Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
Erik Brynjolfsson Digital Frontier Press, 2012
Why has median income stopped rising in
the US? Why is the share of population that is working falling so rapidly? Why
are our economy and society are becoming more unequal? A popular explanation
right now is that the root cause underlying these symptoms is technological
stagnation-- a slowdown in the kinds of ideas and inventions that bring progress
and prosperity. In Race Against the Machine, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew
McAfee present a very different explanation. Drawing on research by their team
at the Center for Digital Business, they show that there's been no stagnation in
technology -- in fact, the digital revolution is accelerating. Recent advances
are the stuff of science fiction: computers now drive cars in traffic, translate
between human languages effectively, and beat the best human Jeopardy! players.
As these examples show, digital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills
that used to belong to humans alone. This phenomenon is both broad and deep, and
has profound economic implications. Many of these implications are positive;
digital innovation increases productivity, reduces prices (sometimes to zero),
and grows the overall economic pie. But digital innovation has also changed how
the economic pie is distributed, and here the news is not good for the median
worker. As technology races ahead, it can leave many people behind. Workers
whose skills have been mastered by computers have less to offer the job market,
and see their wages and prospects shrink. Entrepreneurial business models, new
organizational structures and different institutions are needed to ensure that
the average worker is not left behind by cutting-edge machines. In Race Against
the Machine Brynjolfsson and McAfee bring together a range of statistics,
examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and
that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. The book
makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because
there's been technology has stagnated, but instead because we humans and our
organizations aren't keeping up.
