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

by Erik Brynjolfsson

We wish that progress in digital technologies were a rising tide that lifted all boats equally in all areas, but it’s not. Technology is certainly not the only force causing this rise in spread, but it is one of the main ones. Today’s information technologies favor more-skilled over less-skilled workers, increase the returns to capital owners over labor, and increase the advantages that superstars have over everybody else. All of these trends increase spread—between those that have a job and those that don’t, between highly skilled and educated workers and less advanced ones, between superstars and the rest of us. It’s clear to us, from everything we’ve seen and learned recently, that all else being equal, future technologies will tend to increase spread, just as they will boost the bounty.