Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy [Kindle Edition]

Erik Brynjolfsson (Author), Andrew McAfee (Author)

Book Description

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"We're entering unknown territory in the quest to reduce labor costs. The AI revolution is doing to white collar jobs what robotics did to blue collar jobs. Race Against the Machine is a bold effort to make sense of the future of work.  No one else is doing serious thinking about a force that will lead to a restructuring of the economy that is more profound and far-reaching than the transition from the agricultural to the industrial age. Brynjolfsson and McAfee have hit the ball out of the park on this one.  It's a book anyone concerned with either business, or more broadly, the future of our society, simply must read." - Tim O'Reilly

"This is, quite simply, the best book yet written on the interaction of digital technology, employment and organization.   Race Against the Machine is meticulously researched, sobering, practical and, ultimately, hopeful.  It is an extremely important contribution to the debate about how we ensure that every human being benefits from the digital revolution that is still gathering speed.   If you read only one book on technology in the next 12 months, it should be this one." -Gary Hamel

"In social science inquiry, we badly need the right people asking, and answering, the right questions.  That's precisely what Brynjolfsson and McAfee do in this important treatise on the intersection of technology and the economy.  Moreover, they're tackling the most important question of the present and the future: where are the new jobs going to come from?" - Jared Bernstein

"Race Against the Machine is a portrait of the digital world - a world where competition, labor and leadership are less important than collaboration, creativity and networks." - Nicholas Negroponte

About the Author

Erik Brynjolfsson is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, Chairman of the Sloan Management Review, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-author of Wired for Innovation: How IT Is Reshaping the Economy. He graduated from Harvard University and MIT.

Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist and associate director at the MIT Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management. He is the author of Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges. He graduated from MIT and Harvard University.

Product Details

• File Size: 517 KB
• Print Length: 98 pages
• Publisher: Digital Frontier Press (October 17, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005WTR4ZI
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,754 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Economics > Economic Conditions
  • #6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > International
  • #13 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Economic Conditions

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 120 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book. Everyone should read it. October 23, 2011

By Bill Jarvis

Format:Kindle Edition

In "Race Against the Machine", economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee ask the question: Could technology be destroying jobs? They then expand on that to explore whether advancing information technology might be an important contributor to the current unemployment disaster. The authors argue very convincingly that the answer to both questions is YES.

The book is very readable and includes lots of links to supporting evidence (both statistical and anecdotal). The authors do a good job of focusing on how computer technology is accelerating exponentially and how computers are a "general purpose technology", in other words, a special technology that can affect just about anything else and have much bigger impact than more narrowly focused innovations.

I thought a really good example involved automated driving. In 2005, two other economists suggested that it would be "hard to imagine" computers ever being able to handle driving in traffic. Yet, just 6 years later, Google introduced automated cars that did exactly that. The point is that progress in information technology is very likely to exceed our expectations and surprise us in the coming years.

While the problems are laid out clearly, I think the solutions offered are pretty conventional. The authors' call for reforming and upgrading schools, for example, is something that just about everyone can agree on. However, even if we managed to do that (and we are not making much progress), those kids would not enter the workforce for many years, and who knows what technology will be capable of by then?

In addition to this book, I'd also strongly suggest reading The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future (which the authors cite in "Race Against the Machine"). "The Lights in the Tunnel" takes a somewhat longer view and asks where all this will lead in the coming decades. The answers and the proposed solutions are less conventional and more controversial. Everyone should really read both of these books. I think the issue of technology and how it will affect the job market and the livelihoods of millions of people is going to be a truly huge issue in the coming years. Our kids will live in a completely new world, and it might demand a completely new way of thinking.

172 of 199 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Now What? October 26, 2011

By DB

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Is the book clear? Yes.
Is the book concise? Yes.
Is the book engaging? Yes.
Is the book onto something? Yes.
Is the book well researched? Yes.
Is the book worth reading? Absolutely!

Why on earth did I rate it three stars then? Stick with me here. Because the book tantalizes with its subtitle that accelerating change is "Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy" but just when the book gets going, Chapter Four falls flat and feels like an economic recipe for a by-gone era rather than a roadmap to the economy of "the digital frontier". As humanity moved from an agrarian society to the pre-industrial and then industrial era, modern economic models took hold that allowed diverse suppliers to rationalize their efforts in a common way and leverage that effort through a common currency. In short, barter gave way to the abstract concept of a general currency that could be exchanged for goods.

In that process, the machinery of "GDP" (consumption) and the corporation became all encompassing. With comparatively archaic tools (in comparison to the machines of 2011), human beings were the primary way of creating products for those same humans to then consume. As we began to enter the "information age" in the 80s, 90s and aughts, we created the early incarnations of "the digital frontier" in the model of the industrial era (i.e. we remade the factory). Two examples: Software titans copyrighted their work and big think tanks erected barriers to their information to maintain artificial scarcity that aids in keeping prices up and revenue flowing. This is regardless of the fact that information, once created, can be shared and distributed in an essentially frictionless way. Bits and bytes are not bound by the same physical rules as traditional raw material like wood or rare earth elements. As we decode the machinery of life (DNA, molecular bonds, nanotechnology, etc), the same will be true for physical things...we'll be able to simply reorder material into a form we want. Early generation 3D printers and tissue regeneration are examples of this trend. Yet we continue to bind these information-era processes to economic models of scarcity.

What we need, and what I was hoping this book would help describe, is a different economic model. An economic model in which the concept of abundance, rather than scarcity, is the central driving force. We have an abundance of people willing to work. We have an abundance of information. We have an abundance of things that need to be done. We have an abudance of ability to connect it all together. We have an increasingly abundant ability to create stuff for virtually free. We have 7 Billion people on the planet for whom our moral and social compact drive us to provide them with shelter, food, and health care yet we have an economic model that rewards hoarding and selfishness and creating products that produce huge profit margins when equally good, or better, and cheaper solutions exist. The successful economic model of "the digital frontier" will decouple supply and demand. Profit on the supply side will be driven by those who can create the most social value at the lowest cost (housing for free for example). "Pay" on the demand side will be driven by rewarding human beings to remain active, productive, engaged, and learning rather than trying to "race [the] machine". And, no, I don't mean Communism, I mean a capitalistic system with different measures and rewards.

There are numerous alternatives to a GDP-based economic model that have been put forth. Examples include "Gross national happiness", "Continuum Development Index", and the "Sharing economy" to name just three. Search for alternatives to GDP for others. Yet "Race Against the Machine" did not explore any of these as possible roadmaps to a world where humans' "requirement" to "work" becomes obsolete. With that said, the book serves as an excellent reference for why these trends are happening and why they are irreversible. Everyone should read this book and then help create an economy of abundance!

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The future we all face on the second half of then chess board October 26, 2011

By Mark P. McDonald TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.