Reviewed:¹ Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2014. Hardcover, 320 pp.

“The factory of the future will only have two employees, a man, and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” —Warren G. Bennis²

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“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.” —Karl Marx³

In their new book, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee draw …

Reviewed:¹ Duncan Watts, Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer), Crown Business, New York, 2011. Paperback, 269 pp. plus bibliography, notes and index.

Lest we be paralyzed with indecision, we confidently go about our everyday lives making assumptions, reasoning from the few to the many, seeking regularity and choosing, optimistically, to interpret the outcomes of our decisions as confirmation that our haphazard approach was the best one. What's more, we do the same—and eagerly accept arguments developed in the same way—when we aim to digest current events and important societal trends.

'Twas ever thus, from childhood's …