Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

I thought it would be difficult for the authors to top their prior book - The 2nd Machine Age - which presented the underlying principles of the digital age. Yet, they have pulled this off. They do so by building on their prior work and exploring what they see as the three dominant themes of the oncoming digital age: machines, platforms, and crowds. It's a superb blend of computer science and economics suited for a managerial audience. By exploring the developments in computer science, especially machine learning and artificial intelligence, they predict that more and more human work will be done by machines and economics tells us that we need to invest more in machines. Likewise, the economics of platforms leads the authors to predict the rise of platforms over products because it engenders complementary investments that make the platform more useful. FInally, they argue for a focus on external innovation - the rise of "crowds" which has given rise to the sharing economy and encourages open innovation. What I especially like is that this is a thoughtful book, presenting a compelling set of arguments for how businesses should anticipate and prepare for the second phase of the 2nd machine age. Leveraging theory, analogy, and history, a reader should acquire a nuanced understanding of the digital world and its implications for all businesses, no matter the industry. It is also more directly targeted at business executives. It is a must read!

Authors McAfee and Brynjolfsson are directors of the MIT Centre for Digital Business. In a sentence, this means that you are unlikely to find better informed, accessible guides to the future of business and its key innovation driver, technology.“Over the next ten years,” they conclude, “you will have at your disposal 100 times more computer power than you do today.” Millions of people are working in jobs that create goods and services our grandparents could never have imagined. Billions of brains and trillions of devices will soon be connected to the Internet, not only able to access humanity’s collective knowledge, but also able to contribute to our knowledge.We are living in what is the most creative and disrupted period in human history – so far. This mind-bending reality is a function of the emergence of (for example,) effective artificial intelligence in areas as different from each other as health care, transportation, and retailing.There are three primary contributing forces driving our revolutionary advances: machines, platforms and crowds.Machines of the first Industrial Revolution amplified peoples’ physical strength in ways unimaginable for centuries. We could move faster and further than we could ever have imagined, do tasks that would have required armies of labourers with just a few people, and produce more goods per minute than people were previously able to produce in years.Machines of the second Industrial Revolution will do for people’s mental ability what the first Industrial Revolution did for muscle power. Whereas 100 years ago, an advert for a computer was a job-ad for a person who could compute, an advert for a computer today is for a device that can not only compute, but think faster, collate, analyse, diagnose and even create.This power is well illustrated by the success of a computer built to play the Go board game. This game is deemed to be the most complex game the world has ever seen. It is estimated that there are about 210170 (that is, 2 followed by 170 zeros) possible positions on a standard Go board. This is many times the atoms in the observable universe. Add to this, that not even the top human Go players understand how to navigate this absurd complexity, or how they make smart moves.Where there is a rule structure, we have some levers to create computers to perform outrageously complex tasks. But how do you program a computer when no human can articulate these strategies?DeepMind, a company specializing in machine learning - a branch of artificial intelligence - published a paper describing AlphaGo, a Go-playing application that had found a way of dealing with the paradox of people not knowing how or what they know. The system is designed to learn the unknowable on its own, and how to use the learning. It does this by studying millions of positions to create only those moves it thought most likely to lead to victory.In 2015 AlphaGo won a five-game match against the European Go champion 5–0. In 2016 AlphaGo beat the best human Go player on the planet 4–1.This astounding ability can now be applied to complex medical problems way beyond what even a group of the finest medical minds could solve, and then make this available to millions of practitioners. And, of course, this process can be applied to many more ‘impossible’ problems.The second contributing force driving our revolutionary advances is ‘platforms.’Consider that Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the world’s most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.The idea of platforms is not a new one. A shopping mall is a platform that allows for the aggregation of the shopping experience. It enables sellers to interface with customers by providing a user-friendly platform that enables getting to the shops through parking facilities, and staying there longer by including food outlets.The difference today is that the platforms no longer need to be physical: they are also digital. Unbound by physical assets and infrastructure, digital platforms can grow scarily fast. Airbnb doubled the number of nights booked through the site in twelve months. Apple, through its iPhone and iPad, created a digital platform, and grew into one of the largest companies on the planet in less than a decade!It is precisely because these and so many other platforms are such “indescribably thin layers”, that they can have such an impact.Through the extraordinary power of our new machines, and the explosive multiplier effect of platforms, we can benefit from the third contributing force driving our revolutionary advances – crowds.Humanity has for a long time aggregated knowledge (for example) through collections of wisdom in book form in libraries. The authors call this aggregation ‘core’ to distinguish it from the ‘crowd’. The difference is not size: the Library of Congress in Washington holds 30 million of the worlds estimated 130 million books. The Internet provides a similar aggregation service only in a spectacularly more varied form – text, video, music, contributed by large, varied crowds of people. Billions of them.This ability to aggregate can be used for evil such as propagating hate or crime. But it can also be used for good, as is evident from its ‘crowd-funding’ potential, as an example.Indiegogo is an online ‘crowd-funding’ community which showcases a wide variety of creative and entrepreneurial ideas. Contributors can ‘back’ a film they think has potential, and for their contribution they could be invited to an early screening, or if they supported a product, they could be among the first to receive it.They are in effect ‘buying’ a product that doesn’t exist yet. This is the real value: they are backing a venture that might never exist without their votes of confidence. And they are providing the most powerful and desperately sought, reliable market intelligence, as well as a non-traditional marketing method.The three factors, machines, platforms and crowds, illustrate three great trends that are reshaping the business world.Technological progress will test a firm’s ability to survive, and survival is shortening. In 1960, S&P 500 companies used to last 60 years, now they last less than 20. This book is a guide for business people on how to navigate ‘destruction’ successfully.The real question is not what technology will do to us, but how can we use this tool called technology. Tools don’t decide what happens to people – people do. Technology only creates options; success depends on how people take advantage of these.And here is why you should read this book: Understanding the implications of these developments for your own business can make the difference between thriving or merely surviving. If you read only one book this year, I recommend this one. You will need to work this book, but the benefit will far outweigh the effort.Readability Light ----+ SeriousInsights High +---- LowPractical High -+--- Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy, and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.

This is an amazing book. It came highly recommended by Tom Keene at Bloomberg Surveillance. So I bought it and read it and I learned so much about our ever-changing world that I did not know. It is packed with helpful, useful and vital information about the changes in our world, going on all around us, that will affect the future: jobs, markets, consciousness, all of it. This is the Technological Renaissance that is equal to or vastly superior to the Renaissance in the Middle Ages where the world woke up to what is possible. We are gifted, and challenged, to be alive in this Age, and we can make the most of our opportunities, with the help of his book. I recommend it to everyone who wants to better understand the monumental and shattering changes taking place all around us, gathering speed, and having more and more impact, over time. It has opened my eyes, and served me well. I am still digesting it.

Excelente!

Well written, intelligently written, well researched. It required that I look up a lot of tech terms and other words and names but that was to be expected as it really brought me up to speed in this fairly specialized field of technology. This book has been important and foundational in my self guided of the tech of machine learning and the range of possibilities open to one in the current high tech realm.

Con el objeto de entender a cabalidad las manifestaciones de nuestra era y las interacciones que se dan entre las máquinas y el hombre, este etxto es de gran utilidad. Aporta una gran cantidad de información actualizada y un enfoque holístico. Los autores son de primera calidad.

I needed this book rather quickly. It is true that the book is a basic paperback, but it serves its purpose. Even though it was a new edition on pre-order, it was delivered way ahead of the promised date just a few days after printing. Thank you.

La primera parte de esta serie aporta una idea interesante y práctica sobre la velocidad y profundidad de los cambios tecnológicos y cómo afectarán a nuestras vidas. Este segundo libro estructura muy bien los efectos de la red y los nuevos avances en el futuro del trabajo. La conclusión es muy positiva a diferencia de otros libros que solamente ven nubes en el futuro del mercado laboral. Incluye en cada capítulo una serie de preguntas que invitan al lector a pensar sobre los efectos sobre tu propia empresa