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Second Machine Age, The: Work, Progress, And Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies (2014)

by Erik Brynjolfsson(Favorite Author)

3.89 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1480577472 (ISBN13: 9781480577473)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Brilliance Audio

review 1: This book was came up during a discussion of Capital In The 21st Century, and I definitely see the broad similarities, especially in (1) its attempts to show how the 1% is pulling away from the 99% (and .1% pulling away from the rest of the 1%) and (2) its recommendation of using socialism as lube so that the whole capitalist machine doesn’t overheat and explode.But where Dr. Piketty dismisses technology as a major driving force, Drs. Brynjolfsson and McAfee are all about the technology. They couldn’t be more excited about self-driving cars and human-beating chess computers. (This book is also focused on the US and a lot less Marx-y.)This book is divided into three parts.Part 1 is about how great technology is. Lately, it’s even greater than you realize, you dummies.... more They talk about Google’s controversial Eugenics program, and how IBM’s Watson is bored with watching Jeopardy and now spends its days watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and the later seasons of Bridezillas.Also celebrated in Part 1 is how humanity has progressed from civil disobedience that helped end the Vietnam War to reporting speed traps on Waze.I was least interested in this part of the book, so I may have gotten some of this wrong.Part 2 gets more interesting when it discusses the economics of all this groovy technology. Key concepts are the “bounty" — the way technology is improving quality of life, maybe in ways that GDP doesn’t measure — and the “spread” — the way technology is creating winner-take-all economies.All sorts of ominous graphs are included: (1) showing GDP per capita pulling away from median income per capita, (2) wages moving in lock step independent of education until 1982 then breaking apart like a prism, and (3) labor productivity and the private employment rate diverging around 2002 after being highly correlated.Some interesting hints are dropped that parts of the economy are moving away from a normal distribution and towards a power law distribution. I would have liked to have seen more data backing this up because two interesting properties of this distribution are that it is scale independent and has a long tail.Part 3 is a set of recommendations for individuals and society at large.Some of the ideas floated — like a negative income tax that guarantees a minimum income regardless of working — would make my Facebook feed blow up worse than a iPhone case designed to hold EBT cards. Personally, I’d like to see something like a limit on working hours like 35 to 40 per week across the board.Other advice is more practical, like if you’re young go to Montessori school, and if you’re old take some MOOCs. And don’t be afraid to team up with computers. After all they are just tools, at least until they figure out how to do your job.Long term we need to upgrade our infrastructure (which is falling apart), support basic research (funding for which is being gutted), discourage rent seeking behavior with taxes (so no one can retire then?), and improve education (sigh).So with Congress dithering and our generation's finest minds figuring out how to cash out of their startups, the rest of us will just have to dink around on our smartphones, cashing government checks until AI finally becomes self-aware and puts humanity to its final use.Recommended, if only to skim Part 1 and then read about the possible economic implications of technology combined with other changes like globalization.
review 2: This was a really insightful book on the impact of technology and computers on our economy (and therefore our lives as members of that economy). I particularly found the sections on what the authors call "spread" (or more commonly referred to as inequality) fascinating. Inequality of incomes and wealth is rapidly becoming a defining issue in today's political landscape, but (at least if you believe the author's premises) not for the reasons many believe. It's not capitalism in general that is causing this, but a number of factors around how rapid technological progress impacts the distribution of income amongst those participating in the economy. I like their pragmatic perspectives on policy choices (for example, they recognize that welfare does sometimes have negative effects, but that some kind of robust safety net is going to increasingly be a requirement) and how they tried to incorporate research and opinions from both ends of the political spectrum. A highly recommended read if you want to understand the direction of our (and truly the world) economy as a whole. less

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