TED Blog 5

Erik Brynjolfsson describes the key to economic growth through his idea to utilize technology rather than struggle to compete with it in his TED talk, “Race With the Machines.”  He begins with using the industrial revolution as an example, describing the introduction of electricity and comparing its productivity rates.  Although they had incorporated new technology, their productivity remained at a similar rate because they had not updated the factories to take advantage of the benefits of the new technology.  General purpose technology is meant to drive economic growth by encouraging innovation to produce spin offs of it to make it better.  A modern example for this current age is the computer.  People believe that innovation is slowing to a stop because of the illusion caused when jobs and productivity disassociate from each other.  Brynjolfsson calls this, instead, the New Machine Age.  It is an age in which knowledge and creativity and ideas are more valuable than physical production.  The digital quality of the New Machine Age makes information easily attainable and easily replicable.   Innovation in technological aspects have become exponential instead of linear.  Combinatorial innovation creates opportunities for new innovations through others.  With all the technology being created or improved, so many people are being left behind to lose the race against the machine.  Jobs are being taken by programs leaving less for working-people.  Brynjolfsson argues that instead of trying to be better, we have to cooperate with the machine.  He says that together, humans and technology are better together and are unstoppable against eachother idividually.

In, “Race With the Machines,” a TED talk by Erik Brynjolfsson, the idea that technology and people have to cooperate in order to form a more advanced society with healthy economic growth is discussed.  In his speech he used stories to prove his points and convey meaning on a deeper level than facts can deliver.  He uses constant hand motion but it is not distracting enough to take away the audience’s attention from what he is speaking about.  In his speaking he does not use as much humor as others have but his topic is interesting enough that makes that humor unnecessary.  Similarly to Dan Pink’s book A Whole New Mind,  Brynjolfsson talks about jobs being turned over to automation instead of people because of cheapness and accurate quality.  They also both hit the topic of abundance.  Pink writes about how this world is a world of abundance and society as a whole doesn’t have to worry about running out of food or clothes or people.  Brynjolfsson connects abundance to the economy and as an effect of digitalization in current technology.  He closes in challenging his audience to find ways to incorporate technology into the audience’s lives in a way that increases the advantages and that we find a way to race with the machines, not against them.