without solid skills of your own, it is only a few short steps from being supported by the machine, to finding yourself dependent on it, or subject to it.

“Thirty per cent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child,” Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, told me — referring to the proportion of people in the US who scored level 1 or below in literacy. “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has diff... See more