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A review by troutgirl
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson
Writing books about technology that are both timely and timeless is a near impossibility, but this one is now a little bit of a sunshiny relic before the storm. There's a lot of relatively unfocused "wow how cool is this technology?" here, and not nearly as much about the dark side of Tesla, social media, or virtual reality -- which makes sense given that the book came out in 2012, when the tech sector was the shining star of the economy rather than reviled for its ethical shallowness.
It's hard not to like the authors and their arguments, because they're so smart and optimistic; but their evident love of advanced capitalism makes them come off as a little lacking in imagination. I'm particularly troubled by their deep rooted faith in what you might call the SPIRITUAL power of work -- the Protestant Ethic is alive and well in America's top econ departments, I guess. In Brynjolfsson and McAfee's less data-driven moments, they seem to presuppose that a lack of paid labor -- via guaranteed income, for instance -- will certainly result in a bunch of obese video-game playing layabouts popping opioids in their mama's basements. Certainly the data suggest that it can be an issue, but that scenario is far from the only outcome of guaranteed income.
For instance, in the authors' own social class you can find an enormous number of women who -- through the magic of husband's income, family money, and investments -- have given up their high-powered jobs to engage in competitive childraising, the adoption of shibboleth hobbies, and a surprising rise in anti-scientific thinking. Do I approve of these developments? No, but I see them as absolutely embodying a search for social meaning that is equally as deep as that of their counterparts toiling away in the office or the university. And the fact that the "guaranteed income" comes from personal ties rather than the government isn't the gigantic differentiator to me as it seems to be to these men.
Still, a cut above most "business" books and despite the sunny technophilia worth a read so you can gauge their thoughts before they -- and we all -- really had to start grappling with the oncoming shadows.
It's hard not to like the authors and their arguments, because they're so smart and optimistic; but their evident love of advanced capitalism makes them come off as a little lacking in imagination. I'm particularly troubled by their deep rooted faith in what you might call the SPIRITUAL power of work -- the Protestant Ethic is alive and well in America's top econ departments, I guess. In Brynjolfsson and McAfee's less data-driven moments, they seem to presuppose that a lack of paid labor -- via guaranteed income, for instance -- will certainly result in a bunch of obese video-game playing layabouts popping opioids in their mama's basements. Certainly the data suggest that it can be an issue, but that scenario is far from the only outcome of guaranteed income.
For instance, in the authors' own social class you can find an enormous number of women who -- through the magic of husband's income, family money, and investments -- have given up their high-powered jobs to engage in competitive childraising, the adoption of shibboleth hobbies, and a surprising rise in anti-scientific thinking. Do I approve of these developments? No, but I see them as absolutely embodying a search for social meaning that is equally as deep as that of their counterparts toiling away in the office or the university. And the fact that the "guaranteed income" comes from personal ties rather than the government isn't the gigantic differentiator to me as it seems to be to these men.
Still, a cut above most "business" books and despite the sunny technophilia worth a read so you can gauge their thoughts before they -- and we all -- really had to start grappling with the oncoming shadows.