best prepare.
If this book was written in the late 18th century, it would tell us that our career as a field laborer might not be the best option, but that now would be an excellent time to invest in steam engines and railroad stock.
If you're already in the workforce, this book will give you a valuable glimpse of what is coming. If you're in high school and are taking the important first steps of the rest of your life, drop what you're doing and buy this book right now. It may well change your life.
The authors make two assertions: 1) In the long run machines will become so smart that they can handle almost every tasks which until now required human input. 2) Because of so many machines doing so many tasks prices of all things will fall dramatically, will tend even to
All right so far. But suddenly a deep red Marxist jumps up and says: "The more machines doing these tasks the more profits will accrue to capitalists!"
Why this Marxist is so red? Well, he is unable to uphold this nonsense, because when all products are getting cheaper every year how should it possible for capitalists to claim even higher profits?
The authors don't bother about that very long. For them it's important to conclude further: "In this coming second machine age we need a compensation for the expected masses of unemployed!"
And this is supposedly the gist of the matter: Write some alluring lines that my fellow-socialists can believe that it is necessary to 1) print even more money and 2) use it for an unconditional basic income for all!
Hallelujah!
The authors hint at improving productivity - throughput per worker - in the early chapters as a means of achieving this. Higher levels of computation, digitization, and recombinant innovation are the tools that are making these breakthroughs happen.
They do place an emphasis on better learning techniques, both in school and after. A mention of MOOCs and the way students can make the most of it was definitely a revival for me as I've read it earlier in other books.
Few of things mentioned in the book that the authors think as 'wonders of the future' are actually happening right now, but that could be my timing of reading the book.
I especially liked the argument that "growth" is increasingly inadequately captured by GDP growth, and the point that the
Lastly, for a book about technology, the ebook version is funny in that the final 15% consist of a (completely useless because the keywords are unlinked) index; it's also highly misleading as the main text already ends at 67% of the ebook. In general, the book makes the impression that it could have used another round of editing.
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303.48 |