Category: Uncategorized

Nicholas Shaxson (2011)

I know I write this about a lot of books … but this too is a must-read. For anyone interested in the global flows of finance, not to mention questions around what processes & dynamics keep poor countries poor.

Niall Ferguson (2017)

Something of a review of major networks in recent history, attempted through the lens of network theory.

Francis Fukuyama (2019)

Velly velly intellestin.

Bill McKibben (2019)

There exists a school of thought, out there, that takes the view that everything is basically going great on our 21^st Century planet Earth. I’m thinking of the likes of Ray Kurzweill (The Age of Spiritual Machines; The Singularity is Near), Steven Pinker, Rutger Bregman, and a slew of economists of the mainstream bent. Their works are awash in reassuringly upward curving graphs covering everything from average global income through to the processing speeds of a square inch of microprocessor. (David Hume: farmer shows up every sunrise with chicken food, but one day, he shows up with an axe. Past performance is no guarantee for future performance). To all this inductive hogwash Bill McKibben provides a badly needed reality check. We should consider seriously the possibility that many of our short-term (geologically speaking) gains have been made at the cost of the future.

Ryszard Kapuściński (1978)

…

Bruno Latour (2018)

I recommend reading this in conjunction with Mao’s essay, ‘On Contradiction’.

You can find my curriculum vitae here.