Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee

The successful companies of the second machine age will be those that bring together minds and machines, products and platforms, and the core and crowd very differently than most do today.

of energy used for cooling fell by as much as 40%, and the facility’s overhead—the energy not used directly for IT equipment, which includes ancillary loads and electrical losses—improved by about 15%. DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman told us these were among the largest improvements the Google data center team had ever seen.

Finite capacity and perishable inventory are attributes shared by exercise classes, airplane flights, nights in hotels, and many other physical-world offerings.

Today, millions of people work in jobs that create goods and services our grandparents couldn’t even imagine. One of the things our economy needs most are people who specialize in inventing these new jobs. This task requires designing and implementing new combinations of technologies, human skills, and other resources and assets to solve problems and meet the needs of potential customers. Machines are not very good at this sort of large-scale creativity and planning, but humans are. That is why being an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding jobs both for individuals and for society. Matching new technologies with the right people can lead to more sustainable, inclusive, productive, and higher-paying jobs, benefiting employers, employees, and customers alike.