A mixed bag studded with insights.
A sober, no-holds-barred view of the world that lies ahead.
In this provocative but uneven anthology, more than 20 writers consider living with robots, predictive policing, the potential automation of half of all present American jobs, and other aspects of life in the future. Seeking to “broaden the conversation” beyond the usual white, male, affluent, highly educated deciders who chart humanity’s course, editors Bosch, who writes on emerging technologies at Slate’s Future Tense, and Scranton (English/Notre Dame Univ.; War Porn, 2016, etc.) draw from mainstream media (the New Yorker, the Atlantic) as well as Boing Boing, Narratively, the Establishment, and the Dark Mountain Project. Their selections range from Bill McKibben’s solid but predictable report on climate change and Elizabeth Kolbert’s informative consideration of books about automation to lesser-known writers on such topics as fear of a feminist future, the “unquenchable thirst for simplified belief systems” typified by Donald Trump and his followers, and the ethical concerns raised by the latest application for genetic engineering: gene drives that can force a trait through a population. Unlike the innocent, optimistic forecasts found in many magazines of past decades, these anticipate the real possibility of unexpected or unintended consequences: we are now living in “a society distracted and undermined by its technology,” write the editors. The best articles raise serious questions about future outcomes: a Nature writer wonders whether African nations will actually be able to leapfrog into solar and wind power and avoid some environmentally destructive practices of the developed world. Or will such efforts be rendered useless by the continent’s inadequate electricity grids and transmission lines? In Slate, Sarah Aziza suggests that growing use of driverless cars in Saudi Arabia could be a boon for women unless Saudi officials adapt autonomous technology to “ ‘protect’ and surveil women.” Other contributors include Jeff VanderMeer, Kim Stanley Robinson, and David Biello.
A mixed bag studded with insights.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944700-45-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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