Adjustably Loud and Surprisingly Free

by Andrew McAfee on January 10, 2012

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has a podcast series called “Surprisingly Free” that discusses topics with “an eclectic mix of authors, academics, and entrepreneurs at the intersection of technology, policy, and economics.” Guests have included Nick Carr,  Tyler Cowen, Kevin Kelly, Evgeny Morozov, William Powers, Clay Shirky, Danny Sullivan, Tim Wu and many others.

They’ve just posted my conversation with host Jerry Brito about the ideas we lay out in Race Against the Machine. Jerry did a great job, asking excellent questions and refusing to settle for sound bites. It was a real pleasure to talk with him, and I predict you’ll find it engaging if you give it a listen.

We cover a lot of ground, including

  • The rise in US inequality and why we should care about it.
  • The upsides and downsides of fast technological progress.
  • How education needs to change.
  • The similarities and differences between Race Against the Machine and Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation.
  • How people can race with machines instead of against them.

If you’re interested in these topics, the downloadable podcast is available here. And if you’d like to further the discussion, leave a comment or question on this post.

  • Hanksap

    Andrew…the interview was very interesting. Your point toward the end of the interview is that if Androids replace all human workers, we might reach utopia in which the mankind will be free from labor. My question is who will own all those Androids and will be willing to share goods produced by them? What if all those Androids own by Chinese companies, will they be willing to share the wealth?

  • http://andrewmcafee.org/blog Andrew McAfee

    The question of ‘sharing the wealth’ becomes really interesting if the all-purpose androids become reality (not that I expect this to happen any time soon). If people don’t have jobs it’s hard for them to pay for things, but at the same time if the androids are doing all the work prices would be extremely low.

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