Matthew B. Crawford

This is a frustrating book. I found many of the ideas presented to be compelling, or sharp articulations of things I've felt about work in our age - but the arguments are also frequently squishy, based on the authors own brief time spent in office work or second-hand perceptions, or just on his... aesthetic preferences for how he'd like things to be. Above all, the whole thing is suffused with his nostalgia for workplaces that are basically male and white, with one tiny footnote acknowledging that those workplaces are likely to be hostile to everybody else. If the book had been written in 1979, I could just roll my eyes at that - but it's baffling and gross in a book from 2009. The original essay in The New Atlantis covers all the high points.… (mais)

Tough read, required much thinking and rereading, worth it. Political philosophy. He advocates recognition of an "attentional commons"- public spaces that don't constantly pipe in sound and images that prevent private thought and conversation. We have "a right not to be addressed." "We have allowed our attention to be monetized." Our democracy values individual freedom, but we are ignoring how individual decisions are being manipulated. We should be asking "who benefits." For example, individuals have the "freedom" to gamble, but slot machines are designed to incorporate everything we know about conditioning and psychology to push the gambler to "extinction" i.e. loss of all of their money. "Capital is concentrated to the point that it operates in quasi-governmental ways, abetted by ever more powerful information technology."… (mais)

I decided to take in some of Matthew Crawford's work after listening to his First Things lecture recently. He does not disappoint. Incorporating reflections from literature, philosophy, the findings of psychological research into human behavior as it is formed by interaction with automated systems, and a great deal of personal experience, Crawford offers thought provoking questions about what it means to be human, the nature of human community, and the role of political decision making as we move increasingly into a world of survellance capitalism. There are some great stories in the book, which is entertaining as well as deeply thoughtful. And the chapter on Road Rage will have you laughing at all the more creative ways you can insult the driver who just cut you off. I hope a good many folks read this book before we thoughtlessly buy into a more and more automated future.… (mais)