Average Is Over

July 8, 2013
Economist Cowen’s muddled follow-up to The Great Stagnation, is mired in the incantation that human intuition must be sublimated to computer algorithms if we are to overcome America’s dearth of innovation—which the author blames for our shrinking economy. He glibly dismisses chronic unemployment with the statement that these “regular losers” were going to become obsolete anyway, but the good news is that, in his cheerfully libertarian laissez-faire economic model, costs will plummet as automation eliminates workers, and corporations pass the savings to consumers. What is left for human workers is a vision in which they toil in submissive tandem with machines, providing their scant human abilities to augment the superior judgment of computers. Philip K. Dick could not have crafted a more surreal vision than Cowen’s picture of a Siriesque consultant directing our choices in everything from love to medical care. Unfortunately, Cowen relies upon chapter after chapter about computerized chess (“What Games Are Teaching Us”) as support for his arguments, and neglects to provide evidence of how anyone’s life will become better, or how prosperity can emerge from this approach. Agent: Teresa Hartnett, Hartnett Agency.

Andrew Garman narrates much of this economic analysis with an alarmist tone that will make people pay attention, even worry. But he knows how to lighten up when the author has something positive or hopeful to say, and his performance overall is easy to hear and fitting for this prescient book. The author, an economist, argues that the ubiquity of computers in almost every phase of life creates a labor climate that will reward only those entrepreneurs and others who learn how to interact with them. High earners will not necessarily need to be independently smart--they just need to know how to harness the astounding number of tasks and problems that computers now handle. Everyone else, he says, will be stuck in low-wage labor or service jobs. T.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine