by Jim Dwyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2014
Slowly paced, familiar narrative of tech dreams and youthful hubris.
Journalistic account of an ambitious, ill-fated attempt at creating a privacy-oriented alternative to Facebook.
New York Times columnist Dwyer (co-author: 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, 2004, etc.) lays out the improbable narrative of Diaspora, a project hatched by four New York University students that too quickly gained attention worldwide among digital cognoscenti and “shot like a comet through the venture capital wings of Silicon Valley, but flamed out.” The author explores the strong personalities behind it, quintessential millennials with an intense focus on the virtual world (and quirky pursuits like Burning Man). Unfortunately, the most idealistic of the four became so overwhelmed that he committed suicide at age 22, a looming tragedy that checks Dwyer’s tone of futurist optimism. At first, Diaspora’s bright prospects were due to its open-source software code and a promise of user-controlled data. Suspicious about how Facebook “hoarded and peddled personal information without so much as asking,” the founders attracted supporters worldwide. An initial Kickstarter campaign allowed them to set up shop in San Francisco and spend a year coding; however, the four principals thwarted their own ambitions, starting with a disastrous meeting with a venture capital firm that they alienated with a $10 million “ask.” As Dwyer notes, “Diaspora did not fall under the standard rubric for evaluating startups.” Despite his positive spin (he followed the project from its early days as a columnist), the project never seemed close to practicality. As the rambling narrative follows the crew through many tech-geek happenings and increasingly tense board meetings, the author chronicles how Diaspora’s most promising components were ruthlessly emulated by competitors: “Google came out with circles months after Diaspora had introduced the aspects settings, each of them a digital corral…it was a perfect example of how quickly digital innovation could lose its novelty.” Ultimately, the increasingly estranged partners entered a venture-capitalist incubator program and were advised to abandon the project, though volunteers continue to develop its source code.
Slowly paced, familiar narrative of tech dreams and youthful hubris.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02560-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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by Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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SEEN & HEARD
by Rebecca Henderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2020
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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