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In recent years, computers have learned to diagnose diseases, drive cars, write clean prose and win game shows. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty but in their wake median income has stagnated and employment levels have fallen. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces driving this reinvention of the economy and chart a path towards future prosperity. Businesses and individuals, they argue, must learn to race with machines. Drawing on years of research, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies and policies for doing so. A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will radically alter how we think about issues of technological, societal and economic progress. "...set to be one of the zeitgeist works of 2014..." -- The Guardian "...an ambitious, engaging and at times terrifying vision of where modern technology is taking the human race...The authors may not have the solution to growing inequality, but their book marks one of the most effective explanations yet for the origins of the gap." -- The Economist "Brynjolfsson and McAfee started to lay out their vision of the challenges of the technological revolution more than three years ago. But their broadly optimistic book is still one of the best summaries of the debate about the impact of digital change on our future job prospects and prosperity." -- Andrew Hill, Best Books of 2014 - Financial Times "...a fascinating book..." -- Roger Bootle - The Telegraph "Crammed with analyses of everything from human-machine competition to the state of US education." -- Nature "...fascinating book..." -- John Lanchester - London Review of Books "The fear that robots will take over is, of course, as old as dystopian literature. The new and unheralded development is something called the Internet. This point is elegantly made in a suddenly ubiquitous new book called The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology." -- Evening Standard "...one of last year's most important books..." -- New Statesman "...influential..." -- The Observer "...it [The Second Machine Age] feels like a must-read for entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers." -- The Huffington Post "My favourite and most revealing book of the year was not a novel but a non-fiction publication... a book that throws you off-balance while reading. Different to other publications, it is not only a real analysis and well-researched perspective, but also utterly optimistic." -- The Art Newspaper "...brilliant new book." -- The Evening Standard "... the most influential recent business book..." -- The Economist

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