A well-intended and insightful but messy treatise.
Quirky but sprawling indictment of our Internet-dominated society.
Lanier, an iconoclastic speaker, columnist, computer scientist, musician and innovator of virtual-reality experiments in the 1980s, skewers the degeneration of the modern digital world. The author convincingly argues that changes in digital and software design affect human behavior, just as small changes in virtual-reality simulations modify the player's experience. One of the problems with the modern Internet culture, he writes, is that people get locked in, or confined, in their responses by the software they use, and hence lose their sense of individuality. They must conform to pre-defined categories in Facebook, and get automatically directed by Google search engines to Wikipedia entries that are bland and uninspiring. Lanier is particularly incensed by the “hive mind” mentality, which posits that group-think articles in Wikipedia are better than a creative, inspired article by someone who is a true expert on the subject. The flat structure of the Internet not only results in mediocre content, but allows for trolls, or anonymous users, who use their anonymity to behave badly and to trash others. It was also a blind belief in technology, Lanier asserts, that led to the financial debacle, as rogue traders relied on sophisticated computer algorithms without understanding what they were doing. The author is less convincing when he moves to a larger systemic argument about how an advertising-focused capitalist system directs money where the most clicks go, instead of toward individual talent. It's a difficult argument to prove, and his example of how pop music is less innovative now compared to music in the 20th century, while intriguing, seems a bit removed from the wider claims he makes about the creativity-stifling effects of big business. The last section, in which Lanier describes some inspiring potentials of modern computing, is a disjointed attempt to put a positive spin on a pessimistic view of modern technological culture.
A well-intended and insightful but messy treatise.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-26964-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Erudite writing from an author struggling to find meaning through music.
An Ohio-based poet, columnist, and music critic takes the pulse of the nation while absorbing some of today’s most eclectic beats.
At first glance, discovering deep meaning in the performance of top-40 songstress Carly Rae Jepsen might seem like a tough assignment. However, Abdurraqib (The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, 2016) does more than just manage it; he dives in fully, uncovering aspects of love and adoration that are as illuminating and earnest as they are powerful and profound. If he can do that with Jepsen's pop, imagine what the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Prince, or Nina Simone might stir in him. But as iconic as those artists may be, the subjects found in these essays often serve to invoke deeper forays into the worlds surrounding the artists as much as the artists themselves. Although the author is interested in the success and appeal of The Weeknd or Chance the Rapper, he is also equally—if not more—intrigued with the sociopolitical and existential issues that they each managed to evoke in present-day America. In witnessing Zoe Saldana’s 2016 portrayal of Simone, for instance, Abdurraqib thinks back to his own childhood playing on the floor of his family home absorbing the powerful emotions caused by his mother’s 1964 recording of “Nina Simone in Concert”—and remembering the relentlessly stigmatized soul who, unlike Saldana, could not wash off her blackness at the end of the day. In listening to Springsteen, the author is reminded of the death of Michael Brown and how “the idea of hard, beautiful, romantic work is a dream sold a lot easier by someone who currently knows where their next meal is coming from.” In all of Abdurraqib’s poetic essays, there is the artist, the work, the nation, and himself. The author effortlessly navigates among these many points before ultimately arriving at conclusions that are sometimes hopeful, often sorrowful, and always visceral.
Erudite writing from an author struggling to find meaning through music.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937512-65-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.
A brisk study of 20 of the Bard’s plays, focused on stripping off four centuries of overcooked analysis and tangled reinterpretations.
“I don’t really care what he might have meant, nor should you,” writes Smith (Shakespeare Studies/Oxford Univ.; Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, 2016, etc.) in the introduction to this collection. Noting the “gappy” quality of many of his plays—i.e., the dearth of stage directions, the odd tonal and plot twists—the author strives to fill those gaps not with psychological analyses but rather historical context for the ambiguities. She’s less concerned, for instance, with whether Hamlet represents the first flower of the modern mind and instead keys into how the melancholy Dane and his father share a name, making it a study of “cumulative nostalgia” and our difficulty in escaping our pasts. Falstaff’s repeated appearances in multiple plays speak to Shakespeare’s crowd-pleasing tendencies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a bawdier and darker exploration of marriage than its teen-friendly interpretations suggest. Smith’s strict-constructionist analyses of the plays can be illuminating: Her understanding of British mores and theater culture in the Elizabethan era explains why Richard III only half-heartedly abandons its charismatic title character, and she is insightful in her discussion of how Twelfth Night labors to return to heterosexual convention after introducing a host of queer tropes. Smith's Shakespeare is eminently fallible, collaborative, and innovative, deliberately warping play structures and then sorting out how much he needs to un-warp them. Yet the book is neither scholarly nor as patiently introductory as works by experts like Stephen Greenblatt. Attempts to goose the language with hipper references—Much Ado About Nothing highlights the “ ‘bros before hoes’ ethic of the military,” and Falstaff is likened to Homer Simpson—mostly fall flat.
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4854-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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