Every so often, a new book raises a major issue that none of us can afford to ignore. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies deserves that kind of signs of the times attention. This issue of Open Space considers the ideas in the book through the lens of issues raised at recent meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and economic analyses published in The Economist. Some questions are also raised in line with the thought of Pope Francis about the technology-driven transformations that are now upon us.