Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have created a powerful, concise and informative discussion of the impact of technology on employment, income distribution and macro economics. Do not be fooled by the title, Race Against the Machine is not a neo luddite treatise on the evils of automation and technology. The title is more about generating buzz and attention than an accurate label for what is in this book -- nothing short of the best explanation of the economy we face in the future and the role of technology. This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand why we can have a recession, a jobless recovery and growing income distribution inequities all at the same time. This book does a tremendous job steering its explanation based on facts, insights from other economists and thought leaders. Brynjolfsson and McAfee's basic argument is that we are just beginning to see the long term impact of technology on the economy. The authors highlight this using the analogy of Chinese story where the emperor agrees to pay a servant a grain of rice and then doubling that amount for each square on the chess board. That doubling is the foundation of technology's driving forces embodied in the laws of Moore, Metcalfe and others. The authors believe that we are just getting to the back half of the chess board where a doubling of technology creates gigantic leaps in capability at an unprecedented pace. These leaps are beginning to displace human work as technologies like IBM's Watson and others demonstrate the ability to handle complex work. The book is divided into five chapters; Chapter 1. Technology's influence on the employment and the economy. The first chapter provides an overview of the book and its chapters. Here the authors do a good job supporting their argument based on the observation and ideas of others. The chapter could have been a dry recitation of prior research, but Brynjolfsson and McAfee have described the issue in ways that are broadly accessible. Chapter 2. Humanity and technology on the second half of the chess board -- discusses the impact of technology on the economy, productivity and employment. This chapter focuses on things that are emerging as the capability of technology has crossed a threshold. The most interesting part of this discussion concentrated on General Purpose Technology (GPT) and how these technologies drive further investment in technology. Chapter 3. Creative destruction: the economic of accelerating technology and disappearing jobs. This chapter is the most informative as it explains the impact of technology on employment and income Here the discussion of highly-skilled vs skilled workers, Superstars vs. Everyone else, and Capital vs. Labor all explain different aspects of the economy we all live in. Chapter 4: What is to be done? Prescriptions and Recommendations -- contains a list of 13 recommendations for fostering organizational innovation and investing in human capital, These are two areas where investments can lead to creating new employment opportunities and growth, I will not go over the recommendations, many are ones that you may have heard of in the past, but the authors put these recommendations into a new context. 5. Conclusion: the Digital Frontier -- provides a discussion of the new economy emerging and the impact of digitalization in terms of creating new sources of value and disruption. It is an apt conclusion to the book. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect technology, the economy, employment etc. in a concise and informative way. The authors take full advantage of the book's electronic form by providing active links to referenced research and opinion. While not accessible when you are disconnected, the ability to quickly jump into some original source material adds to the value of the book. The book can be easily read in under 4 hours and would be the best use of your time on a long plane ride where you can read and think through the authors ideas and their implications. Brynjolfsson and McAfee have created a readily accessible, influential and provocative book that should be reaUd by business executives, policy makers and technologist to give them a better understanding of the deep forces at work in the global economy, Some will disagree with the author's recommendations, particularly given that it would be easy to associate some of their recommendations as moderately to the right. That would be a mistake as I believe Brynjolfsson and McAfee have been able to take a relatively neutral view of an economist to these issues. At $2.99 on Amazon, this book is more than well worth the cost and most importantly your time and attention.

McAfee and Brynjolfsson offer a clear and clearly supported thesis: we will lose a race against machines for work, leading to "technological unemployment", because of the sheer scope and speed technologies develop. To win, we must race with machines, using technological innovation to generate innovative enterprise, and thus, new jobs. There is a lot of data to back up their arguments, which, important in itself, is even more useful for the e-book version because they've hyperlinked citations, allowing you to jump right to the source. Because of this, I thoroughly recommend the e-book, and do not recommend the hardcopy; evidently they agree, as they don't offer a hard copy of the book on their website, and Brynjolfsson even disparages its physical limitations in a lecture. Excellent value for $5. It's a concise and short read, with interesting and memorable examples. If you're looking to spark interesting conversation with economists, or just your friends and family, you'll be able to express their points easily. It loses a star because its overall investigation is shallow. This is a descriptive book much more than a normative one, and I would have liked to have seen them confront the argument that technological unemployment is an inherent structural deficiency of capitalism, perhaps even a cause for its undoing (whether they agree with that or not, and I don't think they do). They offer "solutions" at the end, but they are glibly delivered and have the feel of band-aids.

First self-published as an e-book in 2011, this is an excellent abstract of the authors’ expanded full size nonfiction book, “The Second Machine Age”, that the authors will publish three years later in 2014. Indeed, most of the foundation of “The Second Machine Age” is contained in this much shorter book. Within “The Second Machine Age” the authors will expand on a few concepts. They will bring in more historical context to their research by studying the Industrial Revolution that they describe as the first tipping point in human history (circa 1800). Indeed, any time series graph of worldwide economic growth, GDP per capita, population growth will typically show the exact same pattern. The curve will look nearly flat for a millennium and abruptly rise upward at an inflection point close to 1800. The authors indicate that this first inflection point in history was caused by the advent of James Watt steam engine introduced in 1775 at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It led to innovative and technological improvements including mass production, railways, and mass transportation. Additionally, they will redefine the Present as the second tipping point. They will also refer to the first tipping point and its aftermath as the First Machine Age, and the second tipping point as the Second Machine Age. Additionally, within “The Second Machine Age” the authors will repackage their ideas so that all the benefits of technology will be encapsulated in a single word: “bounty.” Meanwhile, all the associated concerns with technological unemployment and rising inequality will be captured in the word “spread.” This will allow them to use effective shorthand description of their objectives. For instance, going forward how can we increase the bounty and reduce the spread? And, they will offer many recommendations on how to do so. Besides the mentioned expansion within “The Second Machine Age”, “Race Against The Machine” very well captures the essence of their theory. The authors were among the first to recognize that the Great Recession recovery was different. Even though many economic metrics had recovered quickly including Real GDP, Real GDP per capita, corporate profits, business investments in equipment and software; other measures of economic health did not recover so well. All employment figures recovered a lot more slowly as job creation remained anemic for a long time. And, Real median household income remained flat. How can Real GDP per capita increase rapidly meanwhile Real median household income remained flat? The answer is simple. It is the difference between the Median and the Average. The Average is skewed upward by very large figures. Meanwhile, the Median is not. Thus, technological progress has contributed to a rapid rise in income for the technologically savvy, entrepreneurs in high-tech fields, stars able to resell their talent digitally worldwide. Thus, technology-benefitting elite has seen its income and wealth grow very rapidly. Their income/revenue growth contributes to GDP growth and it distorts upward average Real GDP per capita. Meanwhile, the majority that did not reap the benefits from technology has experienced stagnant income as some of their respective demand for their labor has been increasingly displaced by technology. The advent of computers, software, robots, artificial intelligence, and web based software platforms has affected just about every field (blue and white collar service industries included). And, this decoupling effect goes further back than the Great Recession. It can be observed since 1975 (near the onset of mass computerization). So, going back to the race between brains and technology, is there any hope for humans? The authors indicate the issue on an individual level is very interesting. They take the example of chess. IBM Deep Blue handily beat Kasparov in chess in 1997. Nowadays, even mid-tier software computer programs on cheap laptop computers can beat the best human chess player. So, what can human beings contribute to this most demanding cognitive challenge (playing chess)? Surprisingly, a whole lot! With the advent of freestyle chess, humans have regained a leading role in this discipline. Freestyle chess entails a tournament between completely different set of team players. A team can consist of a supercomputer (successor of IBM Deep Blue), or a supercomputer plus a human, or various combination of computers and human players cooperating on the same team. And, the outcome of such tournaments is counterintuitive. The winners are not the teams made up of grandmaster chess players and supercomputers. They are instead teams made of amateur chess players and mathematicians with expertise at analyzing freestyle chess games and guiding several laptop computers with Machine Learning and other algorithms. In freestyle chess, the grandmasters are at a marked disadvantage. This is because they are overconfident in their expertise just like any expert typically is (as captured within Phillip Tetlock’s work on the subject) and they typically do not trust the machines and have little ability in using them. Supercomputers on a stand-alone basis have little chance in such tournaments. They can’t match the creativity of human-computer teams. In the near future of freestyle chess, we can anticipate that grandmaster chess players and stand-alone supercomputers will quit this league. Humans who understand machines and machines make for the winning combination. And, this may be the case regardless of the field. As with chess, it is anticipated that IBM Watson specializing in healthcare will be much more effective when combined with the judgment of doctors than without (or probably the judgment of specialists able to better interpret IBM Watson diagnostics rather than expert doctors who are overconfident in their expertise). However, what is true for an elite few freestyle chess quants may have little relevance for the masses. Today’s information technologies do contribute to inequality and technological unemployment because: 1) They favor more skilled and educated workers over lesser skilled and educated ones; 2) They increase the return to capital owners over labor; 3) They increase the advantages of stars over everybody else. Nevertheless, the authors still describe themselves as technology-optimists. And, they come up with a series of 19 specific recommendations so that society at large better adapts and learns how to race with the machine instead of against the machine. Their recommendations are associated with improving K-12 education, improving national infrastructure, reducing regulations affecting start-ups, rationalizing immigration policy so we can attract smart emigrants to fill crucial vacant jobs in engineering and science, reform the patent system to stimulate innovation instead of stifling it, reform the tax code to eliminate market distorting subsidies (in housing in particular), increase Government funding in basic research, and many other sensible recommendations. Although the authors’ recommendations make good sense, many of them are likely to run into a political wall of polarization. And, even if politically feasible you still have to wonder on a nationwide basis how effective these recommendations would be in materially bending the curve so that more individuals can metamorphose themselves from victim of technology (holding jobs that race against the machine) into beneficiary of technology (quantitative jobs that race with the machine). This issue may be a formidable worldwide challenge in the present and coming decades. And, Keynes had exactly figured that out back in 1930: “We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come-namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.” To their credit, the authors do give full credit to this astonishingly prescient prediction of Keynes in both their books.

This book's Big Thought is the understanding we are experiencing a "Great Restructuring" driven by the onfolding of the third industrial revolution: computer and network. This is affecting jobs worldwide and creating a divide between high Vs low skilled jobs. If on one side there is no economic law that says that everyone automatically benefit from tecnological progress, on the other hand, there is no automatic ceiling to the number of different markets that can be created adding value to the community. Therefore the economics of digital information are the economics not of scarsity but of abundance. In order to steer this process is necessary to pursue solutions that aim to improve the gaps this revolution creates: education, flexibility, accountability. Moreover, the book highlights the role talented entrepreneur can bring on creating innovative ideas

Ou va la société eet est ce que la technologie ne va pas trop loin et trop vite ? en tous cas est ce qu'elle n'irait pas plus vite que nous ?

Os autores nos convidam a fazer uma reflexão sobre nossa dependência cada vez maior das máquinas, e a substituição de seres humanos em tarefas cada vez mais complexas, elevando as preocupações em relação ao aumento do desemprego. Um dado interessante é que, depois da crise econômica de 2008, a geração de empregos cresceu num ritmo bem menor do que a economia.

Race against the Machine brings to mind protest marches in the fifties and sixties about the evils of automation. In my own personal experience in the petrochemical and refining industries I have witnessed a dramatic change from the days many years ago when I first saw an operating refinery and its quite limited instrumentation. Over the years the evolution of process control has been simply dramatic. Most large sophisticated units are essentially now operated under computer control. Some 25 years ago this was often a main frame computer however as instrumentation became much more sophisticated the control system became distributed throughout the unit. Now when profit margins are often razor thin sophisticated optimization routines often manipulate the control system directly in order to either maximize profit or minimize loss. None of this is going away and it has had dramatic effect on the employment in the industry. Except for the fact that computers aren't much use to fight the odd fire in these units, staff levels have been reduced and operating and maintenance personnel require much higher level of skills than was the case some thirty years ago. Process control is only one area where employees need much higher understanding of the physics and chemistry behind these complex systems. Social, Health and Safety and Environmental issues require continuous improvement in unit operations, however the major social issue is that these rapid and ongoing changes are hollowing out a large portion of the middle class. This require attention, the one obvious problem is the need for greater levels of education. Race Against the Machine

Empfohlen von einen Professor für Computer Science an der Universität von Santa Barbara, Ca., ist es ein überraschend volkswirtschaftlich argumentierendes Brevier von Professoren aus Harvvard und MIT. Es zeigt, warum Jobs in der US amerikanischen Wirtschaft in Rezessionen verloren gehen und danach nicht wieder entstehen. Und auch, warum das der Fall ist. Gekauft, um zu verstehen, wie sich die digitale Revolution auf den Bereich Rechtsmarkt aufwirken wird, ist meine Lektion folgende: 1. Der Rechtsmarkt wird tiefgehend transformiert werden, da es mit Daten umgeht, die ein Computer besser analysieren und interpretieren kann, bis hin zu Urteilsfindung, Verfahrensgestaltung etc. 2. Der Rechtsmarkt wird viel an Mitarbeitern freisetzen, die in der Sachbearbeitung tätig waren (vor allem: Anwälte unterhalb der Partnerschaft, Unternehmensjuristen, etc.), insbesondere der mittelguten Anbieten sowie in den angrenzenden Berufen (Verlage etc.) 3. Die Zukunft gehört jenen, die digitale Innovationen für die Beratung und Bearbeitung von Rechtsfragen anbieten und nutzen können. Dazu bedarf es Investitionsfähigkeiten, die das Geschäftsmodell der Partnerschaften mit ihrem Cash-basierten Geschäftsmodellen nicht haben, Daher wird der Wettbewerb von aussen kommen, von Anbietern wie Axiom etc. Die Autoren bieten am Ende Hoffnung an, da es die Gesellschaft immer geschafft habe, etwas neues zu erfinden und neue Beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten zu erschließen. Für den einzelnen Anwalt/Juristen bedeutet dies, das er sich auf die Socken machen sollte, und insb. seine Kompetenz in Sachen Digitalisierungtechniken verbessern sollte. Sonst sitzt er/sie auf der Strasse, so wie heute schon viele Banker, die in den neunziger noch Jobs hatten.