An uneven overview that fails to step outside its own scene.
An undercooked introduction to cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens.
Hundreds runs a streetwear label and has minted his own NFTs, both of which provide his book a foundation of industry experience. But despite an eager narrative and insightful interviews, it comes up short. The author rushes through technical details, which are often overshadowed by meandering cultural commentary and speculation. What’s a blockchain? “You can google it,” he explains in his prologue. Written between 2021 and 2022, the book is a “snapshot” of that time, and he’s “cognizant that there are outdated remarks.” Though often informative, the author rearticulates ideas throughout multiple essays. Slang and acronyms like FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) are repeatedly parsed out, as if each appearance is the reader’s first introduction. Hundreds assumes his readership is familiar with his fashion label, and some essays feel like sales pitches, particularly those that tout his company’s efforts to lead the digital fashion scene in the metaverse. A lengthy account of the creation of his “Adam Bomb Squad” NFTs is compelling, but it shines a light more on the expanding fashion industry than on the crypto wave. Most problematic is the author’s view of his readership. Following a comment about his kids’ interest in digital Fortnite costumes, he writes: “you’re no different….You’d rather curate your page instead of decorating your home.” During Zoom meetings, “people started facing their cameras toward their bookshelves to appear well-read. Others dropped a colorful painting behind their heads to associate with culture.” This jaded take muddles his message. NFTs may indeed be a community-driven new wave of media on a cutting-edge platform, but Hundreds is unable to explain the phenomenon without framing its participants as either savvy businesspeople or always-online users looking for something unique to enhance their digital existence. The plethora of readers who don’t fall into these two categories will find little resonance.
An uneven overview that fails to step outside its own scene.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780374610296
Page Count: 224
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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