A thorough and concise look into the technologically saturated future.
A researcher assesses both the challenges and the potentially transformative power of global internet access.
As ubiquitous as the internet may seem, debut author Cashel observes, a considerable swath of the world—its poorest parts—remains without access to it, “locked out” of one of the most significant technological inventions of this era. But there are good reasons to believe that will change soon, in particular the plummeting costs associated with satellite technology, which effectively delivers faster and higher quality broadband service. In addition, major companies like Google and Facebook, with commercial interests in reaching more customers, are experimenting with new ways to supply the developing world with internet access. Facebook has been using drones as instruments of delivery, and Google has been harnessing balloons. Moreover, governmental institutions are making a contribution as well; in 2010, the United Nations established the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and considers the general adoption of broadband access central to the achievement of its other developmental goals for poorer nations. The author astutely raises an important question: How will the widespread promulgation of broadband—what Cashel calls the “Great Connecting”—affect otherwise disadvantaged populations? He provides a searching discussion of the many ways—financial, medical, political, and communicative, just to name a few—in which broadband will positively alter the socio-economic landscapes of the beneficiaries. In addition, the author assesses the challenges, particularly the use of the internet as a tool of extremist hate and political oppression. Finally, he presents a series of thoughtful solutions to these impediments and a kind of road map for governments and investors alike to accelerate the process and clear inevitable hurdles. Cashel is a researcher and visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and so it is unsurprising his study is impressively exacting. At the same time, it’s an exceedingly practical work and draws heavily not only on theory and data, but also on the author’s travels to the developing world. Unfortunately, his optimism can be excessive; for example, especially after the last year of revelations about Facebook’s business, it is remarkable he can write: “The good news is that Facebook does have in its mission statement—and undoubtedly in its corporate DNA—the idea of making the world a better place.” Still, this remains an incisive tour of a complex set of issues.
A thorough and concise look into the technologically saturated future.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63576-645-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Radius Book Group
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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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