A refreshing, cogently argued book that will hopefully make the rounds at Facebook, Google, Apple et al.
A potent challenge to “the superiority of the innovation mindset.”
As professors Vinsel and Russell write in this vibrant, sure-footed argument, the digital economy rests, in part, on the “demand for rapid growth that disrupts the comfortable incumbents of the status quo.” For many, this attitude, characterized by creative disruption, has spread from the economy to become a way of life. Innovation is important, of course, but the concept of “move fast and break things…can be lousy guidance for anyone who builds or designs actual things.” The authors argue that it is time to challenge the unholy marriage between Silicon Valley’s ideology of change for change’s sake and Wall Street’s insatiable appetite for immediate profit; instead, we must attend to the areas of infrastructure and maintenance. Vinsel and Russell point out that innovation—the profitable combination of new and existing knowledge—is not the enemy. The problem is “innovation-speak,” a misleading “sales pitch about a future that doesn’t yet exist.” Innovation-speak flourishes in a society that values the individual accumulation of wealth above the common good. Maintenance, though essential to any functioning society, is often neglected, thus disrupting order in a variety of forms, whether it’s the physical infrastructure of roads and bridges or the simple ability to maintain a healthy populace. The authors guide readers with clear and contemporary examples of when deferred maintenance led to either slow or fast disaster, both of which are dangerous. “A slow disaster…is the accretion of harm from incremental neglect,” they write. “It happens when children ingest chips from lead paint or when a potholed road becomes unsafe for traffic.” The authors also thoroughly expose the unjust hierarchy that leaves maintenance workers at the bottom of the pay scale. We need a systematic approach, they argue, to monitoring and caring for our resources, encouraging sustainability and shared skill sets. Maintenance sustains success, and an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
A refreshing, cogently argued book that will hopefully make the rounds at Facebook, Google, Apple et al.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-57568-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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