“The Second Machine Age” explores how digital technology is changing our world. It looks at the big impact of computers and the internet, comparing this change to the Industrial Revolution. The book talks about the good things technology brings, like more choices and easier access to information. But it also warns about challenges, like jobs being lost because of new tech. The authors share ideas on how to deal with these issues, making sure technology helps everyone. This book gives a clear view of what’s happening now and how we can prepare for the future.
Determining the most significant events in human history is challenging due to the ambiguity surrounding the start of “human history” itself. Modern humans, possessing language and advanced behaviors, emerged from Africa around 60,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of Neanderthals and other hominids by 25,000 BCE. This period could mark the beginning of significant human developments, but the last ice age’s impact on societal progress complicates this timeline. Ian Morris suggests starting around 14,000 BCE when the climate warmed, facilitating societal advancement.
The domestication of animals, notably dogs, possibly before 14,000 BCE, and later, horses and oxen, played a crucial role in transitioning from foraging to farming around 8,000 BCE. This agricultural revolution enabled the establishment of larger human settlements and eventually cities, which then became centers for commerce, conflict, and conquest. The formation of great empires, such as the Mongol, Roman, Arab, and Ottoman, significantly influenced global commerce, kingdoms, and customs.
Beyond tangible achievements, the emergence of transformative ideas marked a pivotal epoch in human history. Karl Jaspers’ notion of the ‘Axial Age’ (800–200 BCE) highlights the simultaneous yet geographically separate lives of Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates, whose philosophies profoundly shaped Indian, Chinese, and European civilizations. The founding of major world religions by figures like Buddha also dramatically impacted human ideals and societies.
The invention of writing in Mesopotamia around 3,200 BCE, followed by the development of a numbering system that included the concept of zero, represents another foundational advance in human history. Such innovations in communication and mathematics underpin many subsequent developments.
Significant historical milestones continue with the practice of democracy in Athens around 500 BCE, the demographic transformations caused by the Black Death in the 14th century, and the consequential encounters between the New and Old Worlds initiated by Columbus in 1492. These events, among others, have indelibly shaped the trajectory of human history, influencing societies, economies, and cultures across the globe.
Ian Morris, in his book “Why the West Rules—For Now,” attempts to quantify human development to address this question, suggesting that most developments have had minimal impact compared to the Industrial Revolution. This period marked a dramatic shift in human progress, primarily driven by the steam engine’s invention and improvement in the late 18th century by James Watt. This innovation significantly increased efficiency and led to factories, mass production, railways, and the modern life we know today, representing the first machine age driven by technological innovation.
The narrative then transitions to the second machine age, highlighting the transformative power of computers and digital technologies on mental power, similar to how the steam engine enhanced physical power. This new era of digital innovation is reshaping our capabilities and understanding, with technologies suddenly improving in tasks they previously struggled with, such as disease diagnosis, language processing, and autonomous driving. The authors’ exploration into the impact of digital technologies reveals a future where the augmentation of mental power could lead to unprecedented human progress, just as the first machine age did for physical power. This exploration is fueled by conversations with various technology innovators, providing insights into the ongoing and future impacts of digital advancements on society.
This book presents three major insights into the impact of digital technologies on society and the economy. Initially, it notes the significant progress made with digital technologies, emphasizing that despite their long history, it’s only recently that their true potential has been unleashed, signaling an inflection point akin to the Industrial Revolution. This era of digital transformation is expected to bring profound benefits, enhancing both the variety and volume of consumption. Digital technologies enable a shift from scarcity to abundance, offering greater choice and freedom by transforming goods into easily shared digital formats. However, this digital revolution also poses challenges, particularly in the labor market, where technological advancements reduce the demand for workers with ordinary skills, potentially leaving many behind.
During a visit to Google’s headquarters, the authors experienced a ride in one of Google’s autonomous vehicles, part of its Chauffeur project. Although they initially expected to be in a car without a human driver, two Google team members were present in the front seats for safety and legal reasons. The car, once switched to automatic mode, navigated the complexities of Highway 101 with precision, providing a smooth and uneventful ride. It followed traffic rules meticulously and used its sensors to maintain awareness of all surrounding vehicles, effectively avoiding blind spots and adjusting to traffic conditions without any need for human intervention.
This experience contradicted the authors’ previous belief, influenced by the book “The New Division of Labor” by Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, that computers would not be capable of driving cars. Levy and Murnane argued that certain tasks, especially those requiring pattern recognition like driving, would remain exclusively human due to the difficulty of programming computers to perform them. However, the rapid advancements in autonomous vehicle technology showcased by Google’s project demonstrated a significant shift. This shift was further underscored by the DARPA Grand Challenge, which highlighted the fast pace of progress in autonomous vehicle technology from initial failures to successful navigation of complex environments.
This evolution of autonomous vehicles exemplifies a broader trend in digital technology, where long-standing challenges are being overcome at an unexpectedly rapid pace. The progress in digital technologies, including robotics and computer capabilities, has accelerated, marking a departure from previous expectations. These advancements suggest that we are entering a new era where computers can perform tasks previously thought to require human intelligence, challenging traditional divisions of labor between humans and machines and indicating a significant transformation in the role of digital technology in society.
Levy and Murnane argued that complex communication would remain a uniquely human skill, essential for tasks where nuanced interaction is crucial, such as teaching or managing. However, the introduction of Apple’s Siri in 2011 challenged this notion by providing a natural-language user interface that could interpret and respond to user commands. Despite initial shortcomings, where Siri often misunderstood or responded inaccurately to requests, its existence marked a significant step towards machines handling complex communication tasks. This evolution continued with Google Translate and other automatic translation services, which, despite their imperfections, offer instantaneous translation across numerous languages, showcasing the broadening capabilities of computers in communication.
The pinnacle of this progress was IBM’s Watson, a supercomputer that competed on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” against two of the show’s most successful contestants and won. Watson’s ability to understand and correctly answer a wide range of questions with speed and accuracy demonstrated that computers could match or even surpass human abilities in pattern recognition and complex communication. This shift suggests a new division of labor where digital technologies take on roles previously thought to require human intelligence, indicating a significant transformation in how work is divided between humans and machines.
Robotics has seen a significant acceleration in development, moving from a phase of gradual progress to a sudden surge in advancements. The concept of robots, originating from a Czech play in 1921, has evolved from fantastical speculations to real-world applications in various environments. However, despite the imaginative robots of science fiction, real-world robotics has struggled to match human abilities in navigating and interacting with the physical world, a challenge highlighted by the limitations of robots like Honda’s ASIMO.
This difficulty is encapsulated in Moravec’s paradox, which posits that tasks humans find easy, such as perception and mobility, require enormous computational effort for robots. Conversely, tasks that involve high-level reasoning, which we might assume require significant intelligence, are comparatively easy for computers. This paradox has made automating complex physical tasks challenging, relegating robots to perform specific, unvarying tasks in controlled environments, rather than the versatile roles humans occupy.
Rethink Robotics, founded by Rodney Brooks, aims to address these limitations by developing robots capable of performing imprecise tasks, such as handling objects that aren’t perfectly aligned, a common scenario in industrial settings. Brooks’s robots, like Baxter, are designed to be affordable, easy to program by non-engineers, and safe to interact with, making them suitable for a variety of tasks on factory floors. Baxter represents a step towards overcoming Moravec’s paradox, demonstrating an ability to adapt to different tasks with minimal setup time, potentially transforming the nature of factory automation by filling roles traditionally held by humans and operating alongside them in a more flexible and intuitive manner.
The rapid progress in robotics signifies an imminent boom in the market, as evidenced by the expanding variety and volume of robots in commercial use, challenging Moravec’s paradox. Companies like Kiva and Boston Dynamics have made significant strides, with Kiva’s warehouse robots enhancing logistics through efficient, safe navigation and transport of goods, and Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robot demonstrating remarkable mobility and balance in challenging terrains. Another innovation, the Double, offers telepresence capabilities, allowing users to navigate distant locations via an iPad-mounted mobile platform. These advancements reflect a broader trend of robotics moving beyond traditional limitations to perform complex tasks in dynamic environments.
The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) represents a concerted effort to push the boundaries of robotic capabilities further, aiming to develop robots that can perform a variety of complex tasks in human-engineered environments. This challenge, along with the successes of self-driving cars, Watson’s victory on “Jeopardy!”, and the advent of practical applications like 3D printing, underscores a significant inflection point in technology. Innovations that seemed confined to science fiction are becoming reality, indicating a shift towards an era marked by exponential, digital, and combinatorial technological progress, laying the foundation for the second machine age. This era promises to transform not just how we work and live but also our understanding of the potential of digital technologies to overcome historical challenges and redefine the future.