The main thesis of the book is that we are in the midst of a technological revolution that is radically redefining what work is, how value is created, and how the economy distributes that value. In particular, the authors observe that after the
Great Recession of 2007–2008, many measures of economic health (such as GDP, corporate profits, and investment in equipment and software) rebounded quickly, while unemployment lagged behind, which they attribute to technology eliminating the need for many forms of human labor. Examples of technology they point to are
robotics,
numerically controlled machines, computerized
inventory management software,
speech recognition, speaker recognition,
language translation,
self-driving vehicles,
pattern recognition and online commerce. The authors write that businesses are increasingly substituting machines for people, and that rate at which digital technologies are advancing is exponentially higher than that of the organizations, institutions, and individuals within our economy. Additionally, the corporate use of equipment and software is increasing faster than the rate of employment. Brynjolfsson and McAfee write that advanced digital technologies are making people more innovative, productive and richer, both in the short- and long-term, but potentially at the cost of increasing
wealth inequality in society. In the authors' view, one of the main
in-egalitarian consequences of digital technological developments is its potentially negative impact on some types of employment, such as routine information processing work. The authors appear to advocate for a collaborative partnership between computers and humans as the road to future job creation. "In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing and even scientific discovery," they write, "the key to winning the race is not to compete
against machines but to compete
with machines." ==Recommendations==