#JustFinished Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant
This has been an absolutely fascinating book to read and is perhaps the most important book I'll read all year. Merchant is spot on with his commentary about the parallels between the first Industrial Revolution and now. We have not learned a thing about protecting our populations and economies from mass unemployment during technological upheaval.
I spent last night thinking about the "shift to the left" initiative at my old job, basically reducing the complexity of any work you can enough for someone lower paid and lower skilled to do it. And now the push to automate anything that is repeatable. In both cases, the companies reduced staff enough to make you HAPPY to get the work off your plate. By running departments "lean" enough to mean we can't complete our objectives,
the powers that be force us into participating in our own obsolescence. It's sinister and brilliant at the same time.
Shifting to the left has morphed into shifting to lower cost environments. Hire someone in the Philippines rather than Hong Kong or North America. And sure, I'm all for global wealth, but it does seem both exploitative of the Filipinos and detrimental to those in higher paid environments.
If we were hiring them for expertise rather than for taking up lower level work, I would feel differently. But doing this is restricting entry level positions in places where you're trying to get your experts, thus limiting the growth potential in those economies. It's going to depress the tech sector in ways I don't think they've considered enough to care about. Or maybe they have considered it and still don't care.
There was even a quote in the book from some first Industrial Revolution tech bro saying, essentially, "Go ahead. Try to get the government to care enough to fix this." And we're right back there now. We can't even go back to the old ways of destroying the tech that's destroying our lives because we live in a surveillance society. And where the hell is that AI being hosted anyway?
It's spread out across geographies and there are backups. I don't know how we'll make it through this.
Are other sectors as bad as tech? What happens in NA when what's left of the middle class is gone and only the ultra rich can afford to live? As each small piece of wealth for the average person erodes, cracks appear in the foundation of the economy, and the negative impact will spread.
HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act at a Time by Brad Aronson, 2020
Bestseller and Canadian Book Club Awards Winner is filled with true stories about how one small deed can make a world of difference.
Brad provides dozens of ways you can make a difference through the simplest words and deeds. You'll discover how buying someone a meal or sharing a little encouragement at the right time can change someone's world, as well as your own.
Cyber Republic: Reinventing Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines by George Zarkadakis, 2020
Science and tech expert George Zarkadakis presents an indispensable guide to making liberal democracies more inclusive, and the digital economy more equitable in the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen, 2020
An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change**
Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book?
Believing in Dawkins: The New Spiritual Atheism by Eric Steinhart, 2020
In this book, atheist philosopher Eric Steinhart explores the spiritual dimensions of Richard Dawkins’ books, which are shown to encompass:
· the meaning and purpose of life
· an appreciation of Platonic beauty and truth
· a deep belief in the rationality of the universe
· an aversion to both scientism and nihilism
Share in the joyful, adventure-filled shenanigans of a child growing up in a small mud hut in Inner Mongolia in this charming, illustrated memoir for young middle grade readers.
(Academic press) book pre-publication reviews are back. Really positive. YES!!!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉.
So now I'm moving onto final revisions. It feels good to slip back into that headspace again.
My big question for anyone who has sent a book off to the world: What was your strategy for those last steps? There's addressing the feedback, of course. But after that? It will never been perfect. But it has to be great. How do you know when to let it go?
The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew B. Crawford, 2015
We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self.
“MEKONG DELTA BLUESMAN” Son Vo tells the story of his life both offstage and on. From an early childhood in Saigon to a hardscrabble life in Maine to discovering his gift for music, Vo relates some wild adventures in a voice full of warmth and hope. B PLUS
Activestills Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel by Vered Maimon & Shiraz Grinbaum, 2016
This book is a joint contemplation about the body of
work produced by the Activestills photography collective
from its inception in 2005 up to 2016.
It includes the perspectives of activists, journalists,
historians and theoreticians of photography, and the
collective’s members themselves.
Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t by Tom Phillips, 2019
As the editor of the UK's leading independent fact-checker, Tom Phillips deals with complete bollocks every day. Here, he tells the hilarious story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other - and ourselves - and asks an important question: how can humanity move towards a truthier future?
"In my darkest hours, what has saved me again and again is some action of unselfing — some instinctive wakefulness to an aspect of the world other than myself: a helping hand extended to someone else’s struggle, the dazzling galaxy just discovered millions of lightyears away, the cardinal trembling in the tree outside my window."
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman, 2020
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that it dramatically shifting our understanding of birds — how they live and how they think.
A New Basis for Animal Ethics: Telos and Common Sense by Bernard E. Rollin, 2016
“Possibly the most important book on animal welfare written to date. In exquisite chapter after chapter Rollin presents the philosophical background of what telos is, why it matters and demonstrates with stories, anecdotes, and data, why common sense is an important basis for understanding animals, their needs and their wants."