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

The future of business, work, and the economy in a digital world. In recent years, computers have learned to diagnose diseases, drive cars, write clean prose, and win at Jeopardy!. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty, but in their wake median income has stagnated and the share of the population with jobs has fallen. MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces driving this reinvention of our economy and chart a path toward future prosperity. Businesses and individuals, they argue, must learn to race with machines. Drawing on years of research, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies and policies for doing so. These include honing the ability to mix and match different technological resources and designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity. A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will radically alter how we think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress.

Date:
Speakers:
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
    • Portrait of Jeff Running

      Jeff Running