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Category: book reviews

Klara and the Sun book review

Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Klara and the SunKlara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is such a brilliant and timely little novel. It touches on so many important ethical questions about AI/robots: care robots, AI replacing jobs, robots/AI as human-like species deserving rights versus being like appliances, philosophy of mind, and more. I’m excited to talk to my students at Olin about this book. It’s our summer reading for incoming first years.

Ishiguro’s “Klara” is an artificial friend (AF). She is a care robot (like the many, notably from Japan, that are developed to be companions to humans and help them with social-emotional health). Her objective is to ensure the child she is acquired for is not lonely. She believes the worst thing a human can be is lonely. Her child Josie is a little sick and lives far away from others. The novel covers Klara’s efforts to serve Josie well.

The novel starts in the store where Klara is for sale. She is our narrator. When we meet her, she is starting to form assumptions about the world. Her observational skills are unusually good for an AF, but her narrative is of course flawed both because of the limits of her technology (cleverly illustrated by Ishiguro) and the limits of her experience.

Ishiguro is not the first to offer a first person perspective to an AI. Many fine examples, especially the Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy beginning with Ancillary Justice, come to mind. What I love about Klara and the Sun is that it’s a bildungsroman—one of my favorite genres—for a young robot. This allows us to explore some of the key ethical questions from a unique perspective and provides for the eponymous plot line written stylistically as a fusion of science fiction and realism.

The book is a fast read, filled with clever imagery and symbolism, which open and close the narrative elegantly. I would read this even if I didn’t have to, and I recommend that you do too.

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A Synthesizing Mind book review

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A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences TheoryA Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory by Howard Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Howard Gardner is a mentor of mine. So it was with personal interest that I picked up this memoir to learn a little bit about the scholar I worked for at Project Zero a decade ago. His voice really comes through in this book. I can hear his didactic tone but also the levity when he cracks a bit of a dad joke. I like the structure of the book around his intellectual development and the set of experiences that contribute to recognizing and using his “synthesizing mind.” I came away with a deeper appreciation for Howard and the opportunity to work alongside him and learn from him.

There are also some valuable insights in this book for scholars trying to make sense of their own work, especially ideas that take on a life of their own, such as his theory of multiple intelligences. Howard is rightfully proud of his work despite its misinterpretation and misuse. Fortunately, his curiosity is his guide and his deeply held principles delineate a path toward richer research and applications of his attention toward practical ends in education that have served many people well. I really loved how he acknowledged that projects can fail and some endeavors just simply end, but that there is value in the relationships developed and the people touched by even a short-term effort like the MI-based schools he writes about.

For me, the book was a quick read. And as I am also an academic, there was much wisdom in this meta-narrative from a leading light in the social sciences (or “social relations”). May I maintain his tenacity and curiosity in my own work and keep avoiding disciplinary silos.

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Digital Minimalism book review

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Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy WorldDigital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Among many books critical of social media use, Digital Minimalism is a very accessible and useful read. It synthesizes just enough research and anecdotal examples to be convincing and then offers well-reasoned recommendations for how to choose a more intentional approach to internet-based media consumption.

Compared to his previous few books, Newport does a better of job of collecting a diversity of voices in his reportage, which strengthens the book’s arguments and its accessibility to a wider audience. By emphasizing intentionality rather than a more ideological argument about life purity or economic extortion, Newport offers a big tent for folks to choose to discard the more insidious aspects of smartphone app design, while finding and optimizing for the specific ways platforms can provide value.

To me, the most profound aspect of the digital minimalism philosophy was emphasizing the value of solitude. I had not thought deeply about the idea that humans had evolved to sort through complicated questions during the vast tracts of solitude that were the norm for most of human existence. Solitude has always been a core aid in my work as an academic, but I had not been particularly conscious of it. Now I am seeking out solitude, while also following the advice to reclaim high quality leisure activities, so as to chip away at the perceived value of smartphone use during idle hours.

As a scholar of social media, I am actually embarrassed by how good and useful I am finding Digital Minimalism. I think others will find it useful too.

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Mutual Aid book review

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Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis by Dean Spade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wonderful, quick, and practical volume on what mutual aid is, why it is important, and how to create and sustain a mutual aid program. Dean Spade writes with the clarity and confidence of a seasoned veteran of organizing and movement building. Mutual Aid is a nice companion to my favorite organizing books by adrienne maree brown. It lacks the holistic and spiritual qualities of doing social change work that brown’s Emergent Strategy series does, instead focusing on the practicalities of getting work done. Use them together to develop a robust approach to your own social change practice, that ideally places mutual aid—one of the most powerful strategies—at the heart of your efforts.

As an academic, I would have liked to see more references to literature on mutual aid because I know scholars have written about it and want to follow up on the sources. I also understand that this is not an academic volume and scholars are not (and should not be) the primary audience. The practical tools that are compiled here are formidable. I expect all folks engaged in changemaking will find something of value perhaps new in this book. The penultimate chapter “No Masters, No Flakes” was stuffed with practical ideas and frameworks. I learned about Mad Mapping there for the first time and love the idea of creating a guide to your future self for how to deal with burnout.

As Spade urges, we need more mutual aid efforts in the world and we need more folks reading this book and applying its ideas!

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Palaces for the People book review

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Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic LifePalaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had been looking forward to reading this book since it came out and finally cracked it on summer vacation. It’s an excellent popular sociology volume that mixes original research with literature review and journalistic storytelling. The core argument of the value and importance of our social infrastructure is inspirational to folks who design spaces and try to cultivate community through their work. It’s also a beautiful love letter to libraries, one of our best examples of social infrastructure. The value we place on libraries in the United States is really uneven. Like K-12 schooling, everyone has opinion about what libraries are good for because they went to one as a kid and it either was important to them or it wasn’t or they believe it worked for them in one way and that’s how it always should be or all libraries are like that and thus irrelevant today. We make a lot of assumptions about our social infrastructure in general. It’s hard to analyze one’s own environment. Thankfully, Eric Klinenberg helps us see what’s there and what’s not and what the potential of good social infrastructure design is. I highly recommend it!

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