The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore - Book Report #238

My goodness this was a "BIG" book.

That's right:  All caps, bold, italics and in quotation marks.

Each chapter could have been a book in and of itself.  Which made this volume overwhelming and, at times, made me throw up my hands in frustration, thinking that the troubles of our time are just too big to take on!

I wanted hope and, sadly, like so many of these kinds of books, the discussion was thin on solutions.  But, as I started to think on it, the reason answers are not provided is for the simple reason that they have not been thought of yet.

Peter Diamandis is fond of saying that the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities.  And he's right; living here on the prairies I'm personally worried about drought, but the world is lousy with water.  In my mind desalination will be a world wide game changer.  If that one problem alone could be solved, scarcity of fresh water, so much of our problems could be solved.

Imagine - pipelines filled with drinking water, instead of oil. Wow!

Al Gore takes on the world in this book.  Like I said, it's a big book.  He discussed:

Table of Contents:

1. Work: The World of Work in the New Global Economy
a. An Introduction to the Global Economy
b. Outsourcing
c. Robosourcing
d. Automation in the Financial Industry
e. The Redistribution of Wealth

2. Power: The Shifting of Power from Nation-States to Multinational Corporations
a. The Rising Power of Multinational Corporations
b. The Declining Power of the United States

3. The Internet: The Global Mind
a. The Rise of the Internet
b. The Internet of Things, and ‘Big Data’
c. Global Democracy
i. Overthrowing Dictatorial Regimes
ii. Reforming Established Democracies
d. The Dangers of the Internet

4. Biotechnology
a. Biotechnology in Food Production: GMOs
b. Biotechnology in Medicine

5. Demographics and Natural Resource Depletion
a. Population Increase
b. Displacement of Peoples: Xenophobia and Urban Stress
c. Environmental Stress
d. Techno-Optimism
e. Techno-Pessimism
f. The Solution: Reforming GDP

6. Climate Change
a. The Problem
b. The Effects: The Threat to Food and Freshwater Sources, and the Displacement of Peoples
c. The Solution

See what I mean?  These are intense subjects.

I was glad I took the time to get through it.  There once was a saying, "think globally and act locally," this book illustrates that there is an abundance of problems to tackle and you can make a difference even if you choose to work on one or two things yourself.

If you can start a business to solve a problem, so much the better.

Highly recommended, but hang on to your optimism it will be challenged by Al Gore.

His website is here - https://www.algore.com/

Tombaugh Station by Robin Wayne Bailey

Scientists and engineers going slowly crazy on the surface of Pluto.

What started off quietly and tense devolved into an action piece that did not seem to fit the first third of the story.

Although beautifully realized with the emotional repercussions of volunteering to work on a one-way mission to advance science and humanity. The battle sequence could have been edited out and the story would still have worked.

The story is centered on the death of a fellow old-timer scientist of Tombaugh Station, one of the first to land on Pluto.  There is something strange about the death, too many things went wrong all at once.

Nothing grabs me more than a mystery in space.

Too bad the author tried to make it two kinds of stories at once.

It did not work for me.


Robin Wayne Bailey's Wiki pages is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Wayne_Bailey

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein - Book Report #237

This was not what I was expecting.

I mean, come on!  It was published in 1965, in the middle of the Apollo program!

Instead of an adventure story about colonizing the moon, building the infrastructure or mounting some kind of rescue, it was, instead, a handbook on how to mount a revolution.

It was political.

It was rather dull actually.

I know I'm going to get a lot of rolled eyes from those people who are real Heinlein fans.  I suspect he was trying to develop his own kind of libertarian paradise and couldn't make a novel work on Earth.


So yea.  It wasn't for me in the same way that Infomocracy wasn't.

It's not like it was badly written it simply was not a subject that interested me, so I was let down by it.

Coma Kings by Jessica Barber

This was a heart warming story that seemed to go in one direction then made a quick twist into vulnerability.

I know that’s not much of a review.

What’s it about? You might ask. 

Jacking into a VR game and how easy it is to be lost in it. 

But that would have been too easy to write. Instead there is a poingnancy to it that was unexpected. 

It was very well done. 

It just goes to show that genre fiction can be much more than cliché. 

Brokenomics by Dina Gachman - Book Report #236

A light and fluffy self-help, personal finance book.

There was lots of humor but very little in the way of nuts-and-bolts money management strategies.

One of my favourites was the advice to think of your shittly little apartment as a vila and you'll feel better, thinking it's a quaint little place in an exotic location.

I laughed with the author, it's good advice - to make the best of things and not to focus on things you don't have.  So much of our problems stem from what our culture depicts as a success or "the way to live."  There is no right or wrong way.

The title of the book sums up the focus - how to live a happy life on what you can afford.  Don't go into debt, if you can help it.  Chasing The American dream is a fiction.

It was a good book to read, but I wouldn't keep it on my bookshelf.

Anda’s Game by Cory Doctorow

A wonderful and inspiring story.

Since I agree with Doctorow’s stance with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I enjoy reading these very same problems played out and solved in his fiction. 

Anda is a young English girl who loves gaming but struggles with the male-dominance of the culture. She is also struggling with her own real-world self-esteem. 

The story tackles balancing an in-game life with the real world.  And how the real world can intrude in the game world. 

There are some important subjects explored here, which makes reading it so very satisfying to me. 

Recommended. 

Cory Doctorow's website - https://craphound.com/

Waking Dragon by Prof. Peter Navarro - Book Report #235

This was a comprehensive look at the influence and future impact of a rising China.

The audiobook was part of the Modern Scholar Series which are recorded lectures taught by university professors.

It was primarily a course on the economics of a modern China.  But it also looked deeply into environmental and social impacts the country's role as the world's factory floor.

Let's face it, the world is a big, complicated and messy place.  So is China.

I liked the course, in that it illuminated the inner realities of the country and, if things are not managed carefully, how conflicts can arise.

I found it sobering.

The only downside to the series were the questions at the end of each lecture.  Which were not questions at all but a terrible way to recap the salient points the professor wanted to make. 

Prof. Navarro's Wiki page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro

The Dreamer and the Dream by Derek Tyler Attico

Wow!

This took one of my favourite episodes of DS9, Far Beyond the Stars, and revisits the life of Benny Russell.   The 1950’s writer has spent the past six years in the Queens Borough Mental Institution. 

He’s been incarcerated there since being fired from his job at  Incredible Tales magazine.   He has fallen into his creations, that of a black captain of a space station, choosing to live in his mind's imagination. 

But now, 1959, he is on the cusp of being released.  However the power of the worlds he created are influencing his reality. 

Like I said - wow!

This was so much fun to read. I tore right through it loving every flashback to 1959.  I was completely taken in by the meta nature of the story and how the author tied the world of DS9 to Benny Russell and further tied his reality to how Star Trek influenced our own society. 

Well done indeed. 

I continue to be impressed by the quality of storytelling in this collection. 

Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free by Cory Doctorow - Book Report #234

This was a fascinating subject but, after a while it just went over my head.

Learning about how to deal with intellectual properties on the Internet, which is nothing more than a copy machine.

The basic thrust of the book was to say that it is better to allow the downloading and sharing of content on the Internet.  Treat it as advertisement and people will likely pay for more.

He used a street busker as an example, most people just walk on by, some stay and listen leaving nothing in the hat but others will.  Those that do will leave enough to pay for and make the effort worthwhile.  When you combine those that listened without paying and those that did, they may tell others about your work who may or may not pay but the audience will grow.

He also makes a good argument on how digital locks, DRMs, simply do not work.

The truth of things is that these are the Wild West years of the Internet and it will take time for things to shake out, correct themselves and develop fair (for the most part) structures.

One thing I found interesting was Doctorow's insight in the streaming music services.  The current belief is that these services are paying ridiculously low royalties to the artists.  But the truth is that it is the record labels that are collecting the royalties, getting fat in the process, and it is THEY who are not distributing the money.

Anyhow, I found the book interesting even though much of it eluded me.

I love learning about the worlds within worlds we live in.

Recommended.

Cory Doctorow's website - https://craphound.com/