Rahul Sharma (Editor)

The Second Machine Age

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Language
  
English

Originally published
  
20 January 2014

Preceded by
  
Race Against the Machine


ISBN
  
978-0393239355

Country
  
United States of America

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Authors
  
Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

Similar
  
Erik Brynjolfsson books, Information technology books

The second machine age work progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies


The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies is a 2014 book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee which is a continuation of their book Race Against the Machine. They argue that the Second Machine Age involves the automation of a lot of cognitive tasks that make humans and software-driven machines substitutes, rather than complements. They contrast this with what they call the "First Machine Age", or Industrial Revolution, which helped make labor and machines complementary.

Contents

Some examples that the book cites include "software that grades students' essays more objectively, consistently and quickly than humans" and "news articles on Forbes.com about corporate earnings previews" — "all generated by algorithms without human involvement."

Erik brynjolfsson andrew mcafee the second machine age


Synopsis

The authors summarize the contents of their book's 15 chapters on pages 11 and 12 of the book itself.

According to the authors, the book has three sections. Chapters 1 through 6 describe "the fundamental characteristics of the second machine age," based on many examples of modern use of technology. Then chapters 7 through 11 describe economic impacts of technology in terms of two concepts the authors call "bounty" and "spread." What the authors call "bounty" is their attempt to measure the benefits of new technology in ways reaching beyond such measures as GDP, which they say is inadequate. They use "spread" as a shorthand way to describe the increasing inequality that is also resulting from widespread new technology.

Finally, in chapters 12 through 15, the authors prescribe some policy interventions that could enhance the benefits and reduce the harm of new technologies.

Reception

The Washington Post says that its strength is how it weaves micro and macroeconomics with insights from other disciplines into an accessible story. It says that the weakness of the book its policy prescription are "straight from the talking points that tech executives have been peddling for years on their visits to the capital", even though they are "perfectly reasonable".

References

The Second Machine Age Wikipedia