Race Against The Machine:

How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy 
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
- Long title, interesting read

Computers are now demonstrating skills and abilities that used to belong exclusively to human workers. This trend will only accelerate as we move deeper into the second half of the chessboard. What are the economic implications of this phenomenon?  Authors and economists Brynjolfsson and McAfee explore this notion, along with what these changes mean for the average person.  

The root of our problems is not that we’re in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind. So it’s urgent that we understand these phenomena, discuss their implications, and come up with strategies that allow human workers to race ahead with machines instead of racing against them.

In keeping with their themes, the authors rely on crowd-sourced data and content, including the cover for the book, and have made it available only as an E-book. 

In Race Against the Machine Brynjolfsson and McAfee bring together a range of statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. The book makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because there's been technology has stagnated, but instead because humans workers aren't keeping up.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have created a powerful, concise and informative discussion of the impact of technology on employment, income distribution and macro-economics. Do not be fooled by the title-- Race Against the Machine is not a neo-luddite treatise on the evils of automation and technology. The title is more about generating discussion and attention of these issues.  It is the best recent explanation of the near-future economy we face and the role that exponentially progressing technology has on it.

This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand why we can have a recession, a jobless recovery and growing income distribution inequities all at the same time. This book does a tremendous job steering its explanation based on facts, insights from other economists and thought leaders. 

http://raceagainstthemachine.com/