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

by Erik Brynjolfsson

We can do more to invent technologies and business models that augment and amplify the unique capabilities of humans to create new sources of value, instead of automating the ones that already exist.

Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner summed up the current attitude of human chess masters. When asked how he would prepare for a match against a computer, he replied, “I would bring a hammer.”2

Motivated students and modern technologies are a formidable combination.

it’s becoming harder and harder to have confidence that any given task will be indefinitely resistant to automation.

Peer economy companies are examples of innovations that increase the value of human labor rather than reducing it.