Machine, Platform, Crowd

Harnessing Our Digital Future

By: Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

“A clear and crisply written account of machine intelligence, big data and the sharing economy. But McAfee and Brynjolfsson also wisely acknowledge the limitations of their futurology and avoid over-simplification.” - Financial Times

In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help listeners make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic Reviews

"A book for managers whose companies sit well back from the edge and who would like a digestible introduction to technology trends that may not have reached their doorstep - yet." (Wall Street Journal)

"The story is warmly and richly told.… This book is in many senses a primer, a thorough grounding for the digital warrior in the driving forces of the 21st-century economy." (Times Higher Education)

"Even Silicon Valley is surprised by the speed and scope of change today. The best way to stay on top of it is to understand the principles that will endure even as so much gets disrupted. This book is the best explanation of those principles out there." (Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and former executive chairman of Alphabet Inc.)

Both How AND Why for Techies

Being a technology professional I am sometimes frustrated by books that are not technical enough or if they are technical enough, do not consider the social aspect of technology adoption. This book does a remarkable job in dismantling the hype and buzz around these topics and replacing it with an exciting and compelling view of what is and will be soon happening. This book is the best I have read on the topic of crowd and platform and how it is changing the IT landscape. If you are a technology leader you must read this book!

1st chapter is dull, but keep reading

Any additional comments?

At the onset of this book, it seemed like it was going to be a very surface level book that jumps around citing several key business minds like Clay Christensen. This turned out to be quite wrong as I continued into the machine section. Within the section, I appreciated clarification of key concepts like supervised learning and AGI, being informed of the latest machine learning related successes and failures, and where the technology is going and what it will take to get it there. The same was true with the following chapters with the introduction of several novel concepts I have never heard before such as incomplete contracts law, polanyi's paradox, transaction cost economics, combinatorial innovation, and others, as well as more pop culture economic concepts like compliments being applied in areas I never would have thought of had I not read this book. I have not read First Machine Age so I'm not sure how this would change my feedback, but regardless I think this book is worth it as it will make you look at the emerging economy in a different way as well as training your business intuition through many recent case studies of success and failure in the 'digital economy.' Great read!

not worth it

Shallow. Adds little or nothing to the "discussion." Have you heard of Uber etc? How about bitcoin? How about the game of Go? Did you know that data / metrics /algorithms are better than people at making decision? .... you get the picture.

Tomorrow's dominant companies

What made the experience of listening to Machine, Platform, Crowd the most enjoyable?

We all intuitively know that the business world is being transformed by companies like Amazon and Google. This book shows us the characteristics of those companies that have helped them become so transformative and gives us a sense for the characteristics of companies that are going to dominate the next era of business.

Brutally basic

Unless you have never seen or studied tech history you will find this to be a dozen hours of platitudes and generalities packaged as insights. There is nothing wrong with the authors’ work, but there is almost nothing new.

Not as good as Second Machine Age;

Still worth a listen. Nice stories and perspectives, but concepts not as novel as Second Machine Age.

Good read if you're running a platform

This is a great book. It peels off all the hype and explains most of the concepts in a very clear way. I liked the crowd-chapters the most because there were sound explanations for how a crowd might behave.

Crowds do often behave quite irrationally, and might be more stubborn than you'd expect. I would recommend this book if you're in the business of running a platform or similar service (like a community website).

Recycled Material, Shallow, Outdated

The Authors probably had some material left after they wrote The Second Machine Age, so they threw it in a pot and called it a new book. It's good stuff, but if you read The Second Machine Age and other books on the topic, you'll find this one very trivial and shallow. Plus, it's outdated stuff. Repeating again how Uber does not own any cars and Airbnb does not own any hotels, and how Facebook changed how we communicate and entertain ourselves - come on! This was news in 2016. By now, everyone has heard about these companies, knows how they work.
So as the first book on the topics of sharing economy, automation, and AI - it's OK. Read it. You'll find it useful, although you really should have read something like this 3-4 years ago. If you're not entirely new to the topic, you'll find this book a seeming random collection of recycled anecdotes and trivial generalizations and insights.

Awesome book on an extremely timely topic

What did you love best about Machine, Platform, Crowd?

Keep me up to date with stories in a digital age and the economics behind them. The book is very well organized and provides systematical yet easy to understand characterization of the digital economy and its enormous potentials.

Who was your favorite character and why?

NA

Which character – as performed by Jeff Cummings – was your favorite?

NA

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

applications in biomedical industry - fantastic and surprising at the same time!

Any additional comments?

Thanks for providing audible books on those topics - it's tough for non-metro residences to get as much information systematically in an easy-to-digest way without this channel.

Superb

The book is based on a comprehensive research, narrative is succint and fluid, reader's performance is great.

Amazing

This book really paints a wonderful picture of where we are and where we are going. Discussing outdated ways of acting and thinking, and offering both sides to all points brought up. Machine, Platform, Crowd is a keenly insightful window into the effects, both current and future, of technology on a personal and macro scale.... all wrapped up in a delightful now of contagious optimism

interesting follow-up to second machine age

found it hard to concentrate on this follow-up because I thought I had heard much of it before in the second machine age. there's new material on bitcoin and the crowd but not as compelling as first time round

insightful

looked forward to listening to the book each morning on my way to work. the book nicely ties past with present and how success has been acheived in platform based applications

Very insightful

loved the book. I am maybe being a little harsh but I think it lost its way at the end. well read