A sweeping and authoritative look at the future of the tech-work connection.
A comprehensive guide focuses on adapting to machines of all kinds in the workplace.
Many readers encountering Uechi’s book will likely be horrified by its United States cover, which shows a group of humans working on some problem at a table—with glasses of water, cups of coffee, and an open laptop—right alongside a human-shaped robot with an expressionless face and a transparent skull. It’s a benign but stark picture of a future many people find terrifying, resembling a scene from the film I, Robot, starring Will Smith. But the author is well aware of this, and his wide-ranging work approaches the whole subject calmly and factually. After a brief survey of the growth of mechanization and automation, the manual explores the impact of technology on a handful of key industries, looking at the probable trends in those areas over the next 25 years. The world, he contends, is undergoing a civilization-level transformation that will move it into a new era, and in these pages, Uechi draws on his own experience as an IT manager to take readers through the likely workplace/tech developments up to 2046. His aim is to inform his readers and soothe their anxieties about things like the growing prevalence and sophistication of artificial intelligence. He goes into great detail under the headings of agriculture, manufacturing, construction, transportation, food services, health care, administration, and education—virtually every employment field that will affect most readers.
Everything from systems to sensors and robots comes in for a careful, painstaking examination in Uechi’s chapters, and he does a skillful, low-key job of breaking down a vast amount of research and technical information for general readers. His decision to spread his inquiry over such a large range of industries is a wise one, giving the broadest possible spectrum of readers some useful details on his predictions and extrapolations. This kind of decision goes hand in hand with his consistent and very convincing note of reassurance. He knows that many of his readers are worried that increasingly complex automation will threaten their jobs. While he's informing those readers of the facts and prospective trends, he’s also mindful of their fears. His steady, methodical approach is helpful—every chapter is segmented and buttressed with extensive notes in case readers involved in that section’s field want to research the topics further. The end result is a tranquil, remarkable, and indispensable guide even if some of the author’s extrapolations may be debatable. Occasionally, he is so diligent that he ends up sounding like an android himself. “Without a job, a person cannot earn income,” he computes at one point. “Without income, a person cannot buy and consume food and other products necessary to live.” But a certain amount of robotic style is probably inevitable in such a deep-dive approach to the complexities of industrial technology in all its endless facets, everything from pulse monitors to heavy grain loaders. The extent of Uechi’s research is genuinely impressive. Readers nervous about the future of their jobs and wanting to know the most likely ways that technology will change those positions will certainly want to read this book.
A sweeping and authoritative look at the future of the tech-work connection.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-203837-7
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Productivity Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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