In addition, as the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT have argued in their book The Second Machine Age, rapid advances in information technology may enable increasingly extensive automation. Some manufacturing activities, though few jobs, may well return to developed countries, as the advantages of proximity to customers and lower transport costs outweigh decreasingly important differences in labor costs.
另外，正如麻省理工学院经济学家埃里克·布伦乔尔森（Erik Brynjolfsson）和安德鲁·麦卡菲（Andrew McAfee）在《第二次机器时代》（The Second Machine Age）一书中所说，飞速发展的信息技术可以使自动化技术的应用日益广泛。一些生产活动，尽管只能很少的就业，很可能会回到发达国家开展，因为接近客户的优势和更低的运输成本更胜于重要性逐渐降低的劳动力成本差异。