I’m currently reading the Jaron Lanier book Who Owns the Future.  It paints a dismal picture of the digital economy destroying livelihoods en masse, and in the process destroying the middle class.  In his future, he sees wealth inequality booming, as network owners capitalise on the increasing amount of information and data we supply to them for free.

There’s a clip of him talking about the ideas behind the book at the end of this post.  Before that however is another talk, this time by Andrew McAfee at TED.  He talks about whether society needs to implement things such as a minimum wage in order to manage the changes technology will invoke upon society, but also on the changing requirements for educating our young and dealing with the inequalities that exist now and are likely to exist even more in the future.

Andrew McAfee discussing the future of jobs at TED

Jaron Lanier talking about Who Owns the Future