A potent challenge to “the superiority of the innovation mindset.”
As professors Vinsel and Russell write in this vibrant, sure-footed argument, the digital economy rests, in part, on the “demand for rapid growth that disrupts the comfortable incumbents of the status quo.” For many, this attitude, characterized by creative disruption, has spread from the economy to become a way of life. Innovation is important, of course, but the concept of “move fast and break things…can be lousy guidance for anyone who builds or designs actual things.” The authors argue that it is time to challenge the unholy marriage between Silicon Valley’s ideology of change for change’s sake and Wall Street’s insatiable appetite for immediate profit; instead, we must attend to the areas of infrastructure and maintenance. Vinsel and Russell point out that innovation—the profitable combination of new and existing knowledge—is not the enemy. The problem is “innovation-speak,” a misleading “sales pitch about a future that doesn’t yet exist.” Innovation-speak flourishes in a society that values the individual accumulation of wealth above the common good. Maintenance, though essential to any functioning society, is often neglected, thus disrupting order in a variety of forms, whether it’s the physical infrastructure of roads and bridges or the simple ability to maintain a healthy populace. The authors guide readers with clear and contemporary examples of when deferred maintenance led to either slow or fast disaster, both of which are dangerous. “A slow disaster…is the accretion of harm from incremental neglect,” they write. “It happens when children ingest chips from lead paint or when a potholed road becomes unsafe for traffic.” The authors also thoroughly expose the unjust hierarchy that leaves maintenance workers at the bottom of the pay scale. We need a systematic approach, they argue, to monitoring and caring for our resources, encouraging sustainability and shared skill sets. Maintenance sustains success, and an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
A refreshing, cogently argued book that will hopefully make the rounds at Facebook, Google, Apple et al.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-57568-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Categories: CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | BUSINESS | ENTREPRENUERSHP | ECONOMICS
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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“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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