At the very least this should make us curious about privacy, democratic control and the quasi-monopoly power exercised by the new giants of the internet age. As Brynjolfsson and McAfee note, the tech industry also seems to be extremely good at creating a relatively small number of superstars, a digital 1 per cent that floats much further above the rest of the population than even financiers do. History suggests that such elites, understandably, gravitate to exerting influence in politics. Sometimes this is in order to do good and sometimes it is because they want to protect their interests.

What can we do about it? Are there any solutions or are we condemned to sit mute, satiated by the pleasures of the internet, while a technological storm remakes our economy?

Any attempt by government centrally to direct the next phase of the technological revolution is obviously doomed to fail. Any state-run commission would find that by the time it published its report the technology would have developed in some unforeseen way that made its recommendations out of date.

The authors of The Second Machine Age suggest other ways in which we might get ready. Education should emphasise ideas and creativity. Computers are "machines for generating answers, not posing interesting new questions. That ability still seems to be uniquely human, and still highly valuable." Western students are going to have to study harder to acquire "the tools to help you stand out" from the machines, they say. And encouraging the growth of entrepreneurship is vital, so that more workers become prepared to establish their own businesses, or have several jobs, rather than being steamrollered by automation in large existing companies that may offer hardly any jobs, never mind one for life.

In the UK there are some signs of a shift, with self-employment on the rise, although the tax system is still one built in the 1980s for an economy with a different structure. This is a reminder that countries that hope to prosper will need bold tax reform, as capital and high-end labour become ever more mobile and the rest of the population is subjected to increased volatility and insecurity. The recent suggestion — quickly denied — that the Tories are flirting again with the idea of a flat tax was encouraging, although creating a system that offered lower and simpler taxation would be a start.

In such an era, the state and our expectations of it will also have to change. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist addressed this in their recent book, The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State (Allen Lane, £20), in which they called for a redesign of the government to make it more agile and cost-effective.

It is certainly possible to envisage a conservative remodelling of the state in which technology and smart management means that fewer workers are involved, reducing costs and enabling those previously on the government payroll to generate fresh wealth. However, I suggest the state and the institutions of civic society will in other respects need to be strengthened to deal with the consequences of the Second Machine Age. Democratic assemblies will need to become vigilant protectors of human rights, not in the sense the term is used now, but as defenders of the rights of human society against potential incursions by machines and to guard against the excesses of the elite that owns the machines and software underpinning the technology.