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

Erik Brynjolfsson,

Andrew McAfee

3.94 · Rating details · 10,644 ratings · 750 reviews

A revolution is under way. In recent years, Google's autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM's Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies with hardware, software, and networks at their core will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retaili ...more

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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published January 20th 2014 by W. W. Norton Company

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Apr 05, 2014 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, politics, technology, business

The first part of this book reviews the incredible boom in technologies that are driving much of our economy. After that, the remainder of the book is about "bounty and spread". Bounty is the increased level of prosperity that some--but not all--of the population enjoys, as productivity increases. Spread is the growth of inequality, as much of the increased prosperity goes to the top economic levels, and little gets distributed to the lower economic levels. Thus, there ia a growing "spread" of i ...more

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May 07, 2018 Trevor rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, work

I’m going to do a more detailed review of another book by these two authors called ‘Race Against the Machine’, which, if you were interested in a quick version of this book, that is the book to read. And this review isn’t really going to cover all of the themes in this book either – as I’m going to try to do that in the other review. What I want to talk about here are some of the ideas the authors have on GDP and how this is being impacted by technology.

GDP has long been a problematic concept. T ...more

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Dec 26, 2013 Kay rated it liked it

This book's mission is fairly straightforward: It seeks to convince the reader, by analyzing various economic data, that today's technology is something that is far more marvelous than most of us realize. The argument is that we're in the middle of a second era of unprecedented innovation, much like the first machine age, when population exploded, as did quality of life, earnings, and a number of other life metrics.

Though its mission is vast, the actual pieces of the book are digestible. The op ...more

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Jun 06, 2018 Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1audio, 2non-fiction, science

The first half & even beyond didn't hold much new to me, but it was nicely put together & leads into their premise that times are changing more rapidly than any other time in history. As the book progressed, the authors delved more into economics & what the machine age means for people in general. I don't know much about economics, so I found their views really interesting, especially since they often balanced opposing viewpoints before saying which side they preferred. Sometimes neither, but a ...more

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Jul 27, 2014 Lilly Irani rated it did not like it

I wrote an essay published in Public Books reviewing The Second Machine Age for those interested in a more extensive analysis: http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction...

When the robots take our jobs, what color is your parachute? In their book The Second Machine Age, MIT researchers Brynjolfsson and McAfee point to machines that are getting better at pattern recognition and real time processing of complex situations. Machines can now (sometimes) drive cars, (sometimes) beat chessmasters, and (some I wrote an essay published in Public Books reviewing The Second Machine Age for those interested in a more extensive analysis: http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction...

When the robots take our jobs, what color is your parachute? In their book The Second Machine Age, MIT researchers Brynjolfsson and McAfee point to machines that are getting better at pattern recognition and real time processing of complex situations. Machines can now (sometimes) drive cars, (sometimes) beat chessmasters, and (sometimes) win at Jeopardy. Humans need to figure out what their competitive advantage is and the line keeps moving. Why should a manager hire a living, learning person when they could have a robot that works quickly, quietly, and without breaks, demands, or opinions? Even FoxConn, the x-million worker strong factory that produces iPhones, is replacing some of its workers with robots. For B and M, what robots are clean replacements for humans – they simply produce the same things but more efficiently.

It is the abstraction of The Second Machine Age that makes my head spin. The book zooms in and out among evidence to support its basic arguments: that digital technology unlocks innovation, that innovation unleashes labor automation as well as digital information abundance, and that these two trends explaining growing income inequality in the United States. To support these arguments, the authors offer anecdotes of digital wonders, predictions of that the singularity (exponential densities of processing power and networking) is near, and findings from economics research usually contextualized with markers of institutional prestige rather than a critical appraisal of assumptions. Early on, they ask that readers just trust them: “things get weird…most of us have trouble keeping up” (p.47). The second machine age is presented as a fait accompli; the march of artificial intelligence will only speed up. This rhetorical form does not invite workers, scholars, citizens, refugees, or others anywhere near the debate. Rather, it offers a guided tour of a future already largely explored and decided at Google and MIT but without detailed attention to how existing digital systems have already transformed the insides of most workplaces. ...more

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Oct 14, 2014 jeroen rated it really liked it

Solid and entertaining overview of high tech robotics, bit of ai and very interesting examples. Not spectacularly innovative maybe, but I founf myself using many examples in conversations with friends.

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Dec 21, 2018 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Well-researched and very interesting--it's a nice counterpoint to Robert Gordon and other techno-pessimists. The most striking insight was their defense of Moore's law and their case for measuring growth by hours saved . The more researchers proposing alternatives to GDP, the better.

However, I don't think I agree with their optimism in the end of the book. They lay out the case well for inequality, but they seem convinced that a UBI can fix it (in fact, I have yet to read a techno-utopian treat ...more

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Feb 12, 2014 Aaron Arnold rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2014, science, economics

With the proper amounts of bombast and self-promotion, prophecy can be an extremely lucrative field. A lot of books about the future of American economic growth fall into either Stagnation or Singularity camps, trying to show that America's future potential is dismal due to the misguided economic philosophies of the ideological villains of your choice (see the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal's op-ed pages) or simple exhaustion of easy ways to generate sustained growth (see Robert Gordo ...more

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Nov 30, 2014 Todd N rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle

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 co ...more

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Apr 17, 2017 Bing Gordon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great insights, but...

This starts with a bang, esp on network effects and geometric growth effects. Humming along, until the book tried to recommend govt policy. Then and only then, the rate of insights dwindled.

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Oct 23, 2015 Andreas rated it liked it

Shelves: computer-science, 2015

Having watched Andrew McAfee's presentation at a manager's conference, I wanted to read more of his assumptions: Digitalization capabilities raise exponentially and while we didn't notice much of that explosion previously, right now we are the start of the "second half of the chessboard" where everything can happen and we have to act quickly to not be overrun by the development. One of his main examples wascomputer Watson winning Jeopardy.
It is only now that digitalization and automation will t ...more

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Apr 27, 2014 Keith Swenson rated it liked it

I should start saying I am a real fan of Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson and the book has a lot of good content, I guess I was just a little disappointed because I was expecting more than what was already covered in Race Against The Machine. This expands upon that a bit, but it appears to have been hastily put together. But put that aside for the moment.

The book covers the most important trend of our time: machines, together with information technology, are becoming capable enough to handle ...more

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Mar 03, 2014 Craig rated it liked it

Exponential advancement, digitization and recombination are the keystone considerations in The Second Machine Age's evaluation of our prospects in the next decade and beyond. The authors are reserved optimists, and if I had to guess I suspect that they subscribe to the view that an optimistic prediction is more likely to lead to an optimistic outcome. I sort of lean that way myself as long as there’s a sharp demarcation between optimism and hype—which the authors aren't confused by.

That said, fo ...more

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Nov 16, 2019 Kes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2019, reference, non-fiction

This was a rather readable book on the impact of technology on people.

I was a little annoyed that the book talks about Kaggle's 2012 competition about the grading of student essays which were sponsored by the Hewlett foundation, and says that "the top three individual finishes were from, respectively, the United States, Slovenia, and Singapore." The finisher from Singapore was born in France and working in Singapore - I'm not sure if I would really say that he was from Singapore.

The start of the ...more

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Jan 11, 2016 Ken-ichi added it · review of another edition

Shelves: work, learning, economics

I guess a lot of people made a big deal out of this when it came out a few years ago? That's cool, I guess. Here are some things I found interesting:

Income inequality is a natural outcome of mechanical advantage and technological innovation: the more technology replaces labor, the more wealth accrues to those who control technology, and the less to former human laborers

This is basic Marxism, right? I am not an economist (clearly) so I have no idea how true that is, and I'm not convinced they rea ...more

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Jun 05, 2016 Nils rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: future-of-capitalism

Wow, this book is terrible: a completely uncritical, technodeterministic paean to cornucopian progress. First of all, it's a paradigmatic example of a business press article that gets puffed up steroidally into a book by adding anecdotes, but without any additional analytic content.

Second, while it does contain some useful insights - for example, that what determines whether a job is subject technological obsolescence via automation is not the cognitive/manual distinction, but the routine/nonro Wow, this book is terrible: a completely uncritical, technodeterministic paean to cornucopian progress. First of all, it's a paradigmatic example of a business press article that gets puffed up steroidally into a book by adding anecdotes, but without any additional analytic content.

Second, while it does contain some useful insights - for example, that what determines whether a job is subject technological obsolescence via automation is not the cognitive/manual distinction, but the routine/nonroutine distinction: tax preparers are at far more risk, for example, than hairdressers - these are obscured by some truly ridiculous arguments about the value of innovation. For example, McAfee & Brynjolfsson argue (with justice) that the social value of free goods is not captured by GDP statistics, but they follow with the ridiculous assertion that a better way to capture value is by measuring how much attention people "pay." Thus, according to M&B, the fact that Americans doubled the amount of time they spend on the internet between 2000 and 2011 means "they valued it more than the other ways they could spend their time." Following this logic, I presume B&M would also conclude that the fact that American opiate use rose nearly tenfold during that same period means that Americans "value" opiates more now, and indeed that the opiate economy must have been even more innovative and valuable than the Internet economy in the early 21st century. (Similar idiocies follow whenever economists uncritically assume the sovereignty of consumer choices. Meeting people's "revealed preferences" doesn't necessarily correspond to socially optimal outcomes, as anyone who has ever parented a child should know.)

Finally, M&B are profoundly blind about the fact that the distributional consequences of innovation are not determined by technology, but rather by the policy and political choices made about how to deploy the technologies and share the rewards of improved productivity. Note to the authors: there is nothing inherent about the technology of the Internet that mandates that marginal tax rates should be low, or that the economic benefits of the productivity gains of the last 40 years should have been captured entirely by the 1%. That is a policy choice, not a technological necessity. But the closest they come to acknowledging this is with the oblique observation that, "In some cases, cultural barriers to very large pay packages have fallen." Cultural barriers!

This book is ultimately less useful for its insights into social or technological reality than as a symptom of the sort of stupidities that pervades the techno-libertarian movement of our current mal du siècle. ...more

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Sep 29, 2016 Muthu Raj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There was a time when tractors replaced huge amounts of human labor. There were people who gained, and in some cases, technological innovations including farming machinery, ultimately created more jobs then they destroyed. However, with the advent of digital machines, this is no longer true. A single machine that eliminates thousands of humans, doesn't create ten jobs in that place.

More importantly, in a country like India, where it hasn't been so big a factor in employment, the possible influe ...more

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May 17, 2017 Marta Franco rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Overall a quite interesting read, but I was a bit disappointed by the policy recommendations chapter, which is the topic I was most interested in.

It's ironic how some parts of the book already feel a bit outdated despite it not being old at all. Ah, technology... ...more

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Jul 31, 2020 Laszlo Szerdahelyi rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: critsoc

I honestly could not get through this book to save my life, It's as if someone took all the shitty articles about how technology will save us, wrapped in some centrist-liberal daydream from WSJ, The Economist and Forbes and bundled into a book and presented it as a serious work that explains the relationship between technology and humanity's progress in various social, economic and (less so) political domains.

It's an extremely boring hodge-podge of uncritical anecdotal references, that often glo ...more

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Mar 13, 2017 Kaspars Koo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, future

Worth reading. A good book on the topic - well written and constructed and the arguments and the ideas seem solid and make sense.
In the beginning after a brief intro in the industrial revolution the author argues that the technologies are now becoming indistinguishable from magic (quote from Arthur C.Clarke) because of the Moore's law and the technological capabilities. That means that often the only boundary to technological progress is our imagination.
The main theme throughout the books is tha ...more

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Jan 19, 2014 Aaron Thibeault rated it it was amazing

*A full executive summary of this book is available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2014/01/28...

In the first machine age—otherwise known as the Industrial Revolution—we humans managed to build technologies that allowed us to overcome the limitations of muscle power like never before. The result, which has reverberated these past 200 years, has been an increase in economic productivity unprecedented in human history. And the corollary of this increase in productive power has been an increase in *A full executive summary of this book is available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2014/01/28...

In the first machine age—otherwise known as the Industrial Revolution—we humans managed to build technologies that allowed us to overcome the limitations of muscle power like never before. The result, which has reverberated these past 200 years, has been an increase in economic productivity unprecedented in human history. And the corollary of this increase in productive power has been an increase in material standard of living and social development equally as unprecedented.

In the past 30 years, with the rise of computers and other digital technologies, we have moved from overcoming our physical limitations, to overcoming our mental ones. This is the second machine age. Though we are still at the dawn of the second machine age, it already shows at least as much promise in boosting productivity (and quality of life) as the first. Indeed, by various measures—including the standard ones of GDP and corporate profits—we can see that the past 30 years has witnessed an impressive steepening in productivity.

And this is just the beginning. For digital technology continues to advance at an exponential pace; more digital information is being produced (and kept) all the time (all of which has enormous economic potential); and new ways of combining existing (and new) ideas into newer and better ones are ever being found.

Still, what is equally apparent is that the benefits of this steepening in productivity have gone to the few, rather than the many. Indeed, while the top 20% of earners have seen their pay increase since the early 1980s (and the closer you are to the top the more dramatically your pay has increased), the bottom 80% has actually seen their wealth decrease. And the spread is widening ever more as we go.

This is no random, or merely temporary outcome. Indeed, as Brynjolfsson and McAfee demonstrate, the unequal distribution of wealth in the second machine age is a natural corollary of how digital technology works and is used. Specifically, computer technology produces an economy that favors capital over labor; skilled labor over unskilled labor; and superstars (who are able to reach and corner entire global markets) over local players.

And not only does computer technology tend to play favorites, thereby increasing inequality. It also steadily erodes human employment outright. For as computer technology advances, more and more jobs that could once be carried out only by humans, becomes possible (and cheaper) for computers to accomplish. Nor is there any guarantee that new innovations and advancements will necessarily produce new jobs as fast as old ones are being lost (as was once thought inevitable). Indeed, we have already seen signs that this simply cannot be counted on.

The problem with all this is not just that extreme inequality is a political problem on its own. It’s that as more and more people are driven out of the economy, the prospects for greater growth are themselves undermined.

Nevertheless, just as wise policies have helped us overcome many of the problems with the Industrial Revolution, Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue that the same can be done with the problems of the Digital Revolution. Specifically, more can be done to ensure that our education systems are geared to the realities and demands of the second machine age; more can be done to ignite and encourage entrepreneurship, which is needed to replace many of the jobs that will be lost; and more can be done to mitigate the inequality caused by the new technology, such as introducing a negative income tax—which preserves a minimal standard of living for all (and keeps people in the economy as consumers), while encouraging all who can to stay in the workforce.

The book is very well-researched, well-written and wisely argued. The authors have taken the facts and the data as they stand, without preconception or political coloring, and have delivered an honest and insightful analysis. Both the bounty and the spread of the second machine age are made apparent, and the proposed approach moving forward is well-measured and judicious. An important book for policy-makers, and the generally curious alike. A full executive summary of this book is available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2014/01/28... A podcast discussion of the book will be available soon.
...more

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Nov 03, 2015 Clinton Smith rated it it was ok

The Second Machine Age tries to do two things at once, and does both of them passably well, though with the author’s sympathies clear (in believing in the inexorable advance of technology, and the concept that such advances are good—good enough that any sort of centrally acting control of the advances themselves in the form of effective governance should be absent or muted, and that such central control should instead focus on mitigating the consequences of these advances), there is an incredibl The Second Machine Age tries to do two things at once, and does both of them passably well, though with the author’s sympathies clear (in believing in the inexorable advance of technology, and the concept that such advances are good—good enough that any sort of centrally acting control of the advances themselves in the form of effective governance should be absent or muted, and that such central control should instead focus on mitigating the consequences of these advances), there is an incredible lack of suspense in a book that’s about some amazing work.

These two things? Detail advanced technologies (their plusses and minuses for society at large), and then attempt to suggest ways to mitigate their unsettling effects on a already-unsettled world.

I think the major insight I plucked from the book is that things that many people think would be fairly easy to replicate with a machine, particularly motor movements, actually aren’t. The human senses interact pretty sensitively, apparently, so the act of doing something like vacuuming a room or going up and down a flight of steps (to date) is not particularly easy for a machine.

A secondary insight that was less surprising (ie, I’d expected this) is that things involving computation, rote math, or other routine and repetitive skills that don’t involve motor coordination are easy to replicate. Computers can already “whomp up” on humans in chess, Jeopardy!—Google’s driverless cars can navigate straight highways fairly well, etc.

The bridge between the two topics (technological advances and effects on society) is basically “the spread”—technological advances are increasing the amount of wealth that is concentrated at the top 1% to 5% of the income spectrum. Divorcing oneself from capitalism versus socialism (or anarchism or whatever else one might adopt) for a second, the logic is clear if one just things of an exponential curve. The development of new technologies, of course, ensures that there’s an ever-increasing level of comfort above the “zero” level (homelessness, inability to feed oneself), and it therefore stands to reason that the “spread” grows because it literally grows.

To continue, a wealthy person has a much higher standard of living relative to a poor person now than even in the 1800s simply because the access to standard of living markers is greater and confers greater privilege (greater technologies, greater access to healthcare, etc—one must note that, even for the very well-off, something like death from infectious diseases at a young age would have been fairly common before the 20th Century).

All this said, I don’t think the authors do a very good job at giving an extensive program to help curb the disruptive impulses of technology from an economic standpoint. The concept of a universal income (which could be instrumental in helping those who are poor keep themselves afloat while thinking of their own savvy business idea, in some instances—it’s becoming harder and harder to compete as a start-up or even start one now, mostly due to financial issues) is pooh-poohed. They want to tinker with the tax code a bit. Increase the collaborations between creative hubs at universities and corporations. Adjust what’s taught at university. But nothing really revolutionary. I suppose this is to be expected when one has done well oneself, but isn’t that the problem to begin with? How can one really care what disruptions technology has wrought if it hasn’t disrupted one’s own life? Or, to put it another way, no one who’s comfortable ever wants to blow everything up on the basis of the concept that technology may have unsettling effects that haven’t even been considered.

None of this would matter, but they devote half of the book to politics and societal disruption. Overall, I’d suggest they should have spent more of their time going into detail about what exactly the creative and gestational methods behind these new technologies was. What are the concrete concerns of someone trying to build a robot? What can society do with a bunch of driverless cars? And what of things that have great destructive power, etc. A lot of it is missing, rendering this book another somewhat business-friendly mediocrity.
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Jan 17, 2016 Ovi Oprea rated it did not like it

Shelves: economics

I enjoyed learning about some new technological advancements, but the economics was rather a hodgepodge of feel-good ideas and buzzwords. You cannot really take an economic analysis seriously when you come across something like this: there is always more innovation when there is population growth. Really? If you have more illiterate people or more people living under the poverty line, you get more innovation?
The recommendation that companies should not pay taxes that fund social security was als ...more

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Mar 21, 2015 Pramod Biligiri added it

The Second Machine Age is a must read. I haven't found myself nodding in agreement with so much of a book in a long time. The authors describe how digital technologies have reached an inflection point and goods produced with their help are reshaping existing industries and their labour force at an accelerating pace. Some features of this new age are: increasing automation, companies of a few people achieving great success, freely available goods and the winner-takes-all nature of digital busines ...more

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Oct 14, 2016 John Gurney rated it really liked it

Very interesting, readable look at how technology filters through the economy to impact labor markets. The MIT economists co-authors persuasively argue automation and IT have pressured working class wages in recent decades and the trends will continue, leading to greater inequality (which they call income "spread"). They show previous technological advances, such as electricity, have taken decades to filter through the economy and this is still happening even in our fast-paced age. They show sev ...more

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Dec 27, 2015 Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin rated it liked it

Shelves: technology, audible, i-possess

Interested in the future technology and what is to come, this book might give some small drips into the thoughts of the future. But as a person who is interested and working within the technology industry, this book brings up a lot of stuff a I already knew and have thought about. The are some interesting comparisons with GDP and technology which is worth its price. But it was the greatest aha experience.

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Oct 11, 2016 Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

There were some worthwhile ideas in here, but nothing really novel or deeply insightful, and it could have been communicated in a few pages instead of a book. If you are really interested in TED Talks and feeling important by learning a superficial amount about a new problem and some potential solution, maybe you should read this, but I'd rather actually learn something meaningful and do something with it. ...more

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Dec 28, 2013 Jose Papo rated it it was amazing

This book is brilliant. It not only explains how we are really now entering the most important part of an exponential era, but also the impacts this is bringing to humanity. It talks not only about the good aspects but also risks, like job market and end of many types of professions

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Sep 22, 2016 Carl Lens rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Very insightful book. The description of technological trends in it are good but not unique. What makes this book special are the vivid images of future scenarios of economy and society. The authors make an interesting case for the importance of human values in the future. Nice read.

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Jan 17, 2014 Max Nova rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, innovation, technology

Read this book if you’re trying to understand what the economics of the future will look like. It doesn’t have all the answers, but the authors do a great job in the exposition. Tyler Cowen’s Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation is very similar.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s newest book follows in the footsteps of their last - explaining how advances in computers and robots are putting an increasing strain our society and challenging conventional economics about wo ...more

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