The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies ★★★★
by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
This is a book the reflect upon. Well, not the book, but the ideas in it. The topics covered claim that we are living alongside a transformative force that will change the shape of the world as we know it.
The author argues that the Second Machine Age is upon us in the form of the crescent digitisation of everything. This is reshaping most of the fundamental aspects of our economies where the cost structures of the digital goals are becoming negligible.
There are many ideas in the book (alongside with some advice) that are food for thought, and this is probably the books best-selling point. The only negative aspect I found is that it focuses mostly on America in the latter chapters of the book.
A curiosity spoiler is that the book addresses some issues in the bounty-spread dichotomy that have been fundamental in recent elections (Brexit and Trump), so they acquire some prophetic aspect when reading the book in 2017.
I also enjoyed the chapters on education, although I found myself wanting more chapters on the topic. Naturally, education is not a “sexy” theme for everybody, but I believe it will become the fundamental tool to reshape the human side of the XXI century man-machine equation.
Highly recommended.