Second Machine Age

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee  · 20 Jan 2014  · 339pp  · 88,732 words

BRYNJOLFSSON ANDREW MCAFEE To Martha Pavlakis, the love of my life. To my parents, David McAfee and Nancy Haller, who prepared me for the second machine age by giving me every advantage a person could have. Chapter 1 THE BIG STORIES Chapter 2 THE SKILLS OF THE NEW MACHINES: TECHNOLOGY RACES AHEAD

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OF THE CHESSBOARD Chapter 4 THE DIGITIZATION OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING Chapter 5 INNOVATION: DECLINING OR RECOMBINING? Chapter 6 ARTIFICIAL AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IN THE SECOND MACHINE AGE Chapter 7 COMPUTING BOUNTY Chapter 8 BEYOND GDP Chapter 9 THE SPREAD Chapter 10 THE BIGGEST WINNERS: STARS AND SUPERSTARS Chapter 11 IMPLICATIONS OF THE

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the drama of the world’s earlier history.”11 FIGURE 1.2 What Bent the Curve of Human History? The Industrial Revolution. Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power—the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments—what the steam

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difficult challenges and choices. This book is divided into three sections. The first, composed of chapters 1 through 6, describes the fundamental characteristics of the second machine age. These chapters give many examples of recent technological progress that seem like the stuff of science fiction, explain why they’re happening now (after all

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other important measures. Spread has been increasing in recent years. This is a troubling development for many reasons, and one that will accelerate in the second machine age unless we intervene. The final section—chapters 12 through 15—discusses what interventions will be appropriate and effective for this age. Our economic goals should

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doublings in efficiency during that period.9 It would take a millennium to reach the second half of the chessboard at that rate. In the second machine age, the doublings happen much faster and exponential growth is much more salient. Second-Half Technologies Our quick doubling calculation also helps us understand why progress

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power increases and cost declines. As we saw in chapter 3, exponential improvement in computer gear is one of the three fundamental forces enabling the second machine age. Waze also depends critically on the second of these three forces: digitization. In their landmark 1998 book Information Rules, economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian

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, data from all kinds of sensors, and so on—is one of the most important phenomena of recent years. As we move deeper into the second machine age, digitization continues to spread and accelerate, yielding some jaw-dropping statistics. According to Cisco Systems, worldwide Internet traffic increased by a factor of twelve in

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- and zettabytes of digital data actually useful? They’re incredibly useful. One of the main reasons we cite digitization as a main force shaping the second machine age is that digitization increases understanding. It does this by making huge amounts of data readily accessible, and data are the lifeblood of science. By “science

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New Recipes Digital information isn’t just the lifeblood for new kinds of science; it’s the second fundamental force (after exponential improvement) shaping the second machine age because of its role in fostering innovation. Waze is a great example here. The service is built on multiple layers and generations of digitization, none

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the process and to a degree that herald . . . astonishing advances.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin THE 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

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such wonders, and they’ll become more and more impressive. How can we be so sure? Because the exponential, digital, and recombinant powers of the second machine age have made it possible for humanity to create two of the most important one-time events in our history: the emergence of real, useful artificial

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incredibly positive one. Billions of Innovators, Coming Soon In addition to powerful and useful AI, the other recent development that promises to further accelerate the second machine age is the digital interconnection of the planet’s people. There is no better resource for improving the world and bettering the state of humanity than

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predict exactly what new insights, products, and solutions will arrive in the coming years, but we are fully confident that they’ll be impressive. The second machine age will be characterized by countless instances of machine intelligence and billions of interconnected brains working together to better understand and improve our world. It will

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Management and Six Sigma principles, continued to boost manufacturing productivity. As with earlier GPTs, significant organizational innovation is required to capture the full benefit of second machine age technologies. Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, to take an obvious example, initially benefited only a small group of

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GPTs are installed. The benefits of electrification stretched for nearly a century as more and more complementary innovations were implemented. The digital GPTs of the second machine age are no less profound. Even if Moore’s Law ground to a halt today, we could expect decades of complementary innovations to unfold and continue

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to boost productivity. However, unlike the steam engine or electricity, second machine age technologies continue to improve at a remarkably rapid exponential pace, replicating their power with digital perfection and creating even more opportunities for combinatorial innovation. The

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that we are able to consume. It soon becomes clear that the trends in the official statistics not only underestimate our bounty, but in the second machine age they have also become increasingly misleading. In addition to their vast library of music, children with smartphones today have access to more information in real

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introduced each year that do not have a dollar price, this traditional GDP heuristic is becoming less useful. As we discussed in chapter 4, the second machine age is often described as an “information economy,” and with good reason. More people than ever are using Wikipedia, Facebook, Craigslist, Pandora, Hulu, and Google, with

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only difference, inflation would be easy to calculate, and the “would you rather” comparison would be a lot easier, too. For other goods, though, especially second machine age goods like online information and mobile phone capabilities, there have been big changes in quality, so the real quality-adjusted price may have fallen even

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physical products are an increasingly important share of consumption, intangibles also make up a growing share of the economy’s capital assets. Production in the second machine age depends less on physical equipment and structures and more on the four categories of intangible assets: intellectual property, organizational capital, user-generated content, and human

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of intangibles is organizational capital like new business processes, techniques of production, organizational forms, and business models. Effective uses of the new technologies of the second machine age almost invariably require changes in the organization of work. For instance, when companies spend millions of dollars on computer hardware and software for a new

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from miscounting all the types of intangible assets, but we are reasonably confident the official data underestimate their contribution.* New Metrics Are Needed for the Second Machine Age It’s a fundamental principle of management: what gets measured gets done. Modern GDP accounting was certainly a huge step forward for economic progress. As

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Well-Being Index.34 These are all important improvements, and we heartily support them. But the biggest opportunity is in using the tools of the second machine age itself: the extraordinary volume, variety, and timeliness of data available digitally. The Internet, mobile phones, embedded sensors in equipment, and a plethora of other sources

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longer needed. In a digital age, they need to find some other way to support themselves. The evolution of photography illustrates the bounty of the second machine age, the first great economic consequence of the exponential, digital, combinatorial progress taking place at present. The second one, spread, means there are large and growing

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While undoubtedly both of these problems are important, the more fundamental challenge is deep and structural, and is the result of the diffusion to the second machine age technologies that increasingly drive the economy. Recently we overheard a businessman speaking loudly (and cheerfully) into his mobile phone: “No way. I don’t use

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capital, then capital owners shouldn’t expect to earn high returns either. What will be the scarcest, and hence the most valuable, resource in the second machine age? This question brings us to our next set of winners and losers: superstars versus everyone else. * * * * This echoes the productivity effects of electricity discussed earlier

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much it; is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt IN THE LAST FOUR chapters, we’ve seen that the second machine age contains a paradox. GDP has never been higher and innovation has never been faster, yet people are increasingly pessimistic about their children’s future living

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, sometimes they’re in kindergarten, but the question is the same. And it’s not just parents who are concerned about career opportunities in the second machine age. Students themselves, leaders of the organizations that might hire them, educators, policy makers and elected officials, and many others also wonder which human skills and

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study hard, using technology and all other available resources to ‘fill up your toolkit’ and acquire skills and abilities that will be needed in the second machine age. Tools to Help You Stand Out Acquiring an excellent education is the best way to not be left behind as technology races ahead. The discouraging

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will still need human workers to satisfy their customers and succeed in the economy. (We’ll discuss the longer term in the next chapter). Yes, second-machine-age technologies are quickly leaving the lab and entering mainstream business. But as rapid as this progress is, we still have lots of human cashiers, customer

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This playbook advocates government policies and other interventions in a few key areas. Not all of them are concerned with the digital tools of the second machine age. This is because many of the things we should do in a time of brilliant technologies are not related to the technologies themselves. Instead, they

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also reform the U.S. intellectual property regime, particularly when it comes to software patents and copyright duration. In any age, but especially in the second machine age, intellectual property is extremely important. It’s both a reward for innovation (if someone invents a better mousetrap, he or she gets to patent it

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group of advocates identified by economist Gregory Mankiw, include both Alan Greenspan and Ralph Nader.37 By improving measurement and metering, the technologies of the second machine age make Pigovian taxes more feasible. Consider traffic congestion. Each of us imposes a cost on all other drivers when we join an already overcrowded highway

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working are much healthier than communities where work is scarce, all other things being equal. So we support policies that encourage work, even as the second machine age progresses. And we see two pieces of good news here. The first is that economists have developed interventions that encourage and reward work in ways

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rely heavily on a VAT.22 We think these are valuable contributions to the discussion about how to best pay for government services in the second machine age, and deserve serious consideration. The Peer Economy and Artificial Artificial Intelligence Changing the subsidies and taxes on labor might seem like a short-term solution

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. After all, isn’t the second machine age defined by relentless automation that will lead to a largely or completely postwork economy? We’ve argued here that in many domains it is. But

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to systematically test ideas and learn from both successes and failures. In fact, there are individuals, industries, and even whole nations where some aspects of second-machine-age economics are visible today. There are lessons to be learned. For instance: How do lottery winners react to not having to work anymore? (Hint: not

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the coming era of brilliant technology. Our era will face other challenges, ones that are not rooted in economics. As we move deeper into the second machine age these perils, from both accident and malice, will become greater while material wants and needs are likely to be relatively less important. We will be

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Design Innovation Using Affinnova,” Affinnova, http://www.affinnova.com/success-story/carlsberg-breweries/ (accessed August 6, 2013). Chapter 6 ARTIFICIAL AND HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IN THE SECOND MACHINE AGE 1. John Markoff, “Israeli Start-Up Gives Visually Impaired a Way to Read,” New York Times, June 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06

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progress in; see also technological progress recombinant innovation and scientific benefits of ubiquity of wealth associated with; see also superstars see also global digital network; second machine age Doerr, John Donner, Jan Hein Dorn, David Double, telepresence provided by Double Robotics Drive (Pink) driving: digitization of see also Google driverless car Dropbox Dyer

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, Peter Schumpeter, Joseph science: effect of digitization on government support of prizes in rapid progress in science fiction robots in SCIgen Sears Second Industrial Revolution second machine age: career opportunities in characteristics of complementary innovations in economic data relevant to intangible assets of interventions for key advances of long-term recommendations for mental

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power boosted by metrics of second machine age (continued) policy recommendations for Power Law distributions in reality of values of see also digitization SecondMachineAge.com self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs) semiconductors Sen, Amartya

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our lives and our politics.” —Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University “Technology is overturning the world’s economies, and The Second Machine Age is the best explanation of this revolution yet written.” —Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired and author of What Technology Wants “Brynjolfsson and McAfee take

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

by Paul Kingsnorth  · 23 Sep 2025  · 388pp  · 110,920 words

of artificial life through synthetic biology (spoiler: it’s already happened), digital finance, gene editing, the morality of robotics, the ‘new world order’ of the ‘second machine age’, and the future of cities. Not all of the contributors are starry-eyed about what is unfolding, but all agree on the breathtaking speed of

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett  · 4 Apr 2018  · 170pp  · 49,193 words

that says that all workers, or even a majority of workers, will benefit from technological progress,’ write McAfee and Brynjolfsson in their influential book The Second Machine Age, which argues persuasively that, while other factors are of course at play – including globalisation – technological advance over the last 30 years has been the main

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

about the effects of automation on the future of work. In early 2014, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee published The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.3 They surveyed a future in which computer and robotics technology replaces human labor not

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jobs of the very journalists who cover these issues. And the pace of change at least seems, to many, to be faster than ever. The “second machine age” is a concept promoted by Brynjolfsson and McAfee. In their book of the same name, they argue that just as the first machine age—the

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. So before delving into the possible social consequences of that process, I will sketch out some of the recent, rapid developments in the so-called “second machine age” we live in. This is a sequel to—or, as some see it, merely an extension of—the first machine age of large-scale industrial

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Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 3Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, New York: W. W. Norton, 2014. 4Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, “The Future

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Computerisation?,” OxfordMartin.ox.ac.uk, 2013. 5Kevin Drum, “Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us?,” Mother Jones, May/June 2013. 6Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age, pp. 7–8. 7Frey and Osborne, “The Future of Employment.” 8Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, New

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

by Jeremias Prassl  · 7 May 2018  · 491pp  · 77,650 words

, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? (Oxford Martin School 2013). 6. Ibid., 38, 42. 7. Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (W. W. Norton & Co. 2014), 10. 8. Cynthia Estlund, ‘What should we do after work? Automation

Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

by Samuel Arbesman  · 18 Jul 2016  · 222pp  · 53,317 words

, and The Way to Go by Kate Ascher examine how cities, skyscrapers, and our transportation networks, respectively, actually work. Beautifully rendered and fascinating books. The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee examines the rapid technological change we are experiencing and can come to expect, and how it will affect our

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

in sections with black clamps. The other was filled with books: David Weil’s book about how technology will impact jobs. A book about the second machine age. I’d chipped in a copy of Janesville, a book that followed a small town near where I’d grown up after the local GM

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

by Thomas W. Malone  · 14 May 2018  · 344pp  · 104,077 words

the ACM South Central Regional Conference, Austin, TX, November 1984. 9. Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence, 1,021. 10. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014); Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the

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? The History and Future of Workplace Automation,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 29, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 3–30. 3. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014). 4. David H. Autor, “Skills, Education, and the Rise

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J. Laubacher, “The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy,” Harvard Business Review 76, no. 5 (September–October 1998): 144–52. 13. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age, chapter 11. 14. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Investors Buying Shares in College Students: Is This the Wave of the Future? Purdue University Thinks So,” Washington Post

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data

by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge  · 27 Feb 2018  · 267pp  · 72,552 words

the challenge of increasing automation, what is there to employ the middle-class workers displaced in data-rich markets? Is this the advent of a “second machine age”—the neat phrase to describe the coming displacement through automation of white-collar jobs coined by MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee? It is

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Statistics, Labor Force Participation Rates, data sets and graphs available at https://data.bls.gov. forecast depressing employment figures: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, The Future

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, UK: Oxford Martin School, September 17, 2013), http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of _Employment.pdf. advent of a “second machine age”: Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age. “labor share” has declined considerably: Matthias Kehrig and Nicolas Vincent, “Growing Productivity Without Growing Wages: The Micro-Level Anatomy of the Aggregate Labor

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson  · 15 Jan 2018  · 523pp  · 61,179 words

of credibility and insight. Have your whole team read it before your competitors do!” — ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON, Director, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; coauthor, The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd “A must-read for business managers who know AI should be a big part of their job but find the topic

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The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

by Thomas Philippon  · 29 Oct 2019  · 401pp  · 109,892 words

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems

by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo  · 12 Nov 2019  · 470pp  · 148,730 words

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

by Robert J. Gordon  · 12 Jan 2016  · 1,104pp  · 302,176 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff  · 15 Jan 2019  · 918pp  · 257,605 words

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance

by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna  · 23 May 2016  · 437pp  · 113,173 words

Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation

by Sophie Pedder  · 20 Jun 2018  · 337pp  · 101,440 words

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman  · 22 Nov 2016  · 602pp  · 177,874 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

by Jenny Blake  · 14 Jul 2016  · 292pp  · 76,185 words

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next

by Andrew McAfee  · 30 Sep 2019  · 372pp  · 94,153 words

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation

by Carl Benedikt Frey  · 17 Jun 2019  · 626pp  · 167,836 words

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age

by Roger Bootle  · 4 Sep 2019  · 374pp  · 111,284 words

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce  · 20 Apr 2017  · 223pp  · 58,732 words

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

by Matt Ridley  · 395pp  · 116,675 words

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

by Rana Foroohar  · 16 May 2016  · 515pp  · 132,295 words

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History

by Stephen D. King  · 22 May 2017  · 354pp  · 92,470 words

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy

by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake  · 4 Apr 2022  · 338pp  · 85,566 words

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

by Edward Chancellor  · 15 Aug 2022  · 829pp  · 187,394 words

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends

by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika  · 12 May 2015  · 389pp  · 87,758 words

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization

by Richard Baldwin  · 14 Nov 2016  · 606pp  · 87,358 words

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott  · 1 Jun 2016  · 344pp  · 94,332 words

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard

by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel  · 3 Oct 2016  · 504pp  · 126,835 words

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

by Steven Radelet  · 10 Nov 2015  · 437pp  · 115,594 words

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

by Aaron Bastani  · 10 Jun 2019  · 280pp  · 74,559 words

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind

by Jan Lucassen  · 26 Jul 2021  · 869pp  · 239,167 words

Economic Dignity

by Gene Sperling  · 14 Sep 2020  · 667pp  · 149,811 words

99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It

by Mark Thomas  · 7 Aug 2019  · 286pp  · 79,305 words

Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality

by Vito Tanzi  · 28 Dec 2017

The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis

by Martin Wolf  · 24 Nov 2015  · 524pp  · 143,993 words

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization

by Branko Milanovic  · 10 Apr 2016  · 312pp  · 91,835 words

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

by Walter Scheidel  · 17 Jan 2017  · 775pp  · 208,604 words

Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy

by Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght  · 20 Mar 2017

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam  · 12 Oct 2020  · 678pp  · 160,676 words

The Tyranny of Metrics

by Jerry Z. Muller  · 23 Jan 2018  · 204pp  · 53,261 words

Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success

by Dietrich Vollrath  · 6 Jan 2020  · 295pp  · 90,821 words

Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing

by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane  · 28 Feb 2017  · 346pp  · 90,371 words