Uber and Airbnb. Self-driving cars. Drones that can deliver everything from shopping to Hellfire missiles. You don't have to be a Silicon Valley veteran like Martin Ford to notice that tech seems to be eating everything else these days. But even though we can all add our own favourite 21st-century examples to that list, the basic premise of The Rise of the Robots - that machines will destroy not only our jobs but also the established social order - is as old as the hills. It dates back at least 200 years, to the Luddites and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, both responses to the same basic issue - the fear of unchecked technological progress.
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