Thoughts on Books, Q3'26

The months of July, August, and September, are the summer months of Britain. For an academic, these are the months of long, drawn out days without too much to do, beyond whatever projects one has set oneself. I normally try to have a summer project each year. This year, for whatever reason, I struggled to land on something. Perhaps it was the heat, which took things out of me physically and mentally. Those days of sitting indoors, curtains drawn, simply waiting for time to pass, for the night to dawn; those days that, I fear, are just a flavour of many more days to come in the lives of those living in this century, and beyond.

One must look for the positives. I had no summer project. I wrote some things. But not that much. Instead, I read a lot. Far too much, in fact, as I now contemplate writing reviews of 18 books. This conquest of literature (by my standards, anyway) means a couple of things. Firstly, for the first time ever, I am actually on track to hit my one-book-a-week goal. I have, at the time of writing, read 39 books in around 39 weeks. I am almost certain to beat last year's record of 41, and I think I now have the spur to actually meet the target. Of course, I will inevitably fail at this goal. I have teaching, which comes with pros and cons re: time to read. And then there is Christmas, a time I typically spend getting merry. But I will try to hit the target. Secondly, many of the books I read this quarter have been quite short, which accounts for the high number. Only two exceeded 400 pages in length; one was less than 100 pages. As such, third, while the page count for this quarter is quite high--4,794--the average book length--266 pages--is lower than previous quarters. A target that is achieved my only reading short books is hardly a meaningful target, and I must keep this in mind. Though, fourth, I think I've generally enjoyed the books I've read this quarter. Certainly, one reason for my reading so much was enjoyment (not just brevity). Another was focus: many of the books I've read recently have had things to say about ideas and writing projects I have been working on. This always helps. One of the reasons I stop reading is that it does not feel productive, in quite the same way that writing feels productive. But when the reading is necessary for the writing, it is easier to forgive the long days spent doing nothing else.

Fifth: my reading pile has, kind of, started to go down. The pile has been growing out of control for a while now. Many books are interesting; some of those interesting books are cheap. It is a bad combination if one cares about having a manageable 'to read' pile. I am glad it is going down. Firstly, because I do actually want to read all the books I buy to read. I think it is quite a shame to leave books unread. Books are reflections of people's souls, and it is not only for the selfish reasons of learning, and of vanity, but for the human reason of experiencing another's narrative and passion, that books ought to be read. So I am glad I am getting through them. Secondly, because as my 'to read' pile (slowly) shrinks, my 'to buy' 'pile' (so to speak) continues to grow, filling up with interesting books that, nevertheless, I am keeping myself from buying while others remain unread. The 12 books listed below, in my 'to read' list, are 12 books I currently own, but I hope (soon) to buy some more that I am keen to read, perhaps in advance of some on this list. We will see...

To read:
1. The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis
2. The Future of Professions, Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
3. Emma Goldman, Alice Wexler
4. No! Against Adult Supremacy, various
5. Outsiders, Dorothy Thompson
6. GDP, Diane Coyle
7. Feeding Britain, Tim Lang
8. The Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes
9. A History of Gold and Money, Pierre Vilar
10. The Prophet of Cuernavaca, Todd Hartch
11. Platform for Change, Stafford Beer
12. Time of Our Side, various

John Law, James Buchan

As much as I had heard of John Law prior to reading this book, I must confess that I knew very little about him. I knew that he was France's finance minister. I knew that he had revolutionised the French finance system through some very modern (and questionable) financial strategies involving fiat currency and gold. I knew that it had all, everything, come crashing down. I felt that by the end of James Buchan's book, I did not, still, really know who John Law was. Buchan is not entirely to blame for this. There appears to be holes in the historical record, holes compounded by a name--John Law--that is easily lost or confused. Furthermore, based on Buchan's use of materials, I can only assume John Law did not write that much, or if he did, that many of these letters have been lost. Buchan does not extensively cite John Law's words throughout this book.

The result is, my the end, a reader may still feel lke they don't know who the guy is. In fact, in a peculiar way John Law does not feel like the main character in the this; just a convenient character, who happens to have been in the right place at the right time, from the historical narrative perspective. Indeed, what John Law is really about is the turn of the 17th century. The intrigue of the Jacobite rebellion, the straining of the Ancien Regime in France, and the emergence of financial capitalism. John Law just happened to intersect these things. Or, at least, that is how Buchan frames things, and in doing so, renders John Law a background character in his own life.

I do, though, have one concrete thought about John Law. Namely, that there seems to be a few telling overlaps between this long-dead financial speculator, and Elon Musk. Both are immigrants. Both claimed to be entrepreneurs when, in fact, they were finance people. Both took enormous financial gambles, and in their personal lives, appear terribly reckless. Both pump-primed asset bubbles with promises far beyond reason. Both rely on government patronage to maintain their wealth. And both, maybe, were at a time the richest men in the world. It is always a bit unhelpful to say X is like Y, and I do not think it is especially useful to say that Elon Musk is some reincarnated John Law. But one does not need to draw such stringent links to gain some insights from history. Namely, that in the end, Law's financial empire collapsed; his lies caught up to him; his disgrace was absolute, and his assent into the realms of power only ever illusory.

Managing in the Next Society, Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker is one of those shcolars who has a line for everything. Or, more accurately, whose name can often be attributed to some smart sounding post on LinkedIn to lend said post some academic legitimacy. Sometimes, the quote is even real. I am, of course, joking (but only a little bit). The truth is I have not read enough Drucker. His prominence in management education circles leads me to think, intuitively, that there must be something worthwhile in his writing. I have skimmed the pages of The Effective Executive, for instance, and found lots to like about his views on decision-making under uncertainty. But Managing in the Next Society was my first concerted attempt to sit down with the Druck and give him his time of day.

Honestly, I got very little out of this book. I believe it is mostly an assemblage of various essays from the mid-90s and early 2000s about the role of computers in organisations. Essay collections can feel disjointed. But this can also add a charm and a friction that ultimately enhances the reading experience. I just found this book very boring. It felt tired. Drucker felt tired. Maybe that is my own context poking through, given that in 2002 Drucker (I think) was getting on in years. But far from being the critical massive of business, the canny professor who spots what Harvard Business School CEOs all miss, this book lacked something. Soul, maybe? Relatedly, I was expecting more criticality. In The Effective Executive (or what I have thumbed through), Drucker emphasises the dangers of redundant information and procrastination. I assumed he would have transferred this critique over to Managing in the Next Society, as surely information technologies compound these problems (that is why I choose to read this book). But, alas, my reading of Drucker is of a man broadly excited by computers, and largely onboard with the IT revolution that swept the world in the 2000s. Maybe my reading was wrong. Maybe there is something I've missed. Maybe someone, someday, will post a Drucker quote on LinkedIn, and I'll find it interesting, and discover it is contained in the pages of Managing in the Next Society. Maybe.

Killing Time, Paul Feyerabend

Some of the books I read are very forgettable. Some are not, because they annoy me in such a way that I cannot bring myself to let go. Some, obviously, do the opposite. They are entertaining, or give me the seed of an interesting idea. And some just kind of linger, neither good nor bad, or perhaps, both good and bad at the same time. These are the books that creep into your mind at unexpected moments. The kind of books that leave you tossing over in your mind feelings more than facts. That are subject to some endless interpretation. That fail to settle. That is what Killing Time is for me.

I love Feyerabend. I love how pedantic he was. I love how radical he was. How fixated he was. But also, how fun he was. His writing is fun. I expected something similar from his autobiography. I mean, just ponder the title for a second: Killing Time. What a subtly funny name for an autobiography. It tells you so much about him as a person; a person who cared about fun, a person who was self-serious only insofar as it exposed the hilarity of self-seriousness. And yet, Killing Time is an incredibly sad book. It does not fill one up with joy for having had a glimpse into the life of another. It leaves one frustrated to only see the fragments of a life, the fragments that Feyerabend has chosen to share. And those fragments, for some reason, seem so constantly tinged with tragedy. Death. Disability. Divorce. And, at the end, death at the moment that life has just started.

And, I suppose this is why I keep turning Killing Time over in my head. I read it wanting to see a portrait of the intellectual I so admire. Feyerabend does not do this. It is from this perspective that I dislike this book, and never want to return to this book. It let me down. But what Killing Time is is the portrait of a man. All those things I so admire as qualities of an academic embodied by Feyerabend (a sense of fun, a lack of self-seriousness) get turned on their head in this book. Feyerabend will not write an academic's autobiography because, I think, Feyerabend did not consider himself an academic. He was a man who lived a life. It involved teaching, and studying, and writing some of the most important philosophy of science in the twentieth century. But he was just living a life. Just killing time. In this sense--perhaps the most important sense--Killing Time is a fantastic autobiography, because it is not interested in recounting the behind-the-scenes details of the stuff most people already kind of know. It's interested in the question of what is a life; what does it mean to live a life; and, by the end, what does it mean to die?

Brain of the Firm, Stafford Beer

One can read Stafford Beer, and very much enjoy whatever it is he is saying while at the same time not really understanding at all what he is saying. Thankfully, this only happens sometimes in Brain of the Firm. And, most of the book is the former, not the latter. This was not something I was expecting. I had read two other Stafford Beer books in my life, Designing Freedom and Decision and Control. The first is more of a pamphlet, replete with drawings, and written in the language of a podcast (as it was a radio broadcast). The second is a much earlier text by Beer. It is dense, spending the first 100 pages or so just dealing with definitions. It is a book I would like to return to some day, but not a book I would keenly return to today.

Brain of the Firm was published soon after Decision and Control, and very much made Beer's name (hence the publication of works like Designing Freedom). One can see that Beer has become much better at writing. Brain of the Firm is far more accessible and engaging than I had anticipated going into it. And much of it is very comprehensible (perhaps the highest praise one can bestow upon a cybernetician). The crux of the book is the development of the Viable Systems Model (VSM), an idea I had heard of, and now have a slightly greater (though still incomplete) understanding of. I also appreciated the more explicit and established links between variety and information theory. Variety remains an important idea--largely because we live and act within a qualitative world, not a quantitative one. To reduce all problems and decisions to information theory is to abstract those problems and decisions outside of any useful context, and implicitly, to proclaim such context irrelevant. Often, the opposite is true. To this end, variety asks us to think in qualitative terms, but also within a structure analogous to information theory. This is helpful, for it gives us (or, Beer gives us) some ideas of how restructuring decisions and understanding the contingencies between options can produce variety-reducing decision strategies (or, as a Herbert Simon head, satisficing heuristics)

My copy of Brain of the Firm now has as many notes as Beer's diagrams. I am even keen(!) to read The Heart of Enterprise at some point. It is currently sat on the pile. And, as above, Platform for Change is coming, I hope. I also hope these ideas, somehow, someway, form into something more substantial within my work. There is something here. I just need to find the decision strategy to cut through the variety, as Beer might say.

Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows

I do not have too much to say about Thinking in Systems. I recall, a couple of years ago, being given some recommended reading around systems theory. I did not jot down the names of those recommended books. But I think there is a good chance that Thinking in Systems was one of them. I kind of understand that: this is a good, simple introduction to systems theory. I also kind of hope I am misremembering: this is not a sufficiently detailed or complex book to acquire enough knowledge to apply systems theory ideas. In some ways, Thinking in Systems reminds me of a lot of popular behavioural science books. We have identified some quirk of behaviour; some bias. Here's how it works. Now, go and find your own applications of it. Of course, the quirk is not an isolated entity. It might be a pattern of behaviour, but that behaviour still exists within the world. It is shaped by environmental stressors and values. To treat the quirk as a tool, divorced from a social environment, is to bastardise the quirk. To an extent, I think Thinking in Systems leads one to a similar error, only regarding systems theory. Here is a feedback loop. Connected this way, it does X. Connected this way, it does Y. Now, go and find your own applications of it. This aspect of the book (which is probably just my own inference about the book) I did not like so much. But it was a pleasant enough read, and as above, a good introduction.

Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom

Most of my 'reviews' are really just stream-of-consciousness dumps. I sometimes edit them, and in the past, I have revised some reviews I have felt were overally harsh. With everything I tried, I do try and spend some time reflecting on the content, and putting the book in some context. And, as above, some books stick in my mind more than others, for various reasons. For some--a minority--that sticking-in-my-mind takes the form of writing-the-review-in-my-mind. The result is rarely better written than the stream-of-consciousness dumps that most books ultimately receive. In fact, the resulting is probably worse, as rather than catching onto a novelty in my head, the writing descends into a list of complaints and talking points that have sat for too long between my eyes. This review, for this book, will be of this sort.

I have two major criticisms of Bostrom's book. The first is that it is essentially a theological text. Let us stop for a moment, and pretend we are not talking about artificial intelligence, or any kind of superintelligence. Let us just imagine an entity, and the defining feature of this entity is that it is more powerful than human beings (whatever 'powerful' means). Yes, it is smarter than us. But it is also faster and stronger than us. It's grasp of the universe is more substantial than others. Its convictions less wavering than ourselves. It is, in a word, more absolute than any person could ever be. What I am describing here is God. What I am describing, an all-powerful, all-knowing creature, is a God by the standards of pretty much all religions.

Once one realises this, it is terribly difficult to take anything Bostrom says with much seriousness or, perhaps worse, novelty. I agree that if God came to Earth, things could happen that would not necessarily be to the benefit of the human race. Aladdin has already taught us the dangers of wishing on a magic genie. Superintelligence, then, is Bostrom making up something in his head to get scared of. All of the thought experiments he comes up with, and prescriptions that follow, stem ultimately from this theological pathology. In some ways, Bostrom is writing in a tradition that more closely resembles the scholastics of the middle and late medieval period, than the philosophy and science of the Enlightenment. I think Bostrom is somewhat aware of this, too. He has a terribly annoying tendency to throw in highly specialist and technical terms, often from outside his field. I think, probably implicitly, this is in an effort to lend more scienctific legitimacy to what is, at its core, a theological text about the end of the world.

However, there is one aspect of Bostrom's project that it somewhat interesting, and that I think separates Superintelligence from being a purely theological text. That is the question of control. God either exists, and made us, or does not. At no point do people have to deal with the question of controlling God. God is beyond our control. But superintelligence is something people will (maybe) build, and so people will have a short window to learn how to control this entity, or lose control of it. That is what Bostrom spends most of his time getting upset about--how can people control superintelligence? Indeed, can we? But this brings me onto my second criticism of Bostrom's book. Bostrom is more than willing to imagine a superintelligence that is so powerful, it would breach any containment we could put it in simply by smooth-talking the security gaurds. And yet, Bostrom cannot imagine a superintelligence that is so smart that it would realise humans do not want to be murdered or enslaved or otherwise made to suffer. He cannot comprehend that, by the rules of his own game, the superintelligence would be smart enough to fully understand that controlling a superintelligence is a hard task, and that humans are probably going to screw up. This is all to say, the superintelligence Bostrom imagines is one that is pretty fucking dumb.

I will end on some more minor gripes. Bostrom does not define what intelligence is. He assumes, like many AI people, that intelligence is a measurable quantity, like fuel. You can fill the tank of intelligence up, and the bigger the tank, the more intelligence. But this is not what intelligence is at all. Intelligence is socially contingent. It is, on the one hand, effective adaption to circumstances. On the other, it is something we, as people, construct between us. We admire the person who can solve a Rubik's cube. We say they're smart. Maybe. But they're also really dumb in many other ways. Having a PhD means people think I am smart. My wife knows I am actually very stupid. To speak of 'superintelligence' is to betray a total failure to grasp what intelligence actually is (hence why Bostrom's superintelligence is actually very dumb). Another gripe: this book is just really boring. It is not even a particularly long book, but one gets the feeling that Bostrom is just padding the wordcount throughout. His good material is used up too soon; the rest is a slog. As a bit of fun, I thought to look up what tech people thought of Superintelligence. I assumed they would totally disagree with me, and like good churchgoers, appreciate the theological text. What I found, much to my amusement, was a lot of tech people who had clearly been told they needed to read this book, who just thought it was really boring.

Conquest of Abundance, Paul Feyerabend

This is my least favourite of Feyerabend's books. As I understand it, Conquest of Abundance is not a complete work, but a compilation of sorts based on Feyerabend's notes and draft chapters at the point of his death. I've never found Feyerabend to be too easy to read. One needs to work at Feyerabend's philosophy. And so, I struggled quite a lot with this book, owing to the lack of any scaffolding to help a reader along. The crux of Feyerabend's thesis--a thesis that can be found in essentially all of Feyerabend's book, bar (perhaps) Killing Time--is that there exist a multitude of 'ways of knowing' within the human experience. Each of these 'ways of knowing' can endow valuable insights, both insofar as they allow us to understand and manipulate the world, and insofar as they give us, as individuals, meaning within the world. Feyerabend's 'concern' (perhaps this is too strong a word?) is that rationalism and modern science seeks to dominate all other 'ways of knowing'; to render all other 'ways of knowing' as somehow primitive, or illegitimate, or some other flavour of pagan. Hence, the titular conquest is the conquest of the plural world by rationalist science, while the titular abundance is this plurality that is now threatened, in the modern world.

This is a perspective I have a lot of sympathy with. It is a powerful idea, and one that now (perhaps more than ever) needs to be articulated, as artificial intelligence threatens many 'ways of knowing', while simultaneously the world's crises demand a plurality of perspectives beyond the rationalist science that has brought us to this cliff egde (e.g., aborginal knowledge about ecosystem management, a perspective only recently recognised by the IPCC as being important to achieving a sustainable planet). Unfortunately, being in the form that it is, I do not think Conquest of Abundance is that text. We cannot know what Feyerabend would have produced had he lived. I am sure something more coherent, more forceful, and less repetitive than the manuscript we readers have found ourselves with. But, at the same time, I personally think Feyerabend's other books (particular Science in a Free Society, perhaps Feyerabend's least favourite of his own books) already do a good job of making this argument. What is needed now is probably not another manifesto pushing Feyerabend's ideas--perhaps he knew this. What is needed, I think, is a more forceful, more conscious synthesis and resurrection of Feyerabend within science and the social sciences.

The Irrational Decision, Benjamin Recht

There is a very good chance that The Irrational Decision will come to be my favourite book of this year. I stumbled across it while browsing the new releases of Princeton University Press; took an interest given decision-making and technology are within my research wheelhouse; and grabbed a copy when I found it quite reasonably discounted online. I have subsequently come to discover that while not being a 'hit' in the mainstream sense of the word, Recht's book has garnered something of an audience, and has popped up in a couple of academic bookshops I've browsed while on different campuses. This is all to say, I found this book first! Anyway...

I went into this book knowing nothing about it, including little about the author. Recht's thesis is that a serious of technosocial developments throughout the twentieth century have brought us, now in the twenty-first century, to a state of technological and political crisis. To use my own words, the technological assemblage that now surrounds and consumes us instills in key decision-makers a doubly false sense of confidence and control. In the first instance, a confidence in knowing (e.g., through prediction) matters that are fundamentally unknowable and uncertainty. In the second instance, a confidence that such an assemblage can actually be built because humans are sufficiently malleable to the demands of technology. Too many people believe both these things. Recht argues we should not, and I very much agree with him.

The weakest part of the book is the discussion of randomised controlled trials, an area of techno-rationality I know quite well, and perhaps have a bit more confident in talking about (and critiquing) compared to Recht (as I would come to discover). Similarly, there are various comments related to behavioural science and decision-making that I felt Recht could have elaborated more upon, and developed further (I have communicated my specific comments to Recht in writing). For instance, I have long been telling anyone who will listen that behavioural science must be understood as a kind of technology, and seen within a twentieth century historical context alongside the rationalisation of everything else through scholars taking an increasing computationalised and calculating mindset. Behavioural science is, in some aspects, just a bastardised and ill-informed continuation of the worse tendencies of cybernetics and artificial intelligence research. It is why, today, some of the biggest cheerleaders of AI seem to be behavioural science people. But too many, in my opinion, are ignorant of the intellectual foundations that make this marriage of fields possible, but also dangerous.

I have gone on a tangent again. Back to The Irrational Decision. The best parts about the book are some of the discussions of machine learning and AI. The depth and knowledge displayed here was impressive; much more impress than many others I have read on the topic. After finishing the book, I assumed Recht was some kind of social science philosopher of technology type, or maybe a historian of technology. I was surprised to discover that he is actually a computer science. As far as I can tell, this is his first step into the 'social science' pond, so to speak. I think The Irrational Decision is, therefore, something of a triumph. Though I should emphasise that it would be a triumph either way; this is an excellent book, and alongside Jill Lepore's If, Then is essential reading for any scholar of modern behavioural technologies.

The Great Leveler, Walter Scheidel

I have previously read another book in Joel Mokyr's series on economic history, that being Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. That book made some interesting points, but was a bit overlong, and at times, too dense for any real enjoyment. Scheidel's The Great Leveler can, I think, be accused of the same thing. Scheidel's thesis is that economic inequality has not, historically, been substantially reduced except by some kind of calamitious event, such as war or disease. This thesis, grim though it is, holds some degree of appeal to a kind of 'big brained' commentator who, really, just holds quite conservative views. There is a reason Janan Ganesh, my favourite FT columnist, gave this book a positive cover quote.

Does Scheidel's thesis hold? Probably, to some extent. I am neither an expert on inequality, nor on the various stages of economic history that Scheidel explores. I have no doubts that terrible events have, by way means or another, seen the equalising of economoc prosperity amongst members of a community. My critique, though, is very much how this whole narrative is put together. Firstly, Scheidel's apparent 'four horsemen' of the apocalypse are actually not that strongly defined. It seems like the narrative--only bad things reduce inequality--has come before a robust conceptual framework. Disease, for instance, reduces inequality. It is the favourite fact of those same big brained commentators that the Black Death increased peasant wages, owing to a reduction in the number of peasants available to work. Great (in a manner of speaking)! But disease is a natural phenomenon--it is, we might say, an exogenous equaliser. Scheidel alos states that war and state collapse--through things like revolution--lead to equalisation. These are also considered horsemen. But these are not all that comparable to disease, because people make war, and people make revolution. And people do these things for reasons. These are endogenous equalisers.

Scheidel hardly explores this dynamic. In my opinion, the reason is that a recognition of endogeneity also means recognising that people can actually do something about inequality. In the first instance, people can rebel, fight wars, destroy one another--stuff Scheidel does not want (and neither do I...). But in the second instance, if we recognise that there are human reasons that bring people to rebel--for instance, exploitation and poverty--or to war--for instance, economic pressures derived from a capitalist system--we could take proactive steps to respond to these reasons. We could reduce inequality because we understand the human consequences of not doing so. But herein lies the danger that, intentionally or not, Scheidel's narrative is trying to hide. If we believe that only bad things reduce inequality, and that these bad things are natural, rather than determined by deliberate actions, then a whole range of ideas--such as redistributive taxes, or more generous public provisions--are taken off the table. Bizarrely, Scheidel's thesis can lead one to conclude that the person who demands lower inequality or either a fool, a monster, or both. They are foolish for thinking that something can be done. They are monstrous for willing the evils that produce equalisation upon us. So, we ought do nothing.

This whole dynamic comes out in, say, Scheidel's discussion of the second world war, a time of economic equalisation. Scheidel attributes this to war. But he then proceeds to discuss how an anger, politicised public demanded greater social provision, security, and welfare. It was these provisions, supported by constraints on capital and progressive taxation, that resulted in reduced inequality. Scheidel recognises this policy mechanism. But he attributes the end result--lower inequality--to war, not to social demoncracy. War, for Scheidel, was the cause, social democracy only the vehicle. Do you, dear reader, see the political implications of this narrative packaging? It is true that great suffering has often given rise to great hope. But it is a false, cynical perspective to suggest that hope without suffering is impossible.

How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle, Jonas Ceika

I have long rated Jonas Ceika's YouTube channel for its clarity, while refusing to avoid tricky topics or complex subjects. Ceika has a gift for clarity. It comes through in this book (the title of which is far too long). I had no major expectations for the book, beyond knowing that it was going to feature some discussion of Marx and Nietzsche. Ceika is quite open in the introduction about what he wishes to do with his book. It will not be a new primer on either thinker, nor a frontation between two philosophers who, historically, have been positioned as polar opposites on a great many issues. Instead, Ceika argues that the ideas of Marx, rather than being studied, must be applied and updated to our present moment. He suggests that Nietzsche may provide the philosophical tools for such application and updating.

So begins Ceika's task. The book thus precedes largely as Ceika, firstly, arguing that the philosophical distance between Marx and Nietzsche is not always so great. For instance, there is an interesting discussion of Nietzsche's criticisms of socialism, which Ceika suggests actually mirrored many of Marx's criticisms of some socialist perspectives. From my reading, two things stuck out to me. Firstly, Marx's emphasis on material reality, and Nietzsche's emphasis on experience and fortitude within that material reality. Ceika suggests that Nietzsche can help us go beyond simply screaming 'material conditions' and, in a manner of speaking, begin to appreciate how material conditions just in various ways, to confront the challenges set before us by the capitalist system. Secondly, Ceika makes an interesting argument that Nietzsche can recentre the individual within the socialist project. This is not a call for individualism over a sense of shared struggle or solidarity. Rather, it is to remember (as Lenin lamented towards the end of his life) that the goal of socialism and communism is the liberation of the individual, broadly defined. This liberated individual, though, is not the individual of today. For me to be liberated as an individual right now, in this moment, would mean a tremendous amount of domination of my fellow human being. A liberated individual, under socialism, is also one who is necessarily a changed individual, one that understands that relations to material reality, and their interdependencies upon other human beings. In this sense, Ceika reformulates Nietzsche's ubermensch for the social revolution: the ubermensch can go through the revolution, can (necessarily) be changed by it, but can remember the goal of liberation for the human race, not of domination under an alternative set of economic relations.

So, I enjoyed Ceika's book. Much more, in fact, than I anticipated (this is a theme, for me, of Repeater Books). Though, I do find myself struggling to catalogue this book in my own head. By which I mean, what do these ideas mean to me? Why are they important? How do they develop my thinking on matters? Right now, I am during a bit of a blank. To this end, Ceika's book is perhaps one I should, some day, return to. It feels like a book that would benefit from a second read, such is the depth of thought, despite the clarity of argument.

Automation and the Future of Work, Aaron Benanav

In last quarter's review (I think), I went off on something of a tangent about Verso Books, and a particular era spanning 2015-2020ish. Basically, in my opinion, this era was defined by interesting books that ultimately said the same thing, and very little to boot. Many were about technology, as the Left begin to grasp the totalising impact of the digital revolution, but (in my opinion) still grapsed around the dark for an appropriate critique (one that has settled, in my opinion, in something that is both oppositional to technology but that places this opposition in relation to physical space, and the people within those spaces). I must confess, I am beginning to revise this position somewhat. Between Greenfield's Radical Technologies and now Benanav's Automation and the Future of Work, I have come to think that the 'problem' with this era was perhaps a problem with me, rather than Verso Books (I mean, it obviously is).

As an editorial note, I think Benanav's book suffers from its title. So many books were published around 2019 about automation and the future of work, it led me (and perhaps others) to dismiss this book as something I had basically already read. When I stumbled across the book in a charity shop, its length hardly sold the book to me, either. At only 99 pages, the book barely qualifies as a book. Verso has some history of publishing vanity essays as books for those authors that it, and presumably its readership, really like. I worried this was one of those instances, too. Nevertheless, for a couple of pounds, it seemed worth the risk. For 99 pages, it seemed worth the time.

Benanav makes two very interesting arguments. Firstly, he suggests that rather than technology driving job losses, a more compelling explanation is a crisis of overproduction within global capitalism. This is quite a standard Marxist analysis; it is why it will rarely be entertained (even to be dismissed) in many other discussions of technological automation effects. Improved productivity in manufacturing, coupled with satiation of needs in some parts of the world, is likely to create overproduction of goods, in turn, seeing a shrinking of industries and the loss of jobs. This need not be because of technology. Rather, it is because of an exhaustion of effective demand for goods, a problem Marxists have previously identified in ideas such as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. If correct (and I do not consider myself qualified enough to judge, only to ponder), it would radically transform how the computer revolution should be understood, and what the economic policies (as well as outlook) for the global economy should be. Secondly, Benanav argues the historical evidence suggests only manufacturing is capable of delivering meaningful growth to economies. Productivity growth in services simply is not very good. If true, this also explains the crisis of overproduction, as developing economies must all invest in manufacturing capacity, leading to a glut of goods. It also explains why computer technologies, despite the hype and the promises, have failed to deliver transformative economic outcomes, while producing transformative social outcomes. Jobs have become more service-orientated, while the quality of that work has declined (the social transformation). But the productiveness of those jobs has barely moved (something I concur with, based on my reading of Robert Gordon, Thomas Landauer, and others).

For a short book, there is much to reflect upon in Automation and the Future of Work. I hold my hands up to my earlier dismissing of it. While I am not personally settled on some of the arguments, they continue to swirl around in my head. I think they should swirl around in the heads of others, too.

Control Science, Henry Snow

Control Science is a relatively new publication from Verso. I was quite excited to read Henry Snow's book. I thought it would be a good discussion of modern management practices, and how technology is shaping management practices. The book is, after all, called control science; I imagined there would be some expounding on the modern science of control. Instead, Control Science is just a history of management as an idea. It is quite a good book. It is well-written, and I enjoyed reading it. I will certainly cite it in future work. These kinds of resources are valuable. But I'm also not sure this book told me much that was very new, at least to me. I expected there to be more time given over to algorithmic management practices, for instance. To the rise of bullshit work. To alternative management practices and forms of organisation. Instead, the book largely follows what we might call the 'Benthamite' history of management, from workers as units of control to workers as assets to be optimised. I would have pushed for more, given that Harry Braverman made an array of similar points fifty years prior. Maybe I am being mean? If so, I should reiterate: I enjoyed this book. But I felt it could have also been more than it is.

Audit Culture, Cris Shore and Susan Wright

I have, in recent years, been very interested in how managers use technologies. But specifically, how they use them badly, wastefully, or for stupid things. More specifically still, how managers deceive themselves into thinking that bad, wasteful, or stupid activities are actually productive. To this end, I brought Shore and Wright's book Audit Culture. Audit, or surveillance of workers more generally, is one of the main uses of information technologies in workplaces today. It is also, for the most part, one of the most wasteful applications of these technologies. Yet, conveying a feeling of control to managers, it feels highly productive, if not valuable. I was interested in a more sociological take on audit, to see how (or if) it aligned with my more economic assessment of the control technologies.

I do not think Audit Culture was quite that. Shore and Wright were frequent in implying some element of uselessness surrounding audit. But they were much more interested in exploring how audit, regardless of its uses, shapes people and organisations. They make the point that, increasingly, we expect to be audited. Increasingly, audit is essential, not because it produces any value in itself, but because audit has become a ritual of most workplaces. We like rituals, and we feel dislocated without them. The computer that watches us is also, in a manner of speaking, a friend that is by our side as we go through the work day. This, though, should not imply that Audit Culture is forgiving of audit. The authors most certainly are not. They (correctly) highlight the links between audit and the marketisation of almost everything. If everything is subject to competitive, market forces, then everything must be optimised. If everything must be optimised, than data must be collected to identify the most optimal approach, while control must be exercise to ensure compliance with this approach. That surveillance and audit achieve both simultaneously is just convenient.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I feel Audit Culture is the type of book a larger, less academic publisher like Verso ought to be publishing. I also feel the book would benefit from that opportunity to reach a less academic audience. The writing is, at times, quite stiff, which is a shame given the subject matter is relatable and could be a source of animation for many people. Shore and Wright also fall into the sad cliche of writing too much about the university. It is a classic trope in this world, but one that I worry ultimately harms the final argument. Yes, the university is an important organisation in the neoliberal world, and an organisation that has experienced the transformative effects of market logic in a more obvious manner than some other organisational types. It is not an invalid subject to analyse. But it also gives the impression a) of a professor who does not really want to leave their bubble; and b) of a professor who sees their research also as a chance to complain about their job. All these things can be true simultaneously. But how much more interesting, and compelling, perhaps, to hear the testimony of audit culture from a fast food perspective, from an oil rig, and so on?

After the Fact, Marcus Gilroy-Ware

A few years ago I read Gilroy-Ware's book Filling the Void. I didn't have high expectations for that book. I assumed it would be another run-of-the-mill commentary on the evils of social media, perhaps with some liberal paranoia through in. I bought it, mostly, because it was published by Repeater Books, a left-wing publisher that (in my opinion) has put out some really good titles. Anyway, after a while of leaving Filling the Void to gather dust, I picked it up, and read it quite quickly. I really enjoyed it. Mostly because it was nothing like what I expected. Gilroy-Ware was very clear and cutting about his perspective on social media: that social media itself was the symptom of a wider disease of alienating, destructive late-stage capitalism. Furthermore, rather than indulging the liberal paranoia about social media, Gilroy-Ware challenged it head on: that the paranoia was the response of a liberal (political economic) class that had condoned the social media revolution, bought into its ideals, and the pervading capitalist logic that surrounded it, and now horrified at the results, were unable to bring themselves to update their beliefs. It could not be they who were wrong; it was the children.

It was after this positive experience that I bought Gilroy-Ware's next book, After the Fact, focusing on misinformation. And the story repeats. It was published by Repeater. It sat on my pile for a while (*cough* years). I read it out of guilt. I had preconceived notions and prejudices. I enjoyed it very much.

Those who know me academically might know that I hate the topic of misinformation. I find it incredibly boring. I am not especially impressed by any of the research in the space. My reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, much like social media, I see misinformation--and its prevalence--as a symptom of an alienating, failing political economic system. Misinformation is not really about tricking people. There is no one who, upon seeing a piece of fake news, changes their voting preferences. The only people who conceivably do are those who were preconditioned to do so, by losing their job, seeing their kids struggle, being unable to access secure housing or put food on the table, and so on. Misinformation, as a social phenomenon and weapon, is not about tricking people, but about undermining the integrity of the information landscape. This is an idea I've adapted from various theories of protest that focus on heightening uncertainties within structures of power. A person whose world is shit, whose economic prospects are shit, wants to understand why. They are willing to understand. They are, at best, susceptible to ways of understanding. If one can undermine the information landscape, so that some people become fascists and others double-down on the current structures of power, or become obsessed with political theory or revolutions that are more Les Miserables than reality, one can fracture solidarity and collective struggle. This might benefit a nation's adversaries; more likely, it will benefit those making life shit, which is to say, the powerful within the existing power structures. Misinformation studies--at least the bit I've been exposed to--does not care or even think about any of this. It is 'apolitical', acting as the science so that the politics may be ignored. It individuates the social causes of misinformation, and prescribes either individual interventions, or increasing state-led regulatory clampdowns. Cures (tentatively described) for symptoms, not for the disease. The reason for this is a combination of honest ignorance--the scientist views social problems as problems of science, just as everything is a nail when one carries a hammer--and convenience--the popular press, elite institutions, and politicians are unlikely to endorse prescriptions that challenge them, their actions, and their complacency. To this end, I think misinformation studies is largely a dead-end; an artifact of a too-late liberal social science mindset, in the end of too-late capitalism. The second reason I dislike misinformation studies is the lack of curiosity around philosophy of science and epistemology. It is quite bold--indeed, I might even say quite a display of power--to label something as misinformation. It is certainly normative to assert, say, that a belief in the flat Earth is someone bad, or dangerous, or in need of correction (it very well might be; that is not my point). The reality is, there are many ways of knowing reality. There are many valid ways of knowing, and many valuable perspectives on issues. We cannot (or, perhaps, should not) go around trying to divine truth, or more often, assign the label of misinformation. Philosophers of science do not do this; they investigate how ideas of truth emerge and change. But misinformation studies, too often (again, from my exposure to the field) begins from a belief in truth; they we can know that something is misinformation. I do not like this perspective. If someone believes something is misinformation, I am much more interested in exploring how they reached that determination (philosophically), rather than why someone else might believe it.

Rant over. But the reason for the rant, in a way, is to provide background to articule why I like After the Fact. Gilroy-Ware's "truth about fake news" is very much a disease, not symptom, perspective. He understands that misinformation is a easy excuse for structural failings of the political economy. That ideas such as 'truth' and 'fake news' are relative ideas--all news is propaganda, and to an extent, might be called misinformation. Gilroy-Ware calls this out. He is much more interested in how a culture of misinformation has developed in the West. In why we have become obsessed with the notion of information war in the aftermath of a financial crisis, collapse in living standards, and a pandemic. He does not argue that misinformation is not a problem, in the same way that I believe misinformation is a tool for exploiting fraying social bonds. But he argues that misinformation is not the problem of our time. In many ways, misinformation is a universal phenomenon, always there. If it is becoming corrosive now, it is because something else has changed in our social fabric. Gilroy-Ware's 'truth about fake news', therefore, is that fake news and misinformation are themselves propagandistic tools to distract and deflect from a political economy that no longer works for many of us. In short, I like this book because it says everything I already think about the topic. I'm sure a misinformation scholar will have much to say about this clear case of confirmation bias!

Empire of Deterrence, Michael Gardiner

Readers of this blog will know I have a macabre interest in nuclear war. So, when I saw Empire of Deterrence, with an atom bomb on the cover and its titular reference to the Cold War doctrine of deterrence, I was immediately interested. I knew nothing of the author or the book itself. But it was not too expensive, and it was from Repeater, who--as above--have been delivering good books in recent years. The book Empire of Deterrence turned out to be was not what I expected. Nevertheless, I still found it interesting, and enjoyable to read.

I thought the book would be something of a history and analysis of deterrence theory; of how game theory had emerged from RAND in the twentieth century and shaped Western attitudes to global affairs ever since. This would be in a manner of some of the discussion found in Benjamin Recht's The Irrational Decision, above. Empire of Deterrence was nothing of the sort--something I later learnt when I looked up the author, Michael Gardiner. Gardiner's book is an analysis of how the notion of nuclear weapons, nuclear apocalypse, and deterrence has shaped our cultural outlook towards authority and the role of the state. Before nuclear weapons, there was still some notion of the state as protecting us from foreign actors. But it was still possible, to an extent, to be an agent divorced from the state. To see the state as something you choose to participate in. To choose to believe in a paternalistic state, and to reject the authoritarian state, even at personal consequence. After nuclear weapons, the state becomes something else in the cultural imaginary. It becomes paternal insofar as it protects us from others who seek to destory us. But, given the stakes, it no longer hides its authoritarian priorities. The state becomes something we cannot escape, for we cannot escape the totalising destruction that the state can now bring about.

For Gardiner, this historically original moment has produced a cultural evolution. Nationalism and patriotism cease to be domestic political tools, but become pillars of national defence policy, and essential for the control of a population that is, in a manner of speaking, a mere inconvenience to the boys at the table, playing nuclear war. Hence, you tell the population to duck and cover, to build backyard bomb shelters, to stockpile a few weeks' of food, and so on. All trivial, and you know it. But the trivial lies give the population--a constraint, something to be managed now rather than actually protected--the feeling that they're being looked after. But this is an old perspective on nuclear war, one grounded much more in the 1950s. Gardiner then explores a more modern inflection of this point. What does nuclear war do to a culture when the inescapble, totalising state itself is in decay? Or, in other words, how does nuclear war become an expression of a decaying social democracy that one must still tie one's mast to? For answers to these questions, I suggest one read the book. But to even arrive at these questions, and to understand the relationship between nuclear weapons and culture in such a way, I think is demonstrative of inspired thinking. This is a strange, peculiar book. It is the kind of book I would recommend, not because I know someone will enjoy it, or get something out of it, but because I am interested to see them wrestle with such interesting ideas, too.

Korolev, James Harford

Korolev, like Superintelligence, has been something of an albatross around my neck for a while. It has sat on the to-read pile for so long, gathering dust and taunting me with it horrible cover, that I was determine to finally clear it, from the pile and from my mind. Unlike Superintelligence (as above, a book I did not particularly enjoy), I probably would not have chosen to buy Korolev had I not, at the time, been struck by insatiable curiosity. In part, this is because I found the book to be a bit of a slog. The many Russian names do not help finding a rhythm in the reading. But, more notably, the narrative and timeline for the book is not that clear. Harford chooses to focus on individual projects undertaken by Korolev--rockets, satellites, manned space flight, space walks--rather than the chronology of all these things. The result is that, in one chapter, a big new rocket is the high drama point: can Korolev do it? But, in the next, Gagarin's flight is the high drama point, and we learn that it had happened before the development of the high new rocket we were previously primed to care about. But, for most non-rocket scientists, the latter is much more important than the former! I have to imagine that the tension and pace in this book would have been better had the story of Korolev been told chronologically. Imagine the feeling the reader would receive having to hold in their minds the various, highly ambitious and dangerous projects Korolev was working on at the same time. The discomfort would have also made the book a vehicle for feeling how Korolev must have thought every day, and in turn, made the book more captivating than it was. Though, I feel I must put in this caveat: this is a book for rocket scientists, written by a rocket scientist. This is another reason why I would probably not buy Korolev, given the choice again: it does not feel like it was written for me.

Small is Beautiful, Ernst Schumacher

Sometimes, I read books and I get a sense that what I am reading will be very intellectually important to me. I had that feeling with Brain of the Firm. But with that book, the sense was more that it is an interesting general reference book; a bit like Simon's Sciences of the Artificial, Brain of the Firm is a book that says a lot, meaning it can be used to say a lot, hence its intellectual importance to me. Small is Beautiful is important to me in a different way. In some ways, an awful lot of Small is Beautiful is him saying the same thing over and over in different ways: that small is beautiful (duh). This is not dissimilar to the style of Ivan Illich, the first of many comparisons I am going to make between Illich and Schumacher. The importance of Schumacher's book is in what it is saying, over and over. For me, Schumacher captures and articulates Illich's notion of conviviality more clearly than Illich ever did over his various texts. That is what I find important about Schumacher.

Now, Illich developed a set of concepts around conviviality that I think, ultimately, is more substantial than Schumacher. I think Schumacher, though, was better at tapping into and disrupting economic discussions, something that Illich seems to have never meaningfully achieved. This is to say, I do not think Schumacher understands conviviality better than Illich, or that Illich entirely embodies Schumacher's ideas. I think the two need to be brought together. As I understand it, there has been limited exploration of this space. On the topic of conviviality, the best thing Schumacher does it articulate the notion of natural limits and natural scales better than Illich does. Illich argues there is a natural limit or a natural scale to technology, beyond which technologies cease to empower people, and instead start to dominate them. This limit is kept vague--how could we possibly measure it. Schumacher cuts through this noise. For him, the limit is can be understood almost like a barrier to entry: technologies should be cheap, work well at small scales, and not inhibit other human endeavours. I like the clarity Schumacher offers.

It is difficult to write my thoughts on Small is Beautiful, though, because it is still a book I am thinking a lot about, and in an unsettled way. Besides the link to Illich and conviviality, here are some more rogue thoughts. Firstly, I can see the religiousity of the book quite clearly. Schumacher emphasises the importance of a spiritual as well as material understanding of the economy, and the world. I am conscious that Illich, a catholic priest, also--though less directly--emphasises an aspect of spiritually, of inherent human nature that modernity distorts. I am conscious of the dangers of such ways of thinking. But I am, finally, also conscious of the ongoing dangers of an economic outlook devoid of spirituality and premised solely, painfully, on the accumulation of material resources. There is a balance to be struck, as Skidelsky and Skidelsky have noted in How Much is Enough?. Secondly, related to spirituality, Schumacher has various ideas about human fulfilment that I find interesting. For instance, he suggests that fulfilling work strikes a balance between physical and cognitive labour, but also between what he calls convergent and divergent tasks. Convergent tasks have a clear answer. Divergent tasks do not; value comes from the exploration of multiple, competing outcomes. I want to think more about this, and perhaps do some research in this space in the future.

Aristocracy, William Doyle

Finally, we turn to William Doyle's Aristocracy. I am increasingly interested in the transition period between feudalism and capitalism. In part, of course, this is to theorise a transition beyond capitalism. But it is more so valuable, to me, so as to understand the evolution of power within capitalism. To this end, I thought Doyle's book would be broader than it was, focusing on the aristocracy throughout Europe. Instead, Aristocracy is really just a history of the French Revolution. But it is still very informative and interesting. Doyle gives economic details about the freedoms (and unfreedoms) of the aristocracy in France, which give more of a shape to the revolution that some explicitly left-wing interpretations that see the revolution as a revolt against absolute monarchy. Doyle argues that the monarchy could have survived provided the alliance between the aristocracy and the state could be maintained. But the state had, over many years, had to undermine this alliance, and had in turn created fracture points within the aristocracy. For Doyle, far from the rising power of the bourgouisie overwhelming the aristocracy (though, of course, this was a factor), it was more the bourgouisie pushing against a door that some in the aristocracy were already holding open. This is interesting insofar as one seeks to understand the revolutionary moment. A powerful revolutionary class must exist to seize the moment. But a fracture in the ruling class must exist to create that moment of seizure (something similar appears to have happened in the October Revolution).

A rogue thought, and probably a silly one: in some ways, the geriatric class within many Western economies resemble the old aristocracy. They demand ever more from the state, and take--in turn--from the economically active. They demand a degree of respect based on nothing but the virtues of age (in the same way aristocrats demand privilege on the basis of birth), and influence politics in their almost exclusive 'class' interests, much to the chigrin of their younger equals within the society. And, finally, they are trapped within their economic dependence, and thus alliance, with the state. Just as aristocrats, by definition, were those who lived off rents rather than working, retirees, by definition, are those who do not work. I wonder (and again, this is probably a silly comparison) whether the historical insights into the aristocracy could be used to understand, and perhaps project, the current intergenerational tension found in many ageing societies?