The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

Overview

A New York Times bestseller. A "fascinating" (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times) look at how digital technology is transforming our work and our lives.



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. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Bloomberg - Clive Cook

"Excellent."

Kevin Kelly

"Technology is overturning the world’s economies, and The Second Machine Age is the best explanation of this revolution yet written."

New York Times - Thomas L. Friedman

"Fascinating."

Salon - Andrew Leonard

"Fascinating."

Nicholas Negroponte

"After reading this book, your world view will be flipped: you’ll see that collective intelligence will come not only from networked brains but also from massively connected and intelligent machines. In the near future, the best job to have will be the one you would do for free."

John Seely Brown

"This provocative book is both grounded and visionary, with highly approachable economic analyses that add depth to their vision. A must-read."

Clayton M. Christensen

"Truly helped me see the world of tomorrow through exponential rather than arithmetic lenses. Macro and microscopic frontiers now seem plausible, meaning that learners and teachers alike are in a perpetual mode of catching up with what is possible. It frames a future that is genuinely exciting!"

The Washington Post - Steven Pearlstein

"Optimistic and intriguing."

InformationWeek - Thomas Claburn

"Maddeningly reasonable and readable."

Bloomberg - Clive Crook

"Excellent."

Garry Kasparov

"Will our new technologies lift us all up or leave more and more of us behind? The Second Machine Age is the essential guide to how and why that success will, or will not, be achieved."

Marc Andreessen

"Brynjolfsson and McAfee are right: we are on the cusp of a dramatically different world brought on by technology. The Second Machine Age is the book for anyone who wants to thrive in it. I’ll encourage all of our entrepreneurs to read it, and hope their competitors don’t."

Rodney Brooks

"In this optimistic book Brynjolfsson and McAfee clearly explain the bounty that awaits us from intelligent machines. But they argue that creating the bounty depends on finding ways to race with the machine rather than racing against the machine. That means people like me need to build machines that are easy to master and use. Ultimately, those who embrace the new technologies will be the ones who benefit most."

Reid Hoffman

"Offers important insights into how digital technologies are transforming our economy, a process that has only just begun."

Austan Goolsbee

"An important book on the technology-driven opportunities and challenges we all face in the next decade. Anyone who wants to understand how amazing new technologies are transforming our economy should start here."

Zoë Baird

"A brilliant look at the future that technology is bringing to our economic and social lives. Read The Second Machine Age if you want to prepare yourself and your children for the world of work ahead."

Inside Higher Education - Joshua Kim

"My favorite book so far of 2014. Both hopeful…and realistic."

Lawrence H. Summers

"What globalization was to the economic debates of the late 20th century, technological change is to the early 21st century. Long after the financial crisis and great recession have receded, the issues raised in this important book will be central to our lives and our politics."

Vivek Wadhwa

"Brynjolfsson and McAfee do an amazing job of explaining the progression of technology, giving us a glimpse of the future, and explaining the economics of these advances. And they provide sound policy prescriptions. Their book could also have been titled Exponential Economics 101—it is a must-read."

Carl Bass

"Information technology is the foundation of the next industrial revolution. Its often unarticulated dark side has been the widening of the economic divide. In this book, McAfee and Brynjolfsson do a masterful job of exploring both the promise of computer technology and its profound societal impact."

Michael Spence

"A terrific book. Brynjolfsson and McAfee combine their knowledge of rapidly evolving digital technologies and relevant economics to give us a colorful and accessible picture of dynamic forces that are shaping our lives, our work, and our economies. For those who want to learn to 'Race with the Machines,' their book is a great place to start."

Hal Varian

"Brynjolfsson and McAfee take us on a whirlwind tour of innovators and innovations around the world. But this isn’t just casual sightseeing. Along the way, they describe how these technological wonders came to be, why they are important, and where they are headed."

MARCH 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Jeff Cummings walks a line between dramatic narration and animated lecturing as he guides listeners through this look at the high-tech future. The authors provide listeners with an upbeat, informative discussion of what the economy may look like in the coming "laborless" world. Cummings's approach lightens some of the material as the audiobook veers between a trendy survey and a future policy manual. Technology may not be the white horse that carries us to a happy ending, but, the authors argue, we can still preserve our species with a combination of humanism and technical advances such as self-driving cars, robotics, massive free online courses, and artificial intelligence. R.W.S. 2015 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2013-12-14
A hopeful view of the future as we enter a second machine age. Driverless cars and 3D printers are harbingers of a new era, argue MIT colleagues Brynjolfsson (Director/Center for Digital Business; co-author, Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping the Economy, 2013, etc.) and McAfee (Principal Research Scientist/Center for Digital Business; Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges, 2009, etc.). Some 200 years ago, the invention of the steam engine sparked massive amounts of mechanical power to drive factories and mass production in the first machine age. Now, computers and other digital advances are providing such "a vast and unprecedented boost to mental power" that technologies once found only in science fiction are becoming everyday realities. Drawing on research, including interviews with inventors, investors, entrepreneurs, engineers and others, the authors describe the forces driving the emerging age, notably the digitization of nearly everything, which increases understanding and fosters innovation, and an amazing exponential growth in improvements. We're now seeing "the emergence of real, useful artificial intelligence (AI) and the connection of most of the people on the planet via a common digital network." As machines complete cognitive tasks--as opposed to physical ones--engaging in pattern recognition and complex communication, AI will do more and more, for example, giving key aspects of sight to the visually impaired and restoring hearing to the deaf. Along with benefits, including greater amounts of individual choice, technological progress will bring economic disruption, leaving some people behind and workers without jobs. The authors describe the large differences that are already apparent among people in both income and wealth and explain how individuals can improve their skills to maintain healthy wage and job prospects. "Our generation has inherited more opportunities to transform the world than any other," they write. "That's a cause for optimism, but only if we're mindful of our choices." Valuable reading for policymakers.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194462162
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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