Rise of the Robots
Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford · first published 1708
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Examines the effects of accelerating technology on the economic system. "In Silicon Valley the phrase "disruptive technology" is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: Can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may only need a handful of employees to achieve enormous valuations, but what will be the fate of those of us
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1. Race Against the Machine by Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2. The Second Machine Age by Brynjolfsson and McAfee 3. The Lights in the Tunnel by Martin Ford 4. Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford 5. Average is Over by Tyler Cowen -specifically, the parts about labor market bifurcation and man-machine pairs Brynjolfsson and McAfee are MIT economists. Top notch. Cowen is also…
on “Ask HN: Any good books on the economic impact of automation?” ↗> Myst's legacy is that if something is pretty, people will buy it, play it, talk about it until the newest pretty thing comes out, then forget about it. Myst - 1993 Rise of the Robots - 1994 People not aware of RotR should do some googling. The pre-release hype was impressive. The game was shiny and looked nice. It was appalling to play. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_robots)…
on “Looking back on the game 'Myst' on its 20th anniversary” ↗And what happened to the Rise of the Robots[1]? And Frey and Osborne[2], and Daniel Susskind[3], and all the others like them? Weren't assembly and logistics workers all supposed to be obsolete by now? 1. Earliest iterations before 2012! https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Robots-Technology-Threat-Jobless...…
on “Factory jobs are booming like it’s the 1970s” ↗…minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or none." This is a bit recent though, but still helpful for a modern big picture perspective. Rise of the Robots By Martin Ford https://shepherd.com/book/rise-of-the-robots This one I haven't read yet, but I've heard it tries to look historically as it looks at this concept. And then of course, you have the historic…
on “Ask HN: Any insightful historical books on the impact of automation?” ↗Many in SV find it hard to grapple with traditional startups not penetrating health care to a greater degree; in Rise of the Robots (one of the Financial Times and The Economist books of the year) it's lamented for an entire chapter. Traditionally the level of fundamental research and development displayed by Theranos - in areas…
on “At Theranos, Many Strategies and Snags” ↗Compare Desert Bus (which does what it sets out to do) with Rise of the Robots which received considerable hype but was "quite disappointing".
on “Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game” ↗> It's easy to forget about the bad games. I will never forget RISE OF THE ROBOTS.
on “I'm Leaving Mojang” ↗It's interesting, though, to see rise of the robots talk breach tech circles and enter into mainstream economic and political discussions. Between the arrival of imagenet in 2011 and now the drums have been steadily getting louder. In 2013 an oft-cited…
on “Autopilot Full Self-Driving Demonstration [video]” ↗I read a book "Rise of the Robots" and after some chapters I checked the last page almost expecting to read something like "By the way, this book was writen by a machine...". But no, no such luck :-P
on “AlphaGo's next move” ↗