"Americans, like peoples across the world, must understand what is at stake in this time of change. This book will speak about new technologies, about virtual reality, about digital destinies, about the automation of everything, and about the moment, not far from now, when all the trends of the future that is now give way to what comes next. Some things we know will occur. Tens of millions of Americans who have the education, the training, and the ethic to do what we thought would be the work of a modern age will no longer be able to find that work. They will, as economist James Galbraith explains, be 'not only unemployed but also obsolete.' Some of the disrupted and the discarded have felt obsolete for years, as they have slipped down the economic ladder from the assembly line to the warehouse to the convenience-store counter to the fast-food prep station. But their experience is being generalized. We will begin to recognize that what comes after the acceleration of automation that is only now beginning will not be some new way of working, some new industry, some new sector of the economy. The 'genius' of the digital revolution — with all of its apps and smart technologies and advances in automation, with all of its blurring of lines between humans and machines, with all of its progress — is its exceptional efficiency. The changes that define the future that is now have nothing to do with job creation. Why would they? They are being developed and implemented by behemoth corporations that seek to maximize profits, not employment.

"Despite what five justices on the United States Supreme Court might imagine, corporations are not people. Corporations do not fret about the fact that millions of American workers have already been displaced, and that millions more will be displaced. They celebrate that fact. If a multinational corporation makes its product or delivers its service without having to pay as many human beings, all the better. That's why the value of the corporation's stock rises when it shutters factories and lays off workers. And if a big corporation can become huge by eliminating an industry, even wiping out a whole sector of the economy, then it is heralded as visionary and truly modern. And if that's a problem for the great mass of Americans who need work to sustain themselves and their families, it's a problem that will work itself out, eventually, thanks to the magic of the profit system. But the evidence is now in: technology writer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford is right when he notes that 'there isn't another big sector of the economy to absorb all these workers.' "