A remarkably frank, comprehensive assessment of 21st-century life is only the staging area for one of the richest, wildly imaginative rocket ship rides into the future of humanity.
The first two-thirds of Darwin’s book are dedicated to carefully cataloguing the greed, selfishness and myopia currently afflicting humankind today, and readers might ask, “So when does the ominous prognostication that the title suggests kick in?” Well, hang on, because when it does, it’s enough the blow off the top of even the most ardent futurist’s head. Here is a fantastic world of tomorrow filled with new races of virtual immortals poised to test the very boundaries of space and time. More incredible, however, than the artificial post-humans, organic post-humans, robots and still-normal humans predicted to one day inhabit the planet is the sheer plausibility of it all. Matching the same sober, meticulous narrative demonstrated earlier in the book, the author (in the guise of an extraterrestrial intelligence) coolly extrapolates what impact genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics might have on the future of humankind. The result is an uncanny universe as astounding as any modern-day comic book creator or ancient myth-maker might imagine. Rooted in present realities, the future of humankind as envisioned here is a fantastically variable and pliable thing. While some might one day opt for a Matrix-like existence exploring virtual worlds via online avatars, others might evolve into super-beings with the ability to draw sustenance from the sun and morph into their environment. It’s a mind-boggling thought experiment with profound, far-reaching implications. Much, of course, is controversial and predicated upon the assumption that human beings will really want to live forever given the opportunity. But there are other things to ponder: When is a robot alive? At what point are you something other than human? How will organic post-humans and artificial post-humans interact? Someday, according to the author, these are the kinds of questions a profoundly changed humanity will have to face.
Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463769079
Page Count: 148
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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