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A review by wilte
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson
3.0
Techno-optimists, interesting read but because things happen so fast sometimes feels a bit dated on current affairs (eg the part on peer-sharing). But quite relevant for future trends.
Stuff I highlighted:
This work led us to three broad conclusions. The first is that we’re living in a time of astonishing progress with digital technologies.Our second conclusion is that the transformations brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones.
It’s important to discuss the likely negative consequences of the second machine age and start a dialogue about how to mitigate them—we are confident that they’re not insurmountable. But they won’t fix themselves, either.
It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.” This situation has come to be known as Moravec’s paradox, nicely summarized by Wikipedia as “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.
understand the nature of technological progress in the era of digital hardware, software, and networks. In particular, we need to understand its three key characteristics: that it is exponential, digital, and combinatorial
In the second machine age, the doublings happen much faster and exponential growth is much more salient. Second-Half Technol
This surge in digitization has had two profound consequences: new ways of acquiring knowledge (in other words, of doing science) and higher rates of innovation.
Copying bits is also extremely cheap, fast, and easy to do. While the very first copy of a book or movie might cost a lot to create, making additional copies cost almost nothing. This is what is meant by “zero marginal cost of reproduction.”
Shapiro and Varian elegantly summarize these attributes by stating that in an age of computers and networks, “Information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce.”
ost economic historians concur with the assessment that ICT meets all of the criteria given above, and so should join the club of general purpose technologies.
complexity scholar Brian Arthur summarizes in his book The Nature of Technology, “To invent something is to find it in what previously exists.”
HE PREVIOUS FIVE CHAPTERS laid out the outstanding features of the second machine age: sustained exponential improvement in most aspects of computing, extraordinarily large amounts of digitized information, and recombinant innovation. These three forces are yielding breakthroughs that convert science fiction into everyday reality, outstripping even our recent expectations and theories. What’s more, there’s no end in sight.
Daron Acemoglu and David Autor suggests that work can be divided into a two-by-two matrix: cognitive versus manual and routine versus nonroutine. They found that the demand for work has been falling most dramatically for routine tasks, regardless of whether they are cognitive or manual.
Digitization creates winner-take-all markets because with digital goods capacity constraints become increasingly irrelevant.
Instead of being confident that the bounty from technology will more than compensate for the spread it generates, we are instead concerned about something close to the reverse: that the spread could actually reduce the bounty in years to come.
This view—that automation and other forms of technological progress in aggregate create more jobs than they destroy—has come to dominate the discipline of economics. To believe otherwise is to succumb to the “Luddite Fallacy.”
So ideation, large-frame pattern recognition, and the most complex forms of communication are cognitive areas where people still seem to have the advantage, and also seem likely to hold on to it for some time to come.
legends and myths populated by fantastical automatons made of clay (like the Jewish golem or Norse giant Mokkerkalfe, built to battle Thor),
The technologies we are creating provide vastly more power to change the world, but with that power comes greater responsibility. That’s why we aren’t technological determinists, and that’s why we devoted three chapters in this book to a set of recommendations that we think will improve the odds of achieving a society with shared prosperity.
As we have fewer constraints on what we can do, it is then inevitable that our values will matter more than ever. Will we choose to have information widely disseminated or tightly controlled? Will our prosperity be broadly shared? What will be the nature and magnitude of rewards we give to our innovators? Will we build vibrant relationships and communities? Will everyone have the opportunities to discover, create, and enjoy the best of life? In the second machine age, we need to think much more deeply about what it is we really want and what we value, both as individuals and as a society. Our generation has inherited more opportunities to transform the world than any other. That’s a cause for optimism, but only if we’re mindful of our choices. Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny.
Mankiw thought experiment: pill discovered that adds one year of life to anyone who takes it, but costs $100,000 per pill to produce—more than most people could afford. Would we ban it, ration it, or regulate it in some way? http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/09/the-price-of-magic-pills.html
Stuff I highlighted:
This work led us to three broad conclusions. The first is that we’re living in a time of astonishing progress with digital technologies.Our second conclusion is that the transformations brought about by digital technology will be profoundly beneficial ones.
It’s important to discuss the likely negative consequences of the second machine age and start a dialogue about how to mitigate them—we are confident that they’re not insurmountable. But they won’t fix themselves, either.
It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult-level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility.” This situation has come to be known as Moravec’s paradox, nicely summarized by Wikipedia as “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.
understand the nature of technological progress in the era of digital hardware, software, and networks. In particular, we need to understand its three key characteristics: that it is exponential, digital, and combinatorial
In the second machine age, the doublings happen much faster and exponential growth is much more salient. Second-Half Technol
This surge in digitization has had two profound consequences: new ways of acquiring knowledge (in other words, of doing science) and higher rates of innovation.
Copying bits is also extremely cheap, fast, and easy to do. While the very first copy of a book or movie might cost a lot to create, making additional copies cost almost nothing. This is what is meant by “zero marginal cost of reproduction.”
Shapiro and Varian elegantly summarize these attributes by stating that in an age of computers and networks, “Information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce.”
ost economic historians concur with the assessment that ICT meets all of the criteria given above, and so should join the club of general purpose technologies.
complexity scholar Brian Arthur summarizes in his book The Nature of Technology, “To invent something is to find it in what previously exists.”
HE PREVIOUS FIVE CHAPTERS laid out the outstanding features of the second machine age: sustained exponential improvement in most aspects of computing, extraordinarily large amounts of digitized information, and recombinant innovation. These three forces are yielding breakthroughs that convert science fiction into everyday reality, outstripping even our recent expectations and theories. What’s more, there’s no end in sight.
Daron Acemoglu and David Autor suggests that work can be divided into a two-by-two matrix: cognitive versus manual and routine versus nonroutine. They found that the demand for work has been falling most dramatically for routine tasks, regardless of whether they are cognitive or manual.
Digitization creates winner-take-all markets because with digital goods capacity constraints become increasingly irrelevant.
Instead of being confident that the bounty from technology will more than compensate for the spread it generates, we are instead concerned about something close to the reverse: that the spread could actually reduce the bounty in years to come.
This view—that automation and other forms of technological progress in aggregate create more jobs than they destroy—has come to dominate the discipline of economics. To believe otherwise is to succumb to the “Luddite Fallacy.”
So ideation, large-frame pattern recognition, and the most complex forms of communication are cognitive areas where people still seem to have the advantage, and also seem likely to hold on to it for some time to come.
legends and myths populated by fantastical automatons made of clay (like the Jewish golem or Norse giant Mokkerkalfe, built to battle Thor),
The technologies we are creating provide vastly more power to change the world, but with that power comes greater responsibility. That’s why we aren’t technological determinists, and that’s why we devoted three chapters in this book to a set of recommendations that we think will improve the odds of achieving a society with shared prosperity.
As we have fewer constraints on what we can do, it is then inevitable that our values will matter more than ever. Will we choose to have information widely disseminated or tightly controlled? Will our prosperity be broadly shared? What will be the nature and magnitude of rewards we give to our innovators? Will we build vibrant relationships and communities? Will everyone have the opportunities to discover, create, and enjoy the best of life? In the second machine age, we need to think much more deeply about what it is we really want and what we value, both as individuals and as a society. Our generation has inherited more opportunities to transform the world than any other. That’s a cause for optimism, but only if we’re mindful of our choices. Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny.
Mankiw thought experiment: pill discovered that adds one year of life to anyone who takes it, but costs $100,000 per pill to produce—more than most people could afford. Would we ban it, ration it, or regulate it in some way? http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/09/the-price-of-magic-pills.html