The Age of Perplexity

Reviewed by Diario de un Inversor · UpdatedJune 13, 2026

Our review

Published in 2017 under the BBVA OpenMind imprint, this collective work brings together world-class thinkers — including economists, philosophers, scientists, and technologists — to reflect on the great challenges of the twenty-first century: artificial intelligence, inequality, climate change, the transformation of work, and the crisis of liberal democracy. The title captures the spirit of the book well: rather than offering answers, it diagnoses an era of uncertainty in which the categories of the past are no longer sufficient to explain the present. The book's strength is its breadth of vision and the quality of its contributors; its weakness is the inevitable heterogeneity of a collective project where depth varies by chapter. For readers interested in finance and investment, the chapters on the future of work, automation, and economic inequality are the most directly relevant. The rest has more value as an exercise in systemic thinking than as financial analysis. It is a book best read with the disposition of someone seeking intelligent questions rather than definitive answers.

Key takeaways

• Automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping the labour market more rapidly than any previous industrial revolution.
• Growing economic inequality is one of the most significant systemic risks to twenty-first-century social and political stability.
• Collective perplexity in the face of technological change is itself a relevant datum for understanding economic decision-making.
• The book illustrates the need for interdisciplinary frameworks to analyse economic phenomena that exceed purely financial analysis.

Fact

The work was published in 2017 and is available in open access through the BBVA OpenMind platform, where it has accumulated tens of thousands of downloads.