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A review by davidharper2
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson
3.0
This is a good survey. I haven't kept pace with the genre (I'll call it economic futurism) so I was really looking forward to savoring this, but I was surprised at how much of it was familiar to me given my reading base on this topic is stale (think Alvin Toffler).
My chief disappointment is the relatively shallow coverage of specific technologies. I guess I was expecting several colorful, concrete insightful technology case studies. Given the book's motivational premise is the authors' self-realization that even their own quite recent technology predictions were proved incorrect, the foundation for updated predictions would benefit from a deeper technology-based anchor. True, there is a helpful introduction to Google's driverless car, and a fascinating snippet on computers and chess (in chess, a strong computer can be beat by a weak human + machine + better process!), but otherwise technology is mostly treated like an economic variable. But I think the argument--and predictions--hinge greatly on the specifics of technology. For example, instead of yet another re-hash of Moore's law (exponential growth) and digital economics (i.e., non-rival goods, zero marginal costs), I would have preferred exploration of big data's role in the future (or any of a several other fresh topics). Put another way, I am increasingly unsure that even the best economists can make very accurate technology-based predictions without the right type of "embedded" technology expert.
This book's frame is primarily economics. And here I think it makes a good case for more overall "bounty" but at the risk of greater "spread" (inequality and other consequences of a non-normal distribution). Although the role of globalization is weirdly almost absent.
Highlights for me included:
* The reminder that it can take decades a new technology to manifest and propagate into widespread economic impact (The productivity slowdown in the 1970s, and the subsequent speed-up twenty years later, had an interesting precedent. In the late 1890s, electricity was being introduced to American factories. But the “productivity paradox” of that era was that labor productivity growth did not take off for over twenty years)
* Moravec’s paradox (“the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources.”), as Steven Pinker puts it, “The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. . . . As the new generation of intelligent devices appears , it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come.”
* Their "innovation-as-building-block" (recombinant innovation) counter-view to Tyler Cowen's stagnation theory, the best defense to Cowen that I have read. "From this perspective, unlike in the innovation-as-fruit view, building blocks don’t ever get eaten or otherwise used up. In fact, they increase the opportunities for future recombinations." This was the highlight of the book, for me, personally. It arms me with a truly optimistic perspective (but, as the book's later chapters explain, this has sharp implications on labor).
* Their presentation of cheap, smart, ubiquitous mobile phones as a uniquely impactful technology that "will bring billions of people into the community of potential knowledge creators, problem solvers, and innovators." I keep underestimating and assuming mobile smartphones, but the make a compelling point that smartphones are likely to enable a serious economic inflection point.
I give it three stars for succeeding as an effective synthesis and overview (introduction, even) to key current realities. And, making a good case for bounty (esp. via recombinant innovation) and spread. It just doesn't reach four or five starts because it does not really live up to the ambition of offering much in the way of fresh, profound, or concretely technological.
My chief disappointment is the relatively shallow coverage of specific technologies. I guess I was expecting several colorful, concrete insightful technology case studies. Given the book's motivational premise is the authors' self-realization that even their own quite recent technology predictions were proved incorrect, the foundation for updated predictions would benefit from a deeper technology-based anchor. True, there is a helpful introduction to Google's driverless car, and a fascinating snippet on computers and chess (in chess, a strong computer can be beat by a weak human + machine + better process!), but otherwise technology is mostly treated like an economic variable. But I think the argument--and predictions--hinge greatly on the specifics of technology. For example, instead of yet another re-hash of Moore's law (exponential growth) and digital economics (i.e., non-rival goods, zero marginal costs), I would have preferred exploration of big data's role in the future (or any of a several other fresh topics). Put another way, I am increasingly unsure that even the best economists can make very accurate technology-based predictions without the right type of "embedded" technology expert.
This book's frame is primarily economics. And here I think it makes a good case for more overall "bounty" but at the risk of greater "spread" (inequality and other consequences of a non-normal distribution). Although the role of globalization is weirdly almost absent.
Highlights for me included:
* The reminder that it can take decades a new technology to manifest and propagate into widespread economic impact (The productivity slowdown in the 1970s, and the subsequent speed-up twenty years later, had an interesting precedent. In the late 1890s, electricity was being introduced to American factories. But the “productivity paradox” of that era was that labor productivity growth did not take off for over twenty years)
* Moravec’s paradox (“the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources.”), as Steven Pinker puts it, “The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. . . . As the new generation of intelligent devices appears , it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come.”
* Their "innovation-as-building-block" (recombinant innovation) counter-view to Tyler Cowen's stagnation theory, the best defense to Cowen that I have read. "From this perspective, unlike in the innovation-as-fruit view, building blocks don’t ever get eaten or otherwise used up. In fact, they increase the opportunities for future recombinations." This was the highlight of the book, for me, personally. It arms me with a truly optimistic perspective (but, as the book's later chapters explain, this has sharp implications on labor).
* Their presentation of cheap, smart, ubiquitous mobile phones as a uniquely impactful technology that "will bring billions of people into the community of potential knowledge creators, problem solvers, and innovators." I keep underestimating and assuming mobile smartphones, but the make a compelling point that smartphones are likely to enable a serious economic inflection point.
I give it three stars for succeeding as an effective synthesis and overview (introduction, even) to key current realities. And, making a good case for bounty (esp. via recombinant innovation) and spread. It just doesn't reach four or five starts because it does not really live up to the ambition of offering much in the way of fresh, profound, or concretely technological.