Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans

This book is scattered. The author doesn’t build on a single case, but shotguns all sorts of things at the reader.

Additionally, it gets very confused with the author’s desire to discuss workers rights and working conditions. There’s a weird segue in the middle to discuss the Cold War, which – for the life of me – I couldn’t relate back to anything else. And the author makes several comments which indicate he’s pushing a political agenda against capital and for worker’s rights.

In the end, I don’t think he made the case he set forth in the title. He didn’t prove that we’re becoming dumber, he just suggested that automation might be making for worse working conditions and more degrading work. His problem seems to be that humans are not at the behest of the machines, and this is degrading and hurts morale.