Just in time for the millennium, elder statesman Dyson (Physics/Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; From Eros to Gaia, 1992, etc.) sounds off on three technological revolutions that could radically transform human social arrangements—if we play our cards right. A big “if,” since some people may not like the cards, and Dyson’s ideas are still on the drawing boards. As the title suggests, one of his visions involves harnessing solar energy. Dyson’s proposal is to breed plants that will convert radiant energy into liquid fuel, which could feed directly into local pipelines. On the human genome, Dyson has no doubt that its data will be used, initially by the rich, for “reprogenetics”—tailoring the genes of the unborn to confer whatever traits parents deem advantageous. (Cloning is a minor issue by comparison, Dyson believes.) Eventually, such gene tinkering could lead to speciation, dividing not just rich and poor but social groups according to lifestyle or philosophical beliefs. To avoid the inevitable intergroup hostilities, we will seek what Dyson calls “the high road” to space (he believes that, by the end of the 21st century, space travel will have become far more practical). The Internet, not confined (as it is today) to the computer-literate, but as a universal source of knowledge and communication, reaching rural villager and city slicker alike, is another of Dyson’s dreams for the future. Dyson argues that the technologies can be used to advance social justice and lessen economic disparities (though he never explains how reprogenetics jibes with that ideal). Dyson admits he was wrong about (the latter) two of the three technologies he had hopes for back in the 1980s: genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and space travel, so one may take his current scenarios not as prophecies but as one man’s hopes. Adding to the book’s value, however, are Dyson’s authoritative commentaries on how past technologies have changed society and, as always, his exemplary prose style.
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-512942-3
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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