Changes in the fundamental relationship between humanity and technology drove Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee to write “The Second Machine Age.” In their book, the two MIT Sloan School of Business professors addressed recent economic trends that have seen median income fall as the overall economy grows. “It’s no coincidence,” said McAfee, that this phenomenon coincides with the computer age.

In the past, technology simultaneously destroyed and created jobs. “People didn’t become unemployed,” said Brynjolfsson, “because they were redeployed.” But now, as worker productivity improves, average income remains stagnant. Brynjolfsson and McAfee seek to understand how technology is different in this technological revolution.

“Objects in the future are closer than they appear”

In the second machine age, the authors suggested, there are extensive opportunities for folks to succeed. “It’s never been easier to become a superstar,” said Brynjolfsson. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are free platforms from which aspiring “superstars” can broadcast their message worldwide.

But more importantly, Brynjolfsson pointed out that superstardom isn’t the only lucrative path in the digital economy. He said machines lack “personal skills.” He continued, stating that machines are not good at “nurturing people, caring for people,” and so the abilities to “negotiate, to be empathetic” remain valuable.

That said, McAfee pointed out that machines are making gains in intuitive areas. He cited Watson’s ability to craft recipes and new computers that recognize human emotion, compose music, and create compelling paintings. The fact is, emphasized Brynjolfsson, there are three types of jobs: those that race agains machines, those that work with machines, and those that have not yet been affected by machines.

It’s man and machine, not man v.s. machine

When working with machines, one of the most important skills is “being able to work with large amounts of data in the virtual environment,” said McAfee. Data scientist-like roles aren’t going anywhere, while in stark contrast, positions like the standard payroll clerk are rapidly disappearing.

At the same time, McAfee predicts jobs like “middle school football coach” will “be around for a long time.” In fact, Brynjolfsson was a middle school football coach. In that role, Brynjolfsson said that he incorporated technology into helping his payers. In that same vein, he believes “the biggest opportunity is how humans and machines can work together to active things that have never been done before.”

In particular, the authors called out medicine as a field with tremendous opportunities to combine human interpersonal skills and machine capabilities. While there’s no way a human doctor could match a machine it its ability to learn — and therefore diagnose — quickly, Brynjolfsson called out that “there’s no amount of time that it would take Watson to learn empathy.”

Successful tech combines innovations into a new whole

One of the most profound ways folks are innovating in the second machine age, said MacAffee, is combining technologies. Wayze is a prime example of this breed of innovation. Wayze creators didn’t invent the technologies their app uses, but they did pull them together to create a popular application with value that increases as its network expands.

Brynjolfsson was quick to proclaim that Wayze is also an excellent example of the new wave of economics that accompany the second machine age. Wayze is free, “but that doesn’t mean it has zero value,” he said. Current metrics “don’t capture the essence of the digital economy,” he continued.

Face-to-Face communication remains essential

In a rapidly changing economic and technological landscape, McAfee and Brynjolfsson acknowledged that sometimes, there’s no substation for face to face conversation. The distributed workforce is a compelling phenomenon, but McAfee doesn’t believe it will mean that “cities will depopulate” and people won’t be driven away from personal interaction.

Citing real estate values, Brynjolfsson said that there’s compelling evidence that being close to colleagues is a major factor in people’s housing decisions. Even when collaborating on their book, McAfee and Brynjolfsson found it most productive to write the “old school” way, meaning “in the same room, with a white board,” according to McAfee.

Changing the conversation is just the first step

McAfee said their main goal for “The Second Machine Age” is to encourage “willingness to engage with these ideas.” McAfee said he recognizes that “changing the conversation has to be a bottom-up phenomenon.”

In the United States its essential to “get people to recognize the big changes going on here,” said Brynjolfsson, because the leaders are actually followers of public opinion. Until there is a grassroots awareness that changes need to happen, policy makers aren’t likely to act. Brynjolfsson cited hallmarks of social progress, like “mass public education,” “social security,” and “marriage equality,” as comparable efforts that began with public opinion before becoming political reality.

Watch the full segment below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of MIT IDE 2015.