(Viking, 406 pages, $28)
Technology has an “inspiring” new evangelist, said Stefan Beck in Salon.com. Kevin Kelly, a former editor at Wired, has carefully considered the possibility that our gadgets may be developing independently of human control, and he’s concluded that this is not just true, but all for the good. Kelly’s concept of technology is broad. He’s invented the word “technium” as a catchall meant to describe all the fruits of human creativity—“everything from UNIX code to Hamlet.” The technium, he says, evolves much the way biology evolves—with general indifference to human welfare but in ways that are largely predictable and beneficial. Show Kelly an iPad and he’ll tell you that because the right conditions existed for its invention, the invention itself was virtually inevitable. This is a “useful” idea, even if you’re not as “smitten” by technology as he is.
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His conclusions, unfortunately, are “surprisingly banal,” said Jeremy Philips in The Wall Street Journal. We’re asked to accept that the technium’s exponential growth is beneficial on the whole because it provides people with opportunities they didn’t previously have: No one could choose to be a violin player until there were violins. Where Kelly will lose a lot of people is when he starts talking about technology being “a reflection of God,” said Susan Jane Gilman in NPR.org. He’s created “a banquet of ideas,” but this “sort of creepy tech-evangelism” borders on “mad scientist” territory.
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”