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  • Published: 19 February 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241244616
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $55.00

The Machine Age

An Idea, a History, a Warning




A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity's relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next

We live in a world made by machines; their development set its beat. This book tells the story of our relationship with machines from humanity's first tools down to the present and into the future. It charts the causes and courses of technological progress across epochs, revealing its impedances and accelerants, its interactions with capital and ascent to the first principle of the modern era.

Tracing the promise of machines to liberate us from work and want and the accompanies threat of redundancy and subjection from ancient times to our own, Robert Skidelsky demonstrates how our creations not only reflect our ideas and ideals but also remake them. Taking in the peaks of philosophy and triumphs of science, the foundation of economics and speculations of fiction, he undertakes a fascinating intellectual journey through the evolution of our understanding of technology, and what this means for our lives and politics. It is an account that offers an escape from many assumptions about the potential and perils of machine learning and the technologies shaping the world now - and from the risks they pose to the future.

  • Published: 19 February 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241244616
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $55.00

About the author

Robert Skidelsky

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Ecomony at Warwick University. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983,1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. He is the author of The World after Communism (1995) and Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009). He was made a life peer in 1991, is a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.

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Praise for The Machine Age

Praise for Robert Skidelsky

Arresting insights, written – despite its complex and heavyweight subject matter – with a captivating lightness of touch

Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times

A truly innovative and radical perspective … thought-stirring and extremely refreshing

John Gray, Guardian

Crisp and pungent … deeply provocative and intellectually suggestive

Rowan Williams, Prospect

Skidelsky is a major figure in the revival of Keynesian thought

Martin Wolf, Financial Times
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