A well-researched and surprisingly poignant commentary on the dangers of technology.
Welser urges readers to reconsider their relationship with technology in this debut nonfiction work.
Per the author, humans have always been drawn to the psychological power of stories—the cave art at Sulawesi tells the tale of a Paleolithic hunting party from 45,000 years ago. Stories, at their core, reflect humanity’s ubiquitous desire for meaning. Yet, writes scholar and entrepreneur Welser, in an era of doomscrolling, AI-generated content for social media consumption, and influencers who peddle highly edited versions of their “real” lives, authentic stories are hard to find. Reflecting on a potential future economy in which, in the words of Bill Gates, “Humans won’t be needed for most things,” the author posits a novel, alternative economic model that allows individuals to break the manipulative tactics of “Big Tech” and restore their mental and physical well-being by leveraging their personal, authentic stories as “currency” in a “story-based marketplace.” While Welser’s promise to “rearrange capitalism” may be overly ambitious, the author offers convincing and harrowing social commentary on the destructive power of modern technology. (He compares smartphones to a “drug in [his] pocket, dependent on stimulation”). Among the many psychologically damaging aspects of technology covered in the book are Phantom Vibration Syndrome (a condition in which heavy phone users remain in a heightened state of alertness in anticipation of the next notification on their device) and the dopamine hits that become a daily part of an “internet junkie’s” daily routine. The author offers here a research-backed guidebook to freeing oneself from technology’s deprivations. As the former director of the Engineering and Applied Sciences Department at the RAND Corporation and the current CEO of Lotic.ai, Welser is far from a Luddite, and his insider’s perspective amplifies his dire warnings about unregulated Big Tech. The book’s engaging graphs and other visual aids accompany accessible text.
A well-researched and surprisingly poignant commentary on the dangers of technology.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9798895150801
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Radius Book Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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