Staying the same is surest prescription for falling behind. Nations that didn’t enter the Industrial Age largely did not turn out well and still are playing catch-up. (To be fair, they also didn’t contribute to environmental devastation like the rest of us.) The countries that master the Digital Age will ensure themselves of wealth in the aggregate, though disparity may continue, technological unemployment and wage suppression might accelerate. At the far end of the dream is a better world, but how do we get there?

In his 1964 “Automation Song,” Phil Ochs, a singing journalist of sorts, greeted the roboticized future with alarm. At first blush, he seems to be communicating nostalgia for the past, but he’s also subtly calling for political solutions for tomorrow.