It is not surprising that nearly forty years later, a Brookings Institution report laments that millions of US workers are “shut out of decent middle-skill opportunities” in the face of “rapid digitalization.” The report exhorts companies to “invest urgently in IT upskilling strategies for incumbent workers, knowing that digital skills represent a key channel of productivity gains.” How different might our society be if US businesses had chosen to invest in people as well as in machines?

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 571