Deft, colorful discussion focused more on social prescriptions than on specific, tangible analog things.
A sociological study arguing that the pandemic reinforced a widespread desire for old-school, “analog” connectivity.
Toronto-based reporter and writer Sax follows up his well-received The Revenge of Analog by testing its thesis against the upheavals caused by Covid-19: “Digital technology will continue its advance [but]…the analog world remains the one that matters most.” The author considers how unpleasant months of enforced isolation upended his life, tartly noting, “The digital future was finally here! And it fucking sucked.” In response, Sax envisions a future “where digital technology actually elevates the most valuable parts of the analog world rather than replacing them,” and he organizes the text into seven sections, reflecting the priorities we encounter in a typical week: work, schooling, commerce, and so forth. In each chapter, he first outlines the unexpected pitfalls of digital life and then suggests more humane, contemplative approaches that acknowledge progressive solutions from pre-pandemic society, which he terms “rear-looking innovations.” For instance, he argues in favor of “the physical space of the office and the human relationships that occur there,” noting how remote work proved frustrating in many fields. As a parent, Sax grimly views virtual schooling in terms of its “soul crushing disappointment,” recalling how, “as weeks turned to months, everyone except the heroic teachers stopped caring.” He discusses how this misadventure revealed rampant economic inequality in student preparedness while highlighting the emotional aspects of learning relative to the physicality of schools. Likewise, Sax examines how digital commerce proved both helpful and destructive. The shortcomings of gentrification in cities became clearer, and issues of personal faith, communication, and political discourse were likewise strained. The author relies on (virtual) interviews throughout, synthesizing the views of academics, other authors, and his suburban peers. This creates a pop-psych feel to the text, rendered in an approachable, witty style punctuated with personal asides poking fun at his own relative privilege during the pandemic.
Deft, colorful discussion focused more on social prescriptions than on specific, tangible analog things.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0155-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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