The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, And Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
This book is divided into three sections: motivation, analysis, and recommendations. The analysis section is the worthwhile part.The motivations section (chapters 1-6) is a boringly familiar summary of technology trends (IT productivity, digitization, crowd-sourcing). The recommendations (chapters 12-15) are a compilation of vague and anodyne policy proposals, most of them unrelated to the main topic.The analysis (chapters 7-11), while not path-breaking, is a lucid and politically moderate survey of tech and inequality. It covers the difficulty of measuring productivity and consumer surplus; labor as both a competition and complement to automation; open questions around demand elasticity and possible over-supply of capital; and more.The analysis does have three major omissions. The authors don't make any attempt to disentangle political from technological causes of economic distribution in the 20th century. They only discuss developing countries in passing. And they don't discuss cybernetics, other than a brief mention of the Singularity.That said, the book is definitely a step up for public discussion. It is politically moderate (within the scope of the US mainstream), solidly grounded in economics, and willing to consider a broad range of outcomes; which makes it a very good introduction or summary for the general reader. I thought that this was going to be a book on technology. I was pleasantly surprise to find out that the meat of the book was about economics. I understand that author's need a point of view, and I can forgive their Pollyanna tendencies, but all in all I feel like I gain additional perspective having read this book.As I commenced reading this, I was worried about the commentary on progress, as it typically favours some underlying teleological vantage where more is superior to less—population, consumption, choice, and so on. I was mostly able to overcome this philosophy and focus on the content. I say "mostly," because it feels to me (and I could be way off base) that the authors are "Blue Dogs," Calvinists, to be more precise. In the penultimate chapter, they promote Voltaire's “Work saves a man from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.” quote, seemingly without understanding the social bias that creates this. It is only a paucity of imagination that keeps people bound with such notions. Such small vision for authors who imagine so much more, but this imagination is in a different realm.
What do You think about The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, And Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies (2014)?
Excellent book - recommended for anyone with kids or an interest in the future economy.
—stumbles
