This week’s book review is The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson.
The authors take us through a great history of social development and chart the relentless and accelerating progress of technology. They do a great job of explaining how technology has impacted society, is impacting society, and will impact society moving forward. Besides the technology itself, they cover the impact that the second machine age will have on politics, economics, social upheaval, income inequity, and more.
My takeaway from this book is that our future will be very different that our current world and that the rate of change is accelerating. The best way for us and our businesses to stay ahead of this change is to:
- Continuously learn and apply what is learned
- Ask intelligent questions
- Be curious and creative – cultivate your ideation skills
- Continuously improve your communication skills
- Be flexible, adaptable and “aggressively” agile
- Always look for ways to differentiate yourself and your business by leveraging technology or other tools. What works today is outdated tomorrow. This must be an ongoing effort.
Note that I have previously reviewed the following books in 2018:
- Tim O’Reilly’s Whats the Future and Why Its Up to Us
- Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art
- Timothy Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentors
- Richard P. Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!
- Bernadette Jiwa’s Hunch
- Scott Galloway’s The Four
- William Mougayar’s The Business Blockchain
- Fredrik Haren’s The Idea Book
- David Burkus’ Friend of a Friend
- Stay on Top of Your Work podcast episode #15
- Blue Ocean Shift by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
- Ideas and Stuff Podcast episode #50
- Tom Peter’s The Excellence Dividend
- Travis Christofferson’s Tripping Over the Truth
- Michael Zipursky’s The Elite Consulting Mind
- Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First
- Vanessa Van Edwards’ Captivate
- Seth Godin’s Linchpin
- Pat Flynn’s Will it Fly?
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