An informed look at the social impact of the Internet.
Digital-age guru Shirky (Interactive Telecommunications/New York Univ.; Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, 2008, etc.) argues that new technology is making it possible for people to collaborate in ways that have the potential to change society.
By “cognitive surplus,” the author refers to the free time of the world's educated citizenry, which amounts to more than one trillion hours per year. In recent decades, the author writes, most people have devoted much of that time-20 hours per week-to watching television. But that is changing. Young people are now spending less time as passive TV viewers, or consumers, and more time using fast, interactive media as producers and sharers in pursuit of their favorite activities. Their behavior demonstrates that in a wired society it is possible to turn free time into a shared global resource that can be harnessed to connect individuals to achieve beneficial outcomes. Examples include such innovations as Wikipedia, the online free-content encyclopedia; PickupPal.com, a global rideshare community; and Ushahidi.com, which was created to gather citizen-generated reports on acts of violence in Kenya. In this well-written and highly speculative book, Shirky suggests that in these ways new media has enormous potential to transform our lives. No longer an abstraction called “cyberspace,” social-media tools are now part of daily life, he writes. As society's connective tissue, they are flexible, cheap and inclusive, and allow people to behave in increasingly generous and social ways. The author discusses the many factors that have given rise to social media and suggests the conditions that will best allow voluntary groups to take advantage of the world's aggregate free time to benefit society. “If we want to create new forms of civic value,” he writes, “we need to improve the ability of small groups to try radical things.” Shirky may be overly optimistic about the possible benefits of social media, but he makes clear their growing global importance.
An informed look at the social impact of the Internet.Pub Date: June 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59420-253-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A panoramic view of life on earth from a Nobel laureate in physiology and Rockefeller University professor emeritus. Key words in this 4-billion-year chronology are ``complementarity,'' ``spontaneity,'' and ``congruence.'' De Duve (A Guided Tour of the Living Cell, not reviewed) is no miracle monger regarding the development of life. Basic physio-chemical forces permitted the spontaneous coming together of primordial molecules: They fit by means of complementary parts—the key-and- lock principle that would play out in the double helix, antigen- antibody reactions and the cell-cell communication characteristic of multicellular organisms. All this prebiotic sorting and shifting led to what de Duve calls ``protometabolism,'' which would be fully congruent to the chemical processes essential to life. Fully half this text is taken up with the most ancestral forms: protocells and bacteria, the latter splitting into the heat-loving forms found in subterranean thermal vents and the ``eubacteria'' that, de Duve hypothesizes, emerged to conquer the world when climate changed and, through a mutation, were able to adapt to a cooler world. Other crises would follow: Photosynthesis would enrich the atmosphere with toxic oxygen. Finally cells with nuclei emerged, coming together into complex differentiated life forms. So the story unfolds with crisis followed by opportunities down to the present, when human life predominates. Not the be-all and end-all, de Duve affirms—and particularly not at the rate we are disturbing the environment. Indeed, much of the latter part of the book is taken up with issues and schools of thought: mind-body dualism, the Gaia hypothesis, existentialist ``absurd'' philosophy versus Teilhard de Chardin's teleology. De Duve himself opts for a ``meaningful universe''; he believes that life is ``bound to arise under the prevailing conditions'' and exists elsewhere in the universe. This is a heady book with much conjecture and rumination. Withal, the reader cannot help but share de Duve's sense of joy and wonder at the chance and necessity that have created life on earth.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-09044-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
+ A journalist's revealing overview of the construction, engineering, and financial, political, and technical resources required to build the railway tunnel that now connects the sceptered isle of England with continental Europe by way of France. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including interviews with principals who got the immensely expensive job done, Newsday correspondent Fetherston provides a start-to-finish account of the so-called Chunnel project, which opens with a brief review of the false starts and alternative proposals that had been made over the years. He goes on to recount how Margaret Thatcher and Franáois Mitterand created a binational commission to study the possibility of an underwater link. Despite the Tory prime minister's insistence that no government money be spent, spirited opposition from ferry interests, the stock market crash of 1987, and other obstacles, the enterprise gained sufficient momentum and funding (from lenders in two dozen countries) for work to begin. Owing to a notably hostile operating environment as well as marked differences in national construction practices and standards, the Anglo-French contracting consortium experienced ongoing difficulties. In the fall of 1990, however, British and French excavators achieved a significant breakthrough, meeting at a midpoint beneath the English Channel. Now in service, the Chunnel encompasses three continuous tubes (each more than 49 kilometers in length) from Folkestone to Coquelles, plus dozens of cross-passages and chambers whose uses range from equipment storage through train switching. Despite signs of popularity with shippers and tourists, the spectacular submarine facility has yet to prove economic; plagued by past cost overruns and a staggering debt burden, in fact, the Chunnel remains years- -perhaps decades—from break-even. A tellingly detailed rundown on a remarkable undertaking that could prove either an eighth wonder of the modern world or one of commercial/industrial history's great white elephants. (69 illustrations)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8129-2198-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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