The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson
Published 2014 · 76,090 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Second Machine Age to read?
The Second Machine Age scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
- Economics and technology vocabulary; largely accessible.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Economic abstractions grounded in specific data and examples.
- Information density: 68 out of 100
- Dense with research citations, statistics, and case studies.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Clear thesis stated early and developed through evidence.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Machine age as central metaphor; otherwise literal.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest policy-oriented register throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Policy recommendations offered explicitly.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Three-part structure; argument builds linearly.
How The Second Machine Age is regarded
The Second Machine Age holds a literary regard score of 53 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.