Embrace your inner bot

The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT, predicts that the future of knowledge work would be largely owned by computers. 

According to the authors, computers would be able to perform increasingly complex parts of cognitive jobs like diagnosing diseasing, picking stocks and granting parole.

Is this something we should worry about?

NYTimes columnist, David Brooks says, we should worry about the future computer displacing the "average" skill-holder, whom he describe in terms of the "middle distance runner." A "middle distance runner" is the worker who regurgitates yesterday's news in language that's comprehensive and length that's graspable, but does nothing more.

However, it's the "creative" sort whom the smart computer will not be able to displace unless the smart computer develops emotive traits and a "heart". Brooks describes the new age creativity brilliantly:

Creativity can be described as the ability to grasp the essence of one thing, and then the essence of some very different thing, and smash them together to create some entirely new thing.

Thomas Friedman has some acute observations on the book here, and the authors' interview is here.