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WEAVING THE WEB

THE ORIGINAL DESIGN AND ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB

The inventor of the World Wide Web tells how he did it, and what it means. Berners-Lee traces the Web to a “play” program he invented in 1980, while a consultant at the CERN laboratories in Switzerland. “Enquire,” named after a Victorian advice book, stored information about the job in a nonhierarchical manner. The program impressed those who saw it, but nobody used it, and the disk containing it was eventually lost. But Berners-Lee was still interested in using computers to connect ideas. Returning to CERN a few years later, he began re-creating Enquire. One problem was allowing workers to use their preferred software without imposing a complex set of new rules governing access to the Web. Hypertext, which allowed any document to be linked to any other on the system, was the key to solving this problem. Also, by then, the Internet was beginning to come into existence in the US. Its standardized protocols seemed an ideal way to bridge between operating systems. By 1989, he was ready to create the Web. Progress was swift; within a year of its introduction, the number of users was doubling every three to four months. Berners-Lee acted as pitchman, convincing different groups to adopt standards that would increase the accessibility and utility of the Web. At last, CERN released the basic Web code and protocols into the public domain, without licensing fees—a step that insured that no hardware or software company would stand in the way of their propagation. Intent on keeping the Web universally accessible, Berners-Lee became head of the MIT-based World Wide Web Consortium, the arbiter of Web standards. In the final chapters of his book, he describes his visions for the Web: as a medium for collaboration, person-to-person and person-to-computer, ultimately restructuring society. Anyone who uses his invention can see how far that process has already come. A compelling combination of techno-history and visionary philosophy. (First serial to Vanity Fair; author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-06-251586-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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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REIMAGINING CAPITALISM IN A WORLD ON FIRE

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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