History has witnessed three industrial revolutions, each associated with a general purpose technology. The first, powered by steam, the second, based on electricity. The third industrial revolution, which is unfolding now, is fuelled by computers and networks. Like both of the previous ones, it will take decades to fully play out. And like each of the first two, it will lead to sharp changes in the path of human development and history. The twists and disruptions will not always be easy to navigate.

Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee
Research Brief
Race Against The Machine:
How The Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity,
and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and The Economy [pdf]

Weʼve stressed that computers are rapidly encroaching into areas that used to be the domain of people only, like complex communication and advanced pattern recognition. And weʼve shown how this encroachment can cause companies to use more computers and fewer people in a growing set of tasks. As we head deeper into the second half of the chessboard — into the period where continuing exponential increases in computing power yield astonishing results — we expect that economic disruptions will only grow as well. But we clearly are not pessimists about technology and its impacts.

Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee
Research Brief
Race Against The Machine:
How The Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity,
and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and The Economy [pdf]

In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing, and even scientific discovery, the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines. … Fortunately, humans are strongest exactly where computers are weak, creating a potentially beautiful partnership. So … we want to focus on recommendations in two areas: improving the rate and quality of organizational innovation, and increasing human capital — ensuring that people have the skills they need to participate in todayʼs economy, and tomorrowʼs. Making progress in these two areas will be the best way to allow human workers and institutions to race with machines, not against them.

Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee
Research Brief
Race Against The Machine:
How The Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity,
and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and The Economy [pdf]

0:58:39 AUDIENCE: …
0:58:49 I would've started to wonder if you had had
0:58:51 the reaction-- other people had the reaction to the book
0:58:53 that your proposed prescriptions don't seem
0:58:56 of the same magnitude as the problem that you're describing.
0:59:01 For the most part, you seem to just be describing tweaks,
0:59:03 or maybe if you have one big idea,
0:59:05 it's education, which everybody has talked about for years,
0:59:07 and nobody knows how to fix, and if you could fix it,
0:59:09 it wouldn't pay off for decades down the line anyway,
0:59:11 and you have new problems by that point.
0:59:13 So what do you think is the biggest policy prescription
0:59:19 or advice for the future that you
0:59:21 have that is proportionate to the magnitude of the problem?
0:59:26 ANDREW MCAFEE: And the nastiest and maybe most accurate
0:59:29 comment we've gotten about our work
0:59:31 is, you guys are proposing linear solutions
0:59:33 to an exponential situation.
0:59:36 Ow, right?
0:59:39 So we're mindful of it.
0:59:42 What we don't want to do is say that we
0:59:44 know what the trajectory of technology is going to be,
0:59:47 and therefore what kind of moonshotty intervention
0:59:50 is appropriate to get there.
0:59:51 What we're saying instead is essentially, let's iterate.
0:59:54 Let's tinker.
0:59:55 Let's mess with the things that we know
0:59:57 will move the dial in the right direction,
0:59:59 and let's make sure that we're tracking the problem correctly,
1:00:02 as opposed to trying to anticipate where this thing is
1:00:04 going to be in some crazy time frame down the road.
1:00:07 I take a lot of insight from your chairman's repeated
1:00:12 assertion that the crazy, long-frame planning
1:00:14 horizon for Google is five years.
1:00:18 Overshooting that by a lot with our policy recommendations
1:00:20 seems like a recipe for failure or disaster.