Technology

Review: The Tech Coup

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Cover image of "The Tech Coup" by Marietje Schaake

The Tech Coup

The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake. Princeton University Press (ISBN: 9780691241197) 2025.

Summary: An expose’ of how tech companies have seized power from government and the danger this poses to the public interest.

At one point last year, big tech firms accounted for 40 percent of the gains in the U.S. stock market. In the last few years, over 150 data centers have popped up on rich farmland in Central Ohio. It seems most residents only woke up to the significance of this boom when they learned this would more than double power demands on our power grid, leading to rising costs for “infrastructure enhancement.” Much of this has been driven by the tremendous resource demands of Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency. And there are a number starting to ask how this high tech juggernaut has gained so much literal and cyber space in our culture. Increasingly, many realize a small number of huge tech firms are driving this tech revolution, wanted or not.

Marietje Schaake is a tech insider. As a member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2019, she was part of an effort to establish guardrails on the burgeoning tech industry’s footprint in Europe. More recently, she moved to Silicon Valley to continue these efforts as international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. She is also an international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence. The basic message of this book is that these tech industries have engaged in a power grab. They have subverted government efforts to establish guardrails, even while supposedly pleading for them. This poses great risks to our democratic interests and to the interests of the public. And it is a plea for governments to assert their proper role of oversight to protect the public interest.

Schaake opens with how online technology, once a means of free speech, has been transformed into a means of surveillance. It even extends across international borders. Even the smartphones most of us carry are used to track our movements. How has something touted to be so beneficial, and in fact is, also become so dangerous. Schaake argues that this is a result of “the code” of these companies that resists efforts for external regulation. She then seeks to delineate the layers of our digital infrastructure, “the stack.”

Furthermore, the whole infrastructure has been turned into a weapon. “Zero day” vulnerabilities in code render all systems subject to cyberattack. Cyber trading of cryptocurrencies can make and unmake fortunes. Datamining can scrape all kinds of private data for law enforcement, a form of illegal search and seizure. And social media platforms combined with AI can generate huge and convincing amounts of misinformation. Meanwhile, the same tech industry seeks to frame the conversation as over-regulatory governments stifling the advance of new and beneficial technologies, even while tech company interests have supplanted the public interest.

The final part of the book is a call for international governments to reassert their role, not to stifle technology, but to ensure that it serves the public interest. This especially needs to engage the world’s four major digital powers: the U.S., the EU, India, and China. That seems challenging because of differing political situations and priorities. Finally, she argues for prioritizing the public. This includes curbing anti-democratic technology: spyware, databrokers, facial recognition, and cryptocurrency. She advocates for transparency and public accountability and the creation of public digital infrastructure.

The strength of this book is its analysis of how Big Tech has gained such a dominant influence. Likewise, as an insider, she offers great insights of how Big Tech maintains and extends its influence. The challenge is the role of government in protecting democratic institutions. It seems the EU has done the most. In the U.S., however, it feels like Big Tech has paid in the form of political contributions to avoid regulation. Furthermore, it is most troubling to see the selective vigilance over the weaponization of digital resources. We fight TikTok while actually utilizing anti-democratic technology. Furthermore, we are not preparing for cyberattacks.

Part of the challenge is the complexity. Perhaps a start is using the lens of the public good consistently throughout. The question, I think, is how to mobilize public advocacy, which the author doesn’t discuss. Such advocacy is proving effective on particular issues, like curbing datacenters, perhaps one of the most visible aspects of Big Tech. But what about those that are less visible?

Schaake’s book, nevertheless, offers crucial analysis of the whole industry and the dangers it poses. And pointing to the question of the public interest seems crucial. And that is a good beginning.

Review: Conscientious Objections

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Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education, Neil Postman. New York: Vintage, 1992.

Summary: A collection of essays of social criticism, considering our communications media and rhetoric, education and its purpose, and technology and how it shapes society.

It has been some time since I’ve read Neil Postman. Twenty years ago, I appreciated his trenchant critique of television and how it was making us dumb, long before critiques of the internet, and of his concerns about how technology was shaping modern society. This collection of essays, which I’ve finally gotten around to reading, revisits some of the same themes, but what I found different (or perhaps didn’t remember) is the biting wit of these essays–these feels like Neil Postman unfiltered–or at least less filtered. Many were originally spoken presentations, which perhaps accounts for some of the difference.

He opens with a critique of the idea of “social science” and would place himself in the camp of those who deny that this is a science at all, calling it “moral theology.” He includes himself in his critique and argues that “social scientists” are story tellers, reminding us in fresh ways of the nature of the human condition and the character of human society. He then considers the purpose of education. Is it to inculcate our culture or to defend us against it? He would argue for the latter and particularly the importance of teaching an awareness of the nature, uses, and power of language.

At times, he can be tongue-in-cheek, as in his essays “The Naming of Missiles” and “The Parable of the Ring Around the Collar” (some of us remember this and other commercials, to which he alludes). He treats these as modern redemption tales. “Megatons for Anthromegs,” “Future Schlock,” “Safe-Fail,” and “My Graduation Speech” are additional examples.

As in Amusing Ourselves to Death, there are several essays on the influence of television on our habits of discourse. “A Muted Celebration,” on the two hundredth anniversary of The Columbian, discussing the decline of literary magazines with the rise of other media. “The News” explores the problems inherent in trying to cover the news of the day on television in 22 minutes or less (I wonder what he would have thought of 24/7 news outlets). “Remembering the Golden Age” considers the period of 52 minute plays written for television by the likes of Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling and Gore Vidal for series such as The Kraft Television Theatre.

Many of the tongue-in-cheek essays discuss the language games we play to deceive or cover despicable things in sanitary language. In one essay, he highlights a thinker, Alfred Korzybski, who he believes deserves more attention, because he “helped to heighten our awareness of the role of language in making us what we are and in preventing us from becoming what we ought to be but are not yet.”

Perhaps worth the price of admission is his essay on “The Disappearance of Childhood.” If you have not read Amusing Ourselves to Death, this essay argues how our new media are contributing to the destruction of the idea of childhood, treating children as little adults, or indiscriminately exposing them to the adult.

This collection is a good introduction to Postman’s longer works, covering in brief many of the themes he develops in greater length in them. Reading him thirty years down the road, I’m struck with how prescient he was in many respects, anticipating how media shapes us (even before social media) and how technology is not neutral but value-laden. He anticipates the decline of print media, and warns us of the dangers of the manipulation of language, so much the greater in our “post truth” generation. While the book is dated, it is a valuable piece of social history, indeed of “moral theology,” that indicates that we had been warned of what was coming.

Review: The Digital Public Square

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The Digital Public Square, Jason Thacker, editor. Brentwood, TN: B & H Academic, 2022.

Summary: A collection of essays exploring the contours and complexities of the digital public square, specific issues that have arisen, and the call of disciples as they engage the digital public square.

Nearly forty years ago, in The Naked Public Square, the late Richard John Neuhaus argued that we cannot strip the public square of belief, religious or otherwise. He argued for a public square practicing principled pluralism, where Christian belief, as well as others, had a place in public discussions. Today, much of our public square discussions occur on various online platforms in the digital world. For Christians who seek to carry forward Neuhaus’ project in this world, it is necessary to understand the nature of the digital public square and the issues that will confront one to frame a Christian engagement that is both faithful to Christ and cogent. That is the purpose of this volume of essays edited by Jason Thacker, the chair of research in technology ethics for the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The collection is organized into three parts. The first part, “Foundations” surveys the landscape of the digital public square. Thacker introduces the section with an essay, “Simply a Tool?” that explores the value-laden of our technology that must be critically appraised and not simply accepted. Bryan Baise looks at how our technology has changed the shape of our public square. Nathan Leamer and Patricia Shaw offer American and global perspectives respectively on governmental approaches to telecom law, AI, and privacy issue. David French concludes the section in his usual, carefully reasoned fashion, discussing the legal and policy issues of online governance and how difficult it is to ask the government to intervene in content moderation. In the end, he believes much of it comes down to personal responsibility rather than looking for government to save us from ourselves.

Part Two focus on “Issues.” Joshua B. Wester discusses religious liberty and freedom of speech essays in the digital context where individuals or groups can be “de-platformed” for expressing viewpoints that fall outside the character of publicly accepted ideas. As private entities platforms from Amazon to Twitter can do this with no avenue of recourse in many instances. In the case of Amazon and books, this can result in a significant revenue loss and essentially mute an author’s voice. Brooke Medina discusses the difficulties in the terminology of “hate speech” and in the policing of such speech online. Classic criteria allowed most speech other than that which actively incited or was likely to incite violence. Sometimes, online technologies such as YouTube have actively been used for such ends in other countries with tragic results. How then will Christians resist and report such speech while engaging in reconciliatory speech?

Jeremy Tedesco and Christiana Kiefer discuss content moderation policies, particularly as they have sometimes been applied to Christians affirming traditional sexual ethics and the experience of censorship in online discussions (I found it interesting that they did not discuss similar efforts of Christians in the realm of book challenges and bans). Bonnie Kristian discusses online pornography, the case for banning it and the difficulties, particularly the deleterious effects of having humans moderate content on their personal lives and emotional stability. We don’t like the idea of “bots” doing this but have we thought of how this effects humans. Much like David French, she argues for personal responsibility and virtue.

Jason Thacker contributes another quite fine essay on conspiracy theories and the “post truth” digital world. He returns to the idea of principled pluralism, the belief in and advocacy for truth, recognizing that others may see things differently but that this does not warrant a contempt for or the trivializing of truth. Olivia Enos explores the world of the “heavy handed” regimes that use digital technology to surveil citizens on one hand and to suppress access to information on the other. She particularly exposes the uses of digital technology of the Chinese in repressing their Uyghur minority and similar actions in Belarus. What is also disturbing is to read about how such regimes export this technology to others and, in contrast to American commitments to the free flow of information, seek to exercise cybersovereignty over their information.

Part Three considers the Church’s discipleship and witness in light of the digital public square. Jacob Shatzer considers the opportunities for and challenges to discipleship. While noting opportunities for digital community and digital education, he notes a number of problems: loneliness and paradoxically, never alone, being reduced to our data, enticements to idolatry, distraction, poor abilities to relate, and lacks of accountability. Shatzer does not seem to offer much in the way of remedy other than the call to follow Jesus is still binding and calls us to press through these things. Keith Plummer focuses on our witness before a watching world. He draws on the work of Francis Schaeffer, contending we must embrace two orthodoxies–one of doctrine and the other of loving communities. The truth is evident in the beauty of our relationships, leading Plummer to argue for the importance of the local and embodied presence amid the opportunity of virtual worlds.

Thacker, in an afterword acknowledges the challenge of such a book with the rapids changes of technology and illustrates it with noting the likelihood that Elon Musk wouldn’t acquire Twitter after all. There was a time when this looked to be so but that acquisition has in fact changed the landscape of platform moderation for all the social media companies. The book also preceded the rise of ChatGPT, and the implications for our digital public square of increasing amounts of AI generated content and product. My own sense is that we may not be able to see very far down the road but this book does help ask the question of how we will engage the digital public square, particularly recognizing the value-laden character of our technologies and platforms.

After the turmoil of the Trump presidency and the pandemic years, my sense is that we are taking a collective breather. With the approach of the 2024 elections, this is coming to an end. Now is the time for careful thought about how, as Christians, we will cogently and faithfully engage the digital public square in ways that uphold Christ and seek the common good. These essays offer a great place to begin.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Soonish

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Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. New York: Penguin Press, 2017.

Summary: A cartoonist and scientist team up to look at ten emerging technologies and the challenges, both scientific and moral, that are involved in bringing these into existence in the “soonish” future.

There are an abundance of futurist scenarios about technological innovations on the horizon that will change, and perhaps, enhance our lives. In this fun and informative book, a scientist and cartoonist team up to explore ten of these technologies, the challenges involved with realizing them, and some of the challenges they may pose for us. In a text that explains these technologies in easily grasped language and amusing cartoons that accompany the text, the authors explore these emerging technologies:

  • Cheap access to space
  • Asteroid mining
  • Fusion power
  • Programmable matter
  • Robotic construction
  • Augmented reality
  • Synthetic biology
  • Precision medicine
  • Bioprinting
  • Brain-computer interfaces

Each chapter explains the current state (in 2017) of the technology, the challenges to its realization, how it might make things terrible, and ways it might make things wonderful.

Under challenges, I learned how expensive it is to get anything into space, how difficult it would be to build a space elevator that would reduce this cost, the challenges of transport and radiation with asteroid mining, the difficulty at present of developing a fusion reactor that puts out more energy than involved in making it work, the problems with large scale robotic construction–contractors can still build a house more cheaply, the privacy issues of augmented reality and medical information, and the difficulties in bioprinting anything more complex than thin layers of tissues.

Under terrible outcomes are the environmental impact of all that rocket fuel, the dangers of moving asteroids into earth intercepting trajectories creating an extinction event, that fusion will always remain in the future because of how hard it is to do, that programmable matter can be hacked, that control of augmented reality falls in the wrong hands, that synthetic biology creates killer organisms, and the use of brain-computer interfaces in manipulative ways.

The other side is wonderful outcomes including space exploration, various mineral resources, cheap and clean fusion power, “smart” construction and objects, and new versions of organs entirely compatible with our bodies because they are based on our genetic materials, greatly extending life, and cures for cancer and neurological diseases.

There has always been this double-edged character to technology. The Weinersmiths help us think beyond the ballyhooed technologies and a wonderful new world to the challenges and possible downsides. They do all this with a light touch that neither sees technology as a panacea nor to always be shunned. As in the past, there are challenges to be surmounted as there were in the past–some which seemed insurmountable, until solutions were found. In some areas, it is surprising how much progress has been made–precision medicine for example.

The greatest challenge then seems the human one. We have both the capacity for great good and unspeakable evil and no technological advance promises to change that. We also are not always very good at predicting the unintended effects of what we do and often our technological fixes only solve one problem while creating others. Perhaps at best, we can be aware of these things and not think we will be better, smarter, or more prescient than our predecessors. Sometimes a bit of humility is a good thing.

Review: Work Pray Code

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Work Pray Code, Carolyn Chen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Summary: A sociologist studies how Silicon Valley tech firms bring religion into the workplace, replacing traditional religious institutions, blurring the line of work and religion.

I’ll just say it up front. Anyone who cares about the future of work needs to read this book. Carolyn Chen, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, spent 2013 to 2017 immersing herself in the tech world of Silicon Valley as a participant observer of the trend of incorporating religious practices into the work life of Silicon Valley companies. She did over 100 in-depth interviews and attended retreats, mindfulness sessions, and various “wellness” programs offered by companies.

What she observed was the expansion of work in these companies to fill the whole of workers lives. Many ate two to three meals a day at work, often catered by the companies, along with healthy snacks. They worked out in company gyms and walked on pathways, placed children in company daycare facilities, and learned meditation practices at company-sponsored retreats and used company-provided meditation spaces. For many of these workers, their place of work has become the source of personal, social, and spiritual fulfillment. At the same time, the involvement of many of these workers in traditional religious institutions and other community and civic institutions has waned.

What Chen chronicles at one level is corporate concern for the whole person. Yet underneath this, Chen discerns that so much of this concern for the “whole person” is driven by productivity concerns, to get the “whole person’s” devotion to the corporate mission. Workers spoke of “drinking the kool aid” in terms eerily reminiscent of cult-like groups, leading Chen to conclude that in many of these workers’ lives, their work is their religion.

The “religious” element draws from the meditative practices of Buddhism, shorn of the metaphysical and ethical content. A number of scientific and pseudo-scientific rationalizations are offered by the coaches and teachers who make up a “mindfulness” industry that offers services to these companies. Many are Zen teachers in temples who find this a way to support themselves, particularly as interest in the traditional religious institution wanes. The focus is on focus, helping people become fully attentive, self-aware, and present to their work. But Chen chillingly observes that an amoral “focus” can be turned both to life-enhancing work and to murder. For the teachers, it is a Faustian bargain, profitable contracts that vitiate the real religious content of their Buddhism–“replacing it with a universalized, Whitened, scientized, profitable, and efficient Buddhism.” Furthermore it is a thin religion that fails to challenge the unjust caste system in tech firms that offers these benefits to the elite tech workers, but not to the support staff.

Her concluding chapter addresses the dangers of what she calls “techtopia.” She describes the monopolization of human energy pulling people away from the communities where they live, from civic and religious involvements. She expresses her concern for what happen to communities when religious and civic institutions suffer. She also expresses concern for workers, who give themselves to this religion until they are used up, and really can’t leave this world, reinventing themselves as coaches when they can no longer bear the totalizing pull of the corporations. Individual “resistance” to this pull is not enough, in her view. She believes the answer is to invest in non-work communities–faith communities, neighborhoods, families, and civic associations.

Reading this work makes me think about whether what she describes in Silicon Valley is a picture of the future of work on a wider basis or whether this is a local phenomenon. I cannot help but think this is going to grow, although I also wonder how the trend to remote work resulting from the pandemic will affect this. Chen briefly touches on this, observing that remote work can actually contribute to work demanding even more of one’s life, as commute times are eliminated and one never “clocks out.” I also wonder if other industries that demand heavy investments of their workers might pursue similar strategies–for example, the health care industry.

The fusion of religion and work Chen describes occurs at a time when trust in religious institutions is at a low point and there is a “great resignation” going on among pastors and other religious leaders. Chen describes a spiritual hunger that suggests a great opportunity for religious institutions able to pivot. They can’t simply promote “butts in seats.” They have to address the big questions of meaningful life, humble and authentic communal life extending welcome and inclusion, and spiritual practices connecting the transcendent and every day life.

This work also implies an important discussion to be had about the renewal of our communities in an age of anomie, of the weakening of critical local institutions. The answer isn’t to be found in workplace or political cults. Many of our local communities are becoming combat zones that neither workplace or political cults can truly address. Only strong local institutions can do so–and this only if work is limited to its appropriate place in our lives, allowing the time to invest in the places where we live.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Riding High in April

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Riding High in April, Jackie Townsend. Phoenix: Sparkpress, 2021.

Summary: A freelance writer faces some crucial life choices as she joins her software entrepreneur partner of fifteen years in Asia as he tries to launch an innovative open-source platform.

Stuart is a software entrepreneur has developed an innovative open source platform enabling people to securely network in the “cloud.” He teams up with a classmate, Niraj, from India to form a company to pursue clients and venture capital, a move that has taken them to South Korea, pursuing a contract with a telecom as well as the first round of venture capital funding.

Marie, his partner of fifteen years has a gift of finding the words to help companies explain their products. She sets all that aside to join Stuart in Asia. She tells him, “I don’t want to be apart anymore.” Yet Stuart keeps leaving as he pursues contracts, deals with his business partner’s meltdown in a family crisis, the betrayal of co-workers, and ultimately that of Niraj. She follows as he tries to put out fires, and has several encounters that force her to question the premise on which her life the last fifteen years has been based.

The narrative is punctuated with episodes of Marie’s swimming. It is her attempt to teach a fearful young girl to swim and consulting with a swimming guru, that confront her with a realization about her own life and how she has made decisions.

Stuart has those moments that could be moments of insight. A heart to heart with a Japanese investor speaking to him about his health. A bite by a deadly tokay that became infected. His father’s loving words to him amid the father’s declining physical and mental health.

But the pursuit of the dream, the ability to solve problems, the inability to fail, and the refusal to settle for…what? The house on a beach with Marie?

It’s a story about two people approaching midlife faced with choices about the second half and what these will mean for their relationship. But this central thread seems to get obscured with highly technical dives into the world of open-source software, networks, clouds, and data and the opportunities for fortunes or failures. At first, I thought this was a tech thriller, but the story unfolds amid a seemingly endless round of meetings, pitch decks, the ordinary business reverses and betrayals, the crises and the pivots.

And this seems to be the problem with the execution of this story. The “deep dive” into tech seemed to be so fascinating to the author that the reader scratches one’s head trying to figure out what kind of story one is reading. Then it dawns on you that it is about the choices of growth (or not) of two people and what those choices will mean.

And that is an interesting idea, one many couples face as they move from the first half to the second half of life. Perhaps the “deep dive” reflects how one or both may become so obsessed with their work, their dream, that they lose sight of the other or even of themselves. But I can’t help but wonder how many readers will wade through the tech parts of this book and how many others who geek out on the tech will be disappointed that this was not the tech thriller they might have hoped for.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Test Gods

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Test Gods, Nicholas Schmidle. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2021.

Summary: An account of Virgin Galactic’s effort to become a space tourism company focusing on the intersection of Richard Branson’s vision and the work of test pilots and engineers to make it work.

On July 11, 2021, Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company achieved its first fully crewed flight with Branson aboard. This was the culmination of a seventeen-year program that began when Branson joined forces with Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites to design an air-launched space ship that would land like a plane. Test Gods traces this history through 2019, centered on one of the key test pilots throughout the program, Mark Stucky.

The author, Nicholas Schmidle, the son of an ace fighter pilot, was embedded with the company for four years, from 2014 to 2018 and became close to Stucky. He traces the design and testing of what was initially called Spaceship Two and the launch vehicle White Knight Two. Space vehicle development has been dotted with disasters and the Virgin Galactic program was no exception. He describes the tragedy of the fuel tank explosion during rocket development in 2007 in which three engineers died.

Then the testing program begins, first, captive flights, attached to White Knight Two, then glide flights and finally longer and longer rocket flights. Each pushes an unknown envelope that often comes with new control problems. Stucky does many of these, and the line between temporary losses of control or anomalies and disaster was a thin one. Each time leads to modifications that improve the vehicle.

Then came the setback that delayed the program several years and led to the separation of Virgin Galactic from Scaled Composites. On a flight Stucky did not fly in 2014, fellow test pilot Mike Alsbury had his first experience of going transonic in the vehicle, and in the exhilaration made the fatal error of deploying the “feather,” a kind of air brake that should not have been deployed during the transonic phase. Stucky saw it unfold in the control room, realized the fatal error that Alsbury was making, and witnessed the subsequent breakup of the vehicle. Alsbury died; his co-pilot Pete Siebold survived.

It wasn’t until 2016 that Virgin Galactic would fly. This gave time to address safety issues and pilot training arising from the crash. Stucky was a key, in setting a tone of rigor in flight training. Finally, on December 13, 2018, Stucky and co-pilot C.J. Sturckow reached Mach 3.0 and an altitude of 51.4 miles, and received their astronaut wings.

Schmidle explores what made Stucky so successful–the combination of risk and preparation. It turns out his most serious injuries were a couple paragliding episodes. His work destroyed his marriage and Schmidle explores his eventual reconciliation with his children, including son Dillon, present at that December 2018 flight. It also causes the author to reflect on his relationship with his own father, whose footsteps he didn’t follow.

One of the most fascinating interactions was that between test pilots and engineers. For the engineers, it was often the case that they always wanted to make things safer, especially after the crash, whereas the test pilots wanted to know if it was safe enough–they understood there was always risk, both known and unknown.

The material on Branson is interesting. On the one hand are his “vapor” promises of being able to do commercial flights as early as 2011, mostly to attract investors and customers. Yet he never compromised safety. And later on when Mohammed bin Salman offered him $1 billion, he left the money on the table. He would not take the money of the man who ordered the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Branson was the one who did all the interviews after the July flight. What this book fills out is the story of all those who contributed to that success, especially the test pilots (and their wives or partners who lived with the fear of every flight), and the engineers who built the rocket motors and space craft. This is a great inside look at one private space company, and what a challenging goal they have already achieved, albeit at great cost.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Summary: An assessment of what it will take to get to “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, and the technological breakthroughs we will need to achieve that.

If you do not believe the scientific consensus about our changing climate and the implication of increasing global temperatures for all forms of life on planet earth, you probably want to take a pass on this post. Likewise if you have it out for Bill Gates. I’m not interested in arguments with you. I review books for those who want to know about new books so they may decide whether or not to purchase them and that’s who this review is for.

Bill Gates spent his early adult life building Microsoft as one of the leaders of the personal computer revolution, with the goal of a computer in every home, many of them powered by Microsoft software. He made a massive fortune and has spent the second half of his life giving much of it away, focusing particularly quality healthcare for the impoverished of the world and quality educational opportunities. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has led initiatives for vaccinations to eliminate childhood diseases, and poured money into COVID-19 vaccines, resulting in conspiratorial allegations, a classic example of the axiom that “no good deed goes unpunished.” His travels around the world have brought to his attention how global climate challenge threatens to undo the progress made by the health and education programs the foundation has funded. And in typical Gates fashion, he has researched the problem, read voraciously, and put his own money where his mouth is. His book recommendations at GatesNotes are second only to my own (just kidding!).

This new book makes a very simple contention. We need to go from 51 billion to zero. 51 billion is the amount of pounds of greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere. Zero is zero net emissions, which most climate scientists believe we need to get to by 2050 at the latest if we have any chances of averting the worst consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Gates outlines their case and the consequences, disproportionately hitting the world’s poorest who have contributed the least to the crisis. And probably in the biggest understatement of the whole book, Gates spends the next chapter telling us “this will be hard.” If we ignore it, things will be even worse. We could just say, we have what it takes and we just need to do it. Gates makes the case that this is only partially true at best. To get to zero, there are problems we need to solve for which we do not yet have the solutions. And we hardly have a consensus that we need to lean into this hard work and invest in solutions we don’t even have.

In the chapters that follow, he lays out the challenges. Electricity and the grid that delivers it is an amazing thing. But we get much of it from burning fossil fuels and we have to figure out how to eliminate those emissions, either by capturing the carbon or better, using forms that don’t require burning carbon-based fuels. He reviews all the alternatives, making the argument for solar, wind, and thermal, but also for a new generation of nuclear plants (in which he is investing). We need to figure out how to make things without carbon emissions. Plastic, steel, and concrete all require significant emissions as currently manufactured. We have to deal with how we grow our food. Huge increases in crop yields have fed the world, but require fertilizers that add to our emissions as do the cows that provide for our beef-heavy appetites, through their burps and farts (Gates’ words!). Then there is transportation. Trains, planes, and automobiles (and ships) are most efficiently powered by fossil fuels. Battery technology allows cars to travel up to a few hundred miles, but they are heavy, and the larger the vehicle, the more limited they are as a solution. Finally, there is heating and cooling. Even if there are solutions for all these problems (and for some they don’t yet exist), the Green Premium (the extra cost of the carbon-free alternative) is often prohibitive, especially in poorer countries, and needs to be reduced.

The final part of the book attempts to chart the course governments, companies, and individuals will need to take to overcome these challenges to get to net zero. First he addresses the fact that adaptation will be part of it. The world will get warmer. It will be particularly critical to address food production, especially in poorer countries. Then Gates argues for the importance of government policies that invest in research and in leveling the playing field so fossil fuel based solutions don’t enjoy an advantage that removes the incentive to develop alternatives, and more. One of the most critical pieces is to invest in research and development and match it to our greatest needs. Finally he focuses on what each of us can do as citizen advocates, as conserving consumers, and as Green employers.

I found myself reflecting as I read all this on whether we have any hope of making it to zero. One thing I appreciate about Gates is his blunt honesty. This is incredibly hard! Even at the height of pandemic lockdowns, carbon emissions only went down 17 percent, according to Gates. Actually the pandemic is a kind of dress rehearsal for what we need to do globally to address climate change. While there are bright spots like the rapidity in which the vaccines and new therapies were developed, or individual countries that managed to balance public health and economic pressures well with high citizen cooperation, the uncoordinated global response and contentiousness within countries have led to a muddled effort at best, far from optimum. Bill Gates does not address how to overcome the resistance to the hard work needed (when many resisted even wearing masks) and what will be needed to engender trust in the science instead of suspicion.

Perhaps the question is whether a critical number of world leaders, business leaders, science leaders, community leaders, and faith leaders will come together in resolute action over a thirty year period. Not all will follow–at least at first. Over time, new norms may just become norms. Bill Gates is hopeful that we will take the measures needed and that we will find and implement the solutions that are necessary. I’m not so sure. But I also agree with him that the alternative is far less desirable. The question is whether we will see it coming before it is here.

Review: The Ages of Globalization

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ages of globalization

The Ages of Globalization, Jeffrey D. Sachs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.

Summary: A study of seven ages of globalization, in which geography, technology, and institutions result in scale-enlarging transformations with global impacts.

Jeffrey Sachs is one of those big picture thinkers one needs when tempted to focus in the minutiae of life. I first came across this in The End of Poverty, published in 2005, where Sachs wrestled with the steps needed to eliminate poverty throughout the world.

Here, he enlarges his focus to the whole 70,000 year expanse of human history. He traces seven ages of globalization, contending that the interplay of geography (including climate, natural resources, and biodiversity), technology (from hunting implements and stone tools to steam driven machinery to digital information systems), and institutions (religious, economic, and political) came together in each age to create scale enlarging transformations with global implications.

The seven ages through which he traces these interactions are:

  1. The Paleolithic (70,000-10,000 bce): foragers arising from Africa to adapt to a variety of habitats, using tools to manipulate nature, and formal tribal societies.
  2. The Neolithic ((10,000-3000 bce): The transition to agricultural societies across the temperate zones (“the Lucky Latitudes”) allowing the rise of farming settlements with domesticated animals.
  3. The Equestrian Age (3000-1000 bce): The domestication of the horse facilitating transport and travel, writing systems, accompanied by more sophisticated administrative institutions allowed for the first empires.
  4. The Classical Age (1000 bce-1500 ce): The successive rise and fall of empires in Asia, the Fertile  Crescent and the Mediterranean, all aligned on travel routes and the Lucky Latitudes, including the rise of Islam. This was the period of the rise of  the major religions and the ideas and institutions multiplied the expansion of global reach.
  5. The Ocean Age (1500-1800): The explosion of knowledge disseminated by the printing press, the development of sailing vessels into ocean-going ships led the most effective countries to extend their power into the Americas and East Asia,  resulting in the expansion of capitalism.
  6. The Industrial Age (1800-2000): The steam engine and then the internal combustion engine, the massive growth in food production resulting led to global population growth and increasingly sophisticated financial and political structures and a parade of successive global powers: Great Britain, the United States, China and other East Asian countries.
  7. The Digital Age (Twenty-First Century): The shift to an age of global information systems, highly integrated economies, resulting both in political rivalries and the necessity of global political institutions to address global crises such as climate change.

Sachs combines description with quantitative tables and statistics to illustrate trends. His argument is that we have always been a global family (albeit the Americas and Australia and the Pacific Islands being isolated from Africa and Eurasia until the Ocean Age) and human migrations, technological innovations and ever-more sophisticated institutions facilitated global connections, and increasingly global empires and systems. He argues that all these have brought us to a place where we face three major challenges: rising inequality, massive environmental degradation, risks from major geopolitical changes, including the possibility of devastating conflict. He contends for working toward sustainable development with a dynamic and adaptive process of planning on a global scale. He argues for a social-democratic ethos as has contributed to the success of northern European countries. Most fascinating, and a check on the consolidation of power, is his discussion of the importance of subsidiarity, of moving tasks to the most local level compatible with effective management.

I suspect some version of what Sachs proposes may be right. Yet the rise of authoritarian movements, the denial or overly simple explanations of poverty or environmental issues, and the breakdown of international cooperation seems a cause of great concern for me. Sachs offers us a tour de force treatment of the development of globalization through human history. But it seems idealistic in a way that seems to rely on us heeding the “better angels of our nature” if there is such a thing. I wonder if the failure of such optimism to deliver on its promises contributes to the rise of authoritarianism. I wonder if the only hope is a somewhat pragmatic and proximate politics without grand schemes, tyrants or visionaries, a politics of adults who realize all solutions are proximate.  Yet that doesn’t mean resignation. We can come up with less than perfect political arrangements, less than perfect environmental solutions, and less than perfect economic arrangements. We might do something more sustainable, more just, and more equitable, and probably different than our plans. And reading Sachs, we may have a better sense of the connection of the local and the global, and the ways geography, technology, and our institutions link us together.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Three Pieces of Glass

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Three pieces of glass

Three Pieces of Glass, Eric O. Jacobsen. Grands Rapids: Brazos Press, 2020.

Summary: Focuses on loneliness and belonging and the influence of cars, television, and smartphones on the experience, and even design of community and the choices we may make to foster belonging.

A recent commercial for a pizza chain reprises a classic TV scene in which a figure of a somewhat heavy set man who walks into an establishment. In the classic version, he is instantly recognized and everyone calls out “Norm.”  In the contemporary version, no one knows his name because he hasn’t created an online profile tracked on his phone. In the old neighborhood bar, “everybody knows your name.” Now belonging is increasingly mediated through a screen.

Eric O. Jacobsen didn’t anticipate the commercial, which underscores the theme of belonging represented by Norm that runs through this book. He contends that three pieces of glass, the windshield of the automobile, the screen of the television, and the screen of our smartphones, tablets, and computers have fundamentally influenced our experience of belonging in society.

Jacobsen begins his discussion by exploring the nature of belonging as having to do with relationship, place and story, and levels of belonging from intimate and personal to social and public and how intimate and personal are not enough. He explores the way in which experiences of social and public, together referred to as civic belonging, offer foretastes of kingdom belonging.

The second part of the book then sketches out the nature of kingdom belonging which he characterizes as unconditional, covenantal, invitational, compassionate, diverse,  transformative, delightful and productive. He contrasts this with worldly belonging and highlights the inclusive (the images of the feast and the table) and the covenantal relationship character of the kingdom.

Part three considers the gospel and belonging and shows how through the gospel, broken relationships are restored and there is healing for the epidemic of loneliness. For people who feel estranged and exiled, there is a promise of homecoming. And for those living in a story of meagre existence, there is a better and grander story.

The fourth part of the books addresses how the “three pieces of glass” have contributed to our crisis of belonging. The automobile has changed how our living spaces have been configured, from the design of our homes, to the walkability of our neighborhoods, and the location of where we shop and work in relation to where we live. Television changes how we view real people versus our “TV friends.” Our smartphones and other devices have led us to substitute virtual for face to face interaction. These have led erosion in the civic realm and an epidemic of “busyness.

The last two parts consider, first, the influence of our choices on our communal life, our public policies, and on our liturgical life and second how we may encourage belonging. The last part reprises ideas elaborated at greater length in Jacobsen’s earlier books, Sidewalks in the Kingdom and The Space Between, both influenced by the new urbanism. He looks at the design of our communities, advocating for walkability, our proximity, which includes a parish vision for the church, the making of meaningful public places, and a local culture reflected in language, shared stories, and events.

Writing this review during the Covid-19 pandemic gives me a different perspective on this book than I might have had during “normal” times. The latter two pieces of glass have taken on critical importance both as sources of information (although we have to watch for media overload), and as the one means of connection, or belonging most of us have when we must practice physical distancing–particularly in connecting with family, friends, our church community, our work colleagues, and even our political leaders. For many of us, we can work from home (and this may not even represent a change for some of us.)

By the same token, people are walking their neighborhoods at safe distances, in some cases meeting neighbors they never knew by name. I know of one neighborhood where a local folk singer set up in his front yard and staged an impromptu singalong. When we can’t go to restaurants, sporting events, and many of the other places our cars take us–we are left with walking and a kind of “neighboring” occurs. By the same token, I wonder if fights would have occurred over essential goods in the neighborhood markets I grew up with that occur in our megastores where people come from miles around and it is rare you meet someone you know. You shopped with people you knew in those neighborhood groceries and, perhaps we would be more considerate of the needs of others and neither hoard nor fight. After all, we lived with those people and we would be publicly shamed if we took more than our fair share!

Jacobsen’s book makes me wonder whether we will be more mindful about this question of belonging, as we realize how dependent we are upon both in our churches, and in the civic sphere. It makes me wonder if we will take a fresh look at our neighborhoods, both what is good about them, as well as what could be better about our places, and how we connect with each other. With internet connected devices, I suspect it is a bit more complicated. It would not surprise me if life becomes more oriented for more people around these devices. We are doing more education through them, more commerce, more business collaboration, and even more religious activity. While we discover that the church is not a building, will we also jettison the physical encounters that are at the heart of Christian community, from the breaking of bread and the cup to all those meals and potlucks that are some of the best part of our lives? Even before this crisis, I was in conversation with those who talked about declines in church attendance, in which someone pointed to their smartphone and said, “that’s because many think they carry church in their pocket.”

Yet Jacobsen reminds us of our epidemic of loneliness. He raises the critical question of whether belonging can be mediated through a smart device, or whether the proximity necessary for social and public belonging can be created in a car culture. We may love our TV friends, but will they love us back? Jacobsen’s book raises a series of inter-related questions for how the church understands its message, how we steward our technology, and how we configure the places where we live. How we answer those might well make the difference between places where nobody or everybody knows our names.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. The opinions I have expressed are my own.