Summary
Review of Douglas Rushkoff’s assessment of IT in the economy in his book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.”
Review of Steven Hill’s assessment of IT in the economy in his book “Raw Deal.”
Henderson analyzes the good and bad news from IT innovation as applies to investment managers.
Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus: How Growth Became The Enemy Of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff, Portfolio Penguin, New York, 2016.
Raw Deal: How The “Uber Economy” And Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing Workers by Steven Hill, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2015.
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and Raw Deal summarize the good and bad news and the backlash brewing against Silicon Valley’s approach to IT innovation. Authors Douglas Rushkoff and Steven Hill level well-researched critiques of Uber, Airbnb, Task Rabbit, Mechanical Turk and similar electronic platforms promoting as the “sharing economy”. Such applications of IT do increase narrowly defined economic efficiency. As digitization overtakes ever more sectors of industrial societies, there are too few broad analyses of the nature of these disruptive technologies, whom they benefit, and how they are restructuring every aspect of our lives.