A clearly written account of a widespread social malady that is sure to gain further attention in coming years.
How interactive technologies facilitate newly debilitating addictions.
Alter (Marketing/NYU Stern School of Business; Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave, 2013) applies psychological insight and business acumen to his argument that compulsive usage of smartphones and social media is not peripheral but rather central to their engineering and lucrative, seductive qualities. “The environment and circumstance of the digital age are far more conducive to addiction than anything humans have experienced in our history,” he writes. Although he speaks to game designers and other innovators, he focuses on the tangled psychology behind “behavioral addiction” and nascent efforts to treat it—despite a lack of consensus on whether or how to do so. Alter first explores how behavioral addiction resembles substance abuse, although it is more widespread and thus often free of moral opprobrium. This amplifies its risk to professionals, who underestimate their time spent engrossed by a constantly expanding menu of technologies. Video games have ensnared a wide demographic, as well. Consider the immersive appeal of World of Warcraft, and even simplistic games like Farmville captivated the unsuspecting, due to having “a new [gaming] rhythm that fits into…people’s lives.” Similar patterns can be seen in the rise of “smartwatches” and ubiquitous email: “The same technology that [now] drives people to over-exercise also binds them to the workplace twenty-four hours a day.” The exhibitionistic nature of social-network apps enables a similarly insidious hidden hold on users, which Alter connects to Mark Zuckerberg’s insight that “people are endlessly driven to compare themselves to other people.” While such behavior might seem acceptable in adults, the author is alarmed by evidence that “screen time” is warping the mental and emotional development of younger generations. He bolsters such points with sociology and marketing studies, although more focus on the fast-changing technology industry itself would have firmed up his discussion.
A clearly written account of a widespread social malady that is sure to gain further attention in coming years.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59420-664-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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