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

by Erik Brynjolfsson

The explanation for this productivity surge is in the lags that we always see when GPTs are installed. The benefits of electrification stretched for nearly a century as more and more complementary innovations were implemented. The digital GPTs of the second machine age are no less profound. Even if Moore’s Law ground to a halt today, we could expect decades of complementary innovations to unfold and continue to boost productivity. However, unlike the steam engine or electricity, second machine age technologies continue to improve at a remarkably rapid exponential pace, replicating their power with digital perfection and creating even more opportunities for combinatorial innovation. The path won’t be smooth—for one thing, we haven’t banished the business cycle—but the fundamentals are in place for bounty that vastly exceeds anything we’ve ever seen before.