Reddit reviews The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
We found 13 Reddit comments about The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Some people predict that cheap housing for the retired and unemployed will be built en mass in the near-future USA, particularly in areas with a low cost-of living. This could very well be the South 15 minutes into the future (with a bit of artistic liberty).
The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, is a popular approach to the topic but they are both academics and their research is quite sound.
History isn't a gradual incline though. There's this book I'm reading called The Second Machine Age, really good read by the way, which has this graph in its early pages. Now I don't know how they source that information and am not claiming it to be fully accurate, but as an illustrative example it shows that total societal upheaval is a pretty rapid thing that compounds earlier periods of change. What we think of as tremendous periods critical to social development were, in this era which is the only one you can really form comparisons in as the dissemination of information is so radically different from what it was prior to the industrial age, as short in duration as the span between Pokemon Red and Pokemon Black.
Two decades is a lot when your society is literate and informed.
The Second Machine Age is all about tech replacing jobs.
The Second Machine Age, by McAfee and Brynjolfsson.
The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Rifkin.
Ending Aging by De Grey.
Although I would personally argue that you get a good understanding of their material from the numerous talks they give, and learning the background science is probably more important for assessing their claims than simply reading their books.
The second graph's accuracy is questionable. The oil crunch that occurred in the late aughts, and the simultaneous run up in food prices that resulted from the ethanol boom, was important--but in other countries, where people were unable to afford staple foods, and where high petroleum prices propped up unsavory regimes. In the US? Not so much, except to the extent that consumers substituted away from motor transport--pulling us further away from Krugman's material world.
As to the first point, as /u/punninglinguist points out, the Internet and related technologies have rippled through the economy, and are still incipient. Check out Brynjolffson's book for one argument about what's coming down the turnpike. These technologies are disruptive throughout the economy, outside of the IT sector proper, and will be increasingly so. A short list of sectors that have already been revolutionized: hired transportation (Lyft and Uber), advertising (eg, Google Ads), content delivery (Hulu, Netflix), news media (when was the last time you read a dead tree newspaper?), music delivery (Pandora Spotify etc). The market I study and can best speak to, prostitution, has been entirely transformed by the Internet; this, to say nothing of pornography.
In any case, that paragraph is sort of badly structured. Only a small fraction of the workforce operates in (say) petroleum; but that's no reason to suggest that petroleum has not had an incredible effect on 'the economy'.
Also, ayn_rands_trannydick? Really? :(
Be glad you're not learning at a university. One reason digital marketing has not worked as well as it should is that education and training ends up being all about silos ("social media" or "mobile") rather than having a foundation in strategy. By being self-taught, you can avoid that trap.
It will be hard to get a job in digital marketing without experience or a degree, especially if you just respond to job listings. Instead, pick an emerging area of interest (VR, AR, Blockchain, whatever) and write things that are genuinely helpful and illuminating -- don't cheerlead or parrot the existing POV. Find an angle that's interesting enough to get the attention of industry leaders.
Where to Start
Why read a book about war from a guy who died in 496 BC? Because he's the most famous strategy thinker in business. He is still admired because his thinking is very smart and very clear.
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Important-Questions-About-Organization/dp/0470227567/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0J3SSMAE3DF0P381FFYK
http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Drucker-Management-Essentials/dp/0061345016
Peter Drucker is probably the second most famous strategy thinker in business, One of my favorite quotes from him: "There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
Note: After you read Sun Tzu and Drucker, it will make so much sense to you that you will assume business naturally works strategically and that things are pretty logical. Distressingly, the opposite is true, because businesses are run by humans and all humans are a little crazy.
Continuing Education
Technology
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPaf9YGz6Es
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWvfOhWYwi8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE
https://www.l2inc.com/video/scott-galloway-at-dld-2017
The Lights In The Tunnel (Grab the PDF eBook and pay whatever you like for it.)
http://www.thelightsinthetunnel.com/
The Second Machine Age
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472
Automate This: How Algorithms Came To Rule Our World
http://www.amazon.com/Automate-This-Algorithms-Came-World/dp/B00D9T9IQG
On Reddit, read Futurology and Singularity
http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing_and_strategy
http://www.prophet.com/thinking/publications
http://blogs.hbr.org (sign up for a free account)
Ad tech = Ad Exchanger
AdWeek, AdAge, Cynopsis, eConsultancy, DIGIDAY
Mobile = MobileMarketer, MMA Smartbrief
Search = MarketingLand, SearchEngine Watch
Research = eMarketer, BizReport, Marketing Charts
Social = SmartBrief on Social Media, Social Media Today
Agency = Mediapost MAD, ClickZ experts
http://www.mediaredefined.com/
Hope this helps. Don't freak out about how long the list is -- the foundational stuff is really in the four books under "Where To Start". And the ad tech stuff is well covered by Ad Exchanger.
The Second Machine Age
Argumentum ad sittingnexttoanaccountantum, that's a new one.
Unless knowledge translates through osmosis, that doesn't actually help, you do realize that? I don't become an expert on human digestion by making a comment while sitting next to a doctor.
>this "topping off everyones salary" money still has to come from somewhere
This indicates you have misunderstood the concept at its root. Basic Income is not about 'topping off everyone's salary'. It's about replacing the vastly inefficient current welfare system with something more streamlined, while at the same time providing for people who in the very near future are going to need to be provided for in a way the system as it is is not designed to handle.
Yes, this likely requires more capital. No, it is not as much as you think it is. Part of the gains are in a reduction in future liabilities (ounce of prevention v. pound of cure.)
Yes, this likely means taxes go up. It also means tax loopholes close.
>Before you go trying to insult someone trying to defend your right to paint pictures all day and get paid to do it
Cute. That would be what we call a 'strawman argument', you see, where you ascribe traits to me that have not come out in my actual statements based on a preexisting stereotype or prejudice.
I'm actually a law student studying for an internship position at a major corporate law firm. I'm one of the people who would absolutely not want to live on basic income. I'd go nuts. I do however recognize that it would stop others from starving in the streets - and that 'painting pictures', or more likely 'futzing around with those damn computers in the garage' actually has value, and was something people like Bill Gates, Steve(s) Jobs/Wozniak, and Sergei Brin did. Then they founded Microsoft, Apple, and Google respectively.
Imagine someone else who might do the same, butfor they spend 40 hours a week asking people if they would like fries with that, since the alternative is their family starving to death.
I'm not exactly the first person to think about this:
>We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian- Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
-Buckminster Fuller
Ironically, people can actually make reasoned arguments for points that might not directly benefit them. I'd likely pay more taxes under a basic income system, especially as someone who actually can read the tax code (which, dear god is painful. Props to your sitting-next-to-you-Accountant for sticking with that.)
If you want a better explanation of how a basic income or negative income tax can work (put in a much more succinct and well sourced manner than I can likely put it) I'd suggest taking a look at "The Second Machine Age", written by Erik Brynjolfsson, a Professor of Management at MIT Andrew McAfee, associate director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT.
It's a good read in general.
Read this book and get back to me.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472
Capital in the Twenty first century actually lays out a 200 year record that the rate of return on capital is always greater than the growth of the overall economy, always concentrating wealth in the hands of oligarchic/dynastic wealth unless acted on by redistributive forces. Robotics massively accelerates this process as noted in the Second Machine Age. When you look at both books you get a picture of the rapid and accelerating transfer of wealth from everybody to a small few. The only way that i see to deal with this is Makerspaces like Technocopia that are build distributed community accessible automation of thier own.
> Yes, there is a lot of progress to be made, but technological advancement is very much part of it, and the problems aren't with the fact that technology renders human labor obsolete, the problem is with how we handle the new situation.
I agree with this very much. We are already seeing employment suffer as a result of a lack of imagination. It's going to get worse as robotic technology gets better. I've read several books on this sort of thing, but the one I think gave the best high level picture was this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/1480577472 (Don't worry, it's not too pessimistic. :))
RE: Repairing democracy. I truly hope you are right...I have kids.
Welcome to futurology. No offense intended, but I think it would be in the best interests of you and our community if you would lurk more before posting to this sub, as subreddits exist for a reason and are each separate communities that are best served by people who have an understanding of it.
Now the reason I asked you about technological unemployment is because universal basic income, as it is discussed on this subreddit, is intrinsically tied to the rise in jobs lost due to automation. People here view basic income at least as a stopgap measure to prevent societal upheaval during a time when wealth is becoming increasing concentrated at the top due to automation technology.
If you want to get a better understanding of this issue, I recommend this talk by Brynjolfsson and McAfee (authors of The Second Machine Age, probably the best book on this issue).