Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, by Neil Postman

The book “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century”, with the subtitle “How the Past Can Improve Our Future” is really refreshing to read. Postman is a person who dares to take a step back and question even fundamental assumptions about progress. He does not even care about the desperate editorials/experts that try to say that we are heading the right direction, Postman discuss something much more fundamental. He asks what we are really want and in many ways he is revisiting a romantic movement where passion and feelings where more important than measurable results and logic. He does fall into the trap of simplistic criticism of technology and is a little too self-loving when he explains how little how knows about technology. I think it must be frustrating to see a world you don’t like and do not understand, so those parts can be ignored.

He’s flirt with religion however I don’t understand. That makes many of his argument vague and/or irrelevant. If he would have dared to take the book beyond religion it would have forced him to push the logic the whole way and come to conclusions in some key areas. I actually think this would have been one of the most important 20th century books if he had attempted to build his argument on enlightenment and humanism. Now the book is more inspiring than actually enlightening in the tradition I think Postman wanted us to respect.

Still the book is written in a style and tone where it is clear that Postman is serious in is urge to do what he can to help us reflect whether we have been on the wrong course for 200 years. As so many of our basic references and so many of the most significant problems have emerged during this time it is well worth taking that question serious.

The Sexual Politics of Meat: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Carol J. Adams

How come I waited 20 years to read this book was my first thought when I put down this book. I would really liked to have read this instead of some postmodern communication theory written by some women who did not understand Habermas when I took my feminist communication course around the time Carol Adams book was first published. An attempt to create a coherent narrative for feminism and animal rights should not be something we see often, but it is not.

I have seen this book now and then but never got around to start reading it. It actually starts quite bad and I don’t think the first two chapters are not particularly well written or interesting. They resembles a lot of simplistic feminist literature with vulgar imprecise generalizations about how worthless men are along the lines “When asked about their sexual fantasies many men describe ‘pornographic scenes of disembodied, faceless, impersonal body parts: breasts, legs, vaginas and buttocks-“ (an actually quote in the book).

But the longer you get into the book you realize that it weaves a story where animal rights and feminism are brought together in different ways. It does so against a broader backdrop of social change and the possibility for humanity to “evolve” ethically, and it does so in a coherent, but still not rigid way.

To read a book with a narrative that is so strong that it is possible to both explore it in depth and follow trajectories far out and will return is not happening very often. Let alone with theme that is one of the most important for the human race.

Please ignore the self-congratulatory parts of the introduction. I think they are written to allow insecure people in the US that read the kind of self-help books that usually have that kind of self-celebration on the cover (or else Adams just feels that she needs to tell someone that she actually touches people).

But these things are not very important and the message in the book is so important and should be required reading for the “cultural elite” as well as all policy makers and business leaders.

This is not a book to be missed and 100 years from now this is a book that we might look back as a classic that was ahead of its time in so many ways.

Take time to visit Adams webpage: http://www.caroljadams.com/spom.html

Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, by Douglas Rushkoff

This is not a book that will challenge your intellectual capacity, but it is written with passion and has enough clear arguments (along with too many the general anecdotes that sadly these kind of books are filled with). I kept thinking that this might be the “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the digital age. A generation that no longer can read long or complicated sentences might be inspired to reflect on how they live and the relation to the world around them. I hesitate writing this as ZAMM was an important book for me, and even if Program or Be Programmed is a nice book it is not in the same league. Still if it can make a few from the “digital generation” reflect it could be a first step for them towards books with a more complex narrative.

Still I can’t help thinking that this is a book written with a frustration that it is necessary to simplify things so much these days. It feels as if Rushkoff have more to tell us (but I have hard time judging that as I can’t access his webpage from China right now for some reason).

The idea of a programmable world is important and the converging trends in computing, robotics, nanotech, cognitive research, etc all indicate a paradigm shift larger than even a singularity. Something that can be found in the intersection of a collective (human) brain, matters that can be shaped as we like it, and self-regulation/self-improvements.

We are living in a world where few look beyond the incremental and hopefully this book will wake a few people up with sentences like: “Programming is the sweet spot, the high leverage point in a digital society. If we don’t learn to program, we risk being programmed ourselves”.

As I wrote above, I’m have not been able to access the webpage, but here it is: http://programorbeprogrammed.com/