Notes

I have tried to gather here and briefly describe a list of books that I have read that have affected my thinking on these topics. Many present unabashed unorthodox thinking, while others are examples of good common sense. Still others will give an insight into the state of technology, the economy and society.

David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky: Chronicles of Dissent

This is the essential Chomsky, a series of wide ranging discussions where Chomsky is allowed to hold forth at length on his favourite topics. He is often accused of promoting the conspiracy theory of government, which I think is a result of his insistence that all human events can and should be understood using a scientific method. A fascinating book.

Stuart Brand, The Media Lab

There is no better book to introduce you to the cult of technology. The Medial Lab at M.I.T. is at the forefront of the school that believes technology can and should be applied to most aspects of everyday living.

A. Alan Borovoy, Uncivil Obedience: The Tactics and Tales of a Democratic Agitator

Borovoy advocates ways to bring about change that don’t violate the law but do violate social sensibilities.

Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader

A selection of Chomsky’s own writing, which is more analytical and precise than Chronicles and thus often less penetrable.

Douglas Coupland, Generation X

The classic depiction of the generation at the tail end of the Baby Boom. Coupland is praised and criticized with equal ferocity. I enjoyed it and generally agree with its descriptions. The X label has been incorrectly applied to subsequent generations. It is a description of a particular generation, born in the late ’50s and ’60s and how they particularly are affected by the dominant mass of people before them.

James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, The Great Reckoning

Their premise is that the world has and will be governed by the exercise of power in the geopolitical sense. This should have been good, but I found it tedious. Their view is rather too technical for me, at times it felt like reading a stock newsletter.

Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society

Drucker asserts that society has passed from the dominance of capital to one where knowledge is the controlling factor. He believes knowledge is inherently a portable commodity that the employee possesses and that this will lead to a drastically different definition of organization and productivity. A bit too much cheerleading and wishful thinking for my taste but I would be pleased if he were right.

Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

A detailed documentation and analysis of the American reaction to the women’s movement. Extremely broad and deep coverage which shows an awful pattern of repression. An important book.

John Kenneth Galbraith, A Journey Through Economic Time

Galbraith sketches the major economic events of his lifetime from the point of view of one of the participants shaping the action. Well worth reading.

Václav Havel, Summer Meditations

This was such a joy to read, with clear and eloquent arguments. Havel presents his ideas on the way people should govern themselves, particularly that ethics and morality should be part of the decision making process in business, science, politics and all other human affairs. The chapter regarding Slovakian independence is startlingly similar to the situation in Québec.

J.N. Patterson Hume, By Chance Or By Design: An exploration into the Nature of Physical Law

This book asserts that the existence of God can be neither proved nor disproved by gaining greater knowledge of science – and that scientists have actually spent a considerable amount of time trying. Along the way it shows that grandiose scientific theories of everything are only an illusion.

Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers

Ignatieff’s main point is the necessity to distinguish between the basic needs of human survival, upon which the modern notion of human rights rests, with the needs of the human as a social being. He argues that the application of these two definitions of need are often in conflict in our law and policy.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

An amazing study of the decline of the American city and why cities work. Even more amazing is that it has been simultaneously praised by readers and ignored by planners.

Jane Jacobs, Systems of Survival

This book offers a compelling thesis of two systems of organization. One is the commercial and the other the governmental. Her argument is that they are both quite natural and distinct and that rules from one system should not be imposed on the other.

Lawrence E. Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea

This book offers a detailed but not too technical account of the unorthodox Gaia theory of the planet. It shows both the proponents and detractors and puts in context the great environmental debates of the ’80s and ’90s.

James Laxer, False God: How the Globalization Myth has Impoverished Canada

The argument in this book is that free trade is not itself bad, but that we have been deluded that the United States is bound to be the right partner to hook up with. Much evidence is given to the contrary.

Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

This is the real life saga of Wall Street traders in the ’80s, with detail of the kind of thinking that pervades the money world.

Linda McQuaig, The Wealthy Banker’s Wife

The author asserts that the steady, almost creeping erosion of our social system will lead to its destruction.

Marlo Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under

An amazing account of an American doctor’s journey with a remote Australian aboriginal tribe and their relationship with each other and with their environment.

Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

Norman provides a litany of design errors in everyday objects, often induced by a concentration on aesthetics or lack of testing. He believes that all products and systems should be designed to be used, and need to be tested and modified before production.

Sidney Piburn (ed.), The Dalai Lama A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings by and About the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama presents the Buddhist way of thinking about our responsibilities for others and the world. Quite a contrast with the Western way of thinking.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

This book shows that the American system of television with its emphasis on entertainment, dominated by advertisers and profit making corporations, is leading to an overall diminishment of citizen control, not through state coercion but rather through voluntary amusement.

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

Postman gives us a sweeping history of the institution of childhood. He takes us from its creation thanks to the need to become literate, to what he suggests is its demise thanks to television and a culture that does not value children with a separate societal status.

Neil Postman, The End of Education

The latest in the thoroughly enjoyable Postman output in which he argues that American schools need to find what he calls a new narrative, if they are to survive as public institutions.

Neil Postman, Technopoly

This book ties together Postman’s ideas on culture and technology with a compelling thesis on how technology has come to dominate us. He argues that American society is now defined and controlled exclusively by a reverence for technology.

Dennis Potter, Potter on Potter

Dennis Potter, Seeing The Blossom

Potter offers many interesting views on the state of television and media and their relationship to society. He is especially concerned about the ‘commercialization of everything’.

Hubert Reeves, Malicorne: Earthly Reflections of an Astrophysicist

Scientist tries to reconcile his belief in science to love of art, culture, and life. It’s sad that scientists believe that they have to think about everything scientifically, and that science can explain all. It’s also sad that others find these views more valid when expressed by scientists.

Jeremy Rifkin, Biosphere Politics

Rifkin leads us on a wide ranging historical look at how the world has moved through stages of consciousness. First it was the desire to secure control of ‘the global commons’, followed by the doctrine of geopolitics, and next Rifkin hopes, to a new stage where the state of the biosphere is considered in all decisions.

Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work

Here we are presented with the rise and decline of mass employment. Its peak was generated by the invention of mass consumerism, its decline is forecast by replacement with technology. He argues that society has to replace work with something to maintain income (thus purchasing power) and self-esteem, and that a formalized voluntary sector and shortened work week could be an answer.

Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism

This is a fascinating look at how imperial states are sustained through political and cultural institutions. He offers a detailed examination of great works of Western fiction and how they contributed to domestic support of the vast imperial activities.

Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

Said argues that society needs intellectuals to retain an independence from institutions and the lure of money and prestige if they are to retain the ability to question power and privilege.

Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Sacks shows with great compassion and wisdom the human side of mental illness and disease. He takes the scientific study of neurology beyond abstract references to patients, into the worlds they construct for themselves. A delightful read.

Ricardo Semler, Maverick:The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace

An almost unbelievable account of true workplace empowerment. Workers set salaries and work hours, choose their own bosses, and make all production decisions. And the company is wildly successful. A powerful example.

Gail Sheehy, The Man Who Changed the World: The Lives of Mikhail S. Gorbachev

This biography of Gorbachev shows how he moved from being a country Cossack, to ardent Communist, to the man who brought about the end of the Cold War.

Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom

This is an interesting and important political and personal account of Gorbachev’s foreign minister during the crucial years leading to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Mark Slouka, War of the Worlds

Slouka warns that the computer technology revolution is being steered toward virtual reality worlds and a redefinition of community. I think his thesis is overdrawn, but is worth reading as a taste of things to come.

Gore Vidal, At Home

Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

In these books of essays, Vidal provides thoroughly enjoyable and readable accounts of political and intellectual life in the United States. His criticism of the state of the American political system is forceful. He argues that the system needs to be given back to the people.

Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe captures the excess of the ’80s beautifully in this novel that’s extremely hard to put down. A barely fictional version of Liar’s Poker.


The End


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Questions We Won’t Ask


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The Nature of Questioning


© 1995, 1997 Mark Nairn Hume