Just as McCulloch’s history shows how the internet changed yesterday, it seems A.I. will change the future.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
How the Internet Happened (From Netscape to the iPhone)
By: Brian McCullough
Narrated By: Timothy Pabon
Brian McCullough (Author, CEO of Resume Writers.com, entrepreneur.)
A book about the beginning of the internet is such old news, one is inclined to put this book aside. The internet was born in the 1960s and only became recognizable in the 1980s. However, even in 2024, it is interesting to hear about early users who became rich just by organizing information on an easily accessible and free media platform.
Like this blog, it is rewarding to write something that others are interested in reading.
The exercise of book reviews is a reward to one’s education and an ego boost for a writer from an audiences’ clicks. Brian McCullough tells the story of the founders of YAHOO, Jerry Yang and David Filo who were in college and became fascinated by the World Wide Web because of information it offered with clicks on a computer board. This was in the 1990s. Though there were many websites to choose from, they were disorganized and difficult to find if you were looking for specific information. Yang and Filo began organizing the websites by their offered information. YAHOO’S founders were looking for information of interest to them, and presumed others would like to know how they could use a keyboard to find information they might need or want.
Jerry Yang and David Filo were fascinated by what could be found on the internet.
They spent hours, days, weeks, months that grew into years organizing website addresses so others could find what was interesting to them. In these early years, making money was not their primary objective. They did not use their site to advertise products for income. They felt clicks were their reward and that clicks would be lost if advertisers were allowed to use their site. They chose to have users pay a fee to become members of their site. Their use and organization of the internet became an obsession for them and followers steadily increased. Their click numbers and users rose into the millions and advertisers were again knocking at their door. They resisted until they realized their idea could be worth something more than their interest in learning, gathering, and organizing knowledge. They relented, allowed advertising, and the clicks to their site kept on rising. YAHOO went public. The rest is history.
McCulloch goes on to describe the rise and fall of companies that capitalize on the internet.
The companies ranged from behemoth companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Ebay that rocketed to the stratosphere while Priceline.com, Netscape, Pets.com, Webvan and others plunged into the abyss. This is not to say today’s behemoths will continue to dominate the market or that some new company will replace their success with even greater appeal. A.I., like the internet, may be a killer discovery that makes or breaks today’s behemoths into tomorrow’s also-rans or hangers-on.
McCulloch’s history is interesting because it explains how winners understood the future better than losers understood the present.
It’s fascinating to find Apple’s Jobs resisted creation of the iPhone but employees worked secretly to refine the idea and Jobs eventually agreed. McCulloch also reveals the monopolistic nature of today’s winners and the threat they present to the future. Killer ideas of today’s tech companies capitalize on the internet’s information ubiquity, and how it can be organized to offer product to the world at a competitive price.
A.I. is a new idea that organizes information on its own with consequences to the public that are yet to be realized. Just as McCulloch’s history shows how the internet changed yesterday, it seems A.I. will change the future.
With rule by the one there are no checks and balances which threatens war and discounts peace.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Autocracy, Inc. (The Dictators Who Want to Run the World)
By: Anne Applebaum
Narrated By: Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum (Author, journalist, historian, wrote Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction with “Gulag: A History” Also wrote “Red Famine”, both of which have been reviewed in this blog.)
“Autocracy, Inc.” infers there are two forms of government in the world, one is autocratic, the other democratic. Applebaum shows autocracies are often venal and kleptocratic. One might agree, but immorality and greed are a part of human nature in every form of government. This is not something Applebaum denies, but all forms of government have experienced excesses of wealth and power that have led to autocracy. What Applebaum argues is that autocracy is more threatening today than at any time in history.
The prestige of national leaders is by definition power.
As the British Lord Acton noted in 1887–“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Both democratic and autocratic leaders are subject to Acton’s aphorism. This is not to say Applebaum’s argument is not important, but no form of government, including democracy, has been found to fairly regulate the faults of human nature.
What Applebaum makes clear is that autocracy magnifies the faults of human nature because in countries like China, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, parts of Africa, and similar autocracies, there are no checks and balances.
Imprisonment, torture, and murder for challenges to leadership are condoned, and commonplace. Applebaum’s added dimension is that many autocratic nations have begun aligning themselves to split the world between the lands of the relatively free and the chained.
Alexi NalvanyLiyu XiuaoboJang Song-thaekAung San Suu Kyi
Applebaum offers many examples of imprisonment, torture, and murder in autocratic countries. Some of the most famous are Navalny in Russia, the Nobel Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in China, Jang Song-thaek, the second most powerful leader in North Korea, and of course, Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar. However, what makes Applebaum’s history terrifying is the calculated and cooperative effort by aligned autocracies to subvert freedoms offered in America and other democratic countries.
The author argues many autocratic leaders have become so powerful that no fellow countryman, regardless of their location, is safe from incarceration or assassination.
Assassination of Kim Jon Un’s brother.
Vladimir Putin is believed to have ordered the assassination of a number of Russian citizens around the world. Autocracies use the tools of State to directly or indirectly threaten or assassinate dissidents anywhere in the world.
Facial recognition in China.
The advance of Artificial Intelligence has magnified the strength of autocratic rule with tools of surveillance, assassination, and indoctrination that reach around the world. Applebaum argues the line between democracies and autocracies is hardening to the point of irreconcilable difference, leading to wars between states and territories like Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza.
Democracy has its problems which includes dalliance with autocracy, but rule by the one where there are no checks and balances threatens war and discounts peace.
What Kalifa shows is how alone every human being is in a country led by leaders who care only about their power.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Death is Hard Work
By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price-translator
Narrated By: Neil Shah
Khaled Khalifa (1964-2023, Syrian author, screenwriter, and poet, died at age 59.)
Conscience is an inner sense of voice that guides a person to understand the difference between right and wrong. The author is characterized by western publications as a critic of Baath party rule in Syria. Khaled Khalifa chose to remain in Syria despite the horrendous rule of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad. (Khalifa died of a heart attack at age 59 in 2023.)
Khalifa’s “Death is Hard Work”, published in 2016, seems a conscience driven criticism of Bashar’s rule during Syria’s 2011 civil war.
Though Khalifa is a Muslim, his novel appears to object to Assad’s rule during the war. Of course, there are five sects of the Muslim church in Syria, but al-Assad’s Alawites are only 10% of the population versus 74% Sunni Islam, of which the author is said to belong.
This is not to suggest Khalifa is anti-Assad because of religion but that Khalifa is noting in his book the muti-religious fabric of Syria. The novel is about the cruelty and lawlessness in Syria during the 2011 Civil War which is, at best, a frozen conflict in 2024. The country remains divided despite Assad’s continued rule and growing normalization of his regime among regional powers.
“Death is Hard Work” reflects on the many wars being waged today. The conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, tribal conflicts in Sudan, the Sahel, Ethiopia, and Nigeria create societal tragedies that make America’s problems pale in comparison.
The overarching story is the main characters commitment to his father to bury him in his family village somewhere near Aleppo.
Khalifa explains some of the horrific consequences of the Syrian civil war in “Death is Hard Work”. The Civil War is raging in Damascus where the family patriarch dies from old age. There are checkpoints throughout the country that have to be crossed. Each checkpoint is a test of two brothers’ and a sister’s resolve to fulfill their father’s last wish.
The backstory is about a father who marries and has been a constant critic of Assad-rule. He recalls his life in the 1960s as much better. That is odd considering history shows the four Presidents during that period fostered political instability, revolt, and global tension. The point made by the author is memories often block out the truth of our past.
Assad’s murder of women and children is a reminder of today’s conflicts in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, several African nations, and Gaza. Leaders in these countries are fomenting war over land and ideas that only increase the suffering of their people.
The past is always present. Khalifa reflects on what he sees as Syria’s present. He writes of a Syrian woman raped to death by four men. He explains a story of a husband who sends his children to another country while he stays in Syria to plan the murder of the four rapists whom he knows. Khalifa writes of the poverty and hunger of Syria’s civil war. Citizens searching garbage cans and eating flowers and grass to stay alive. It makes no difference whether one is a college professor or bum, all were hungry. One is reminded of the chemical attack in Syria and the many bodies on the ground that President Obama called a red line for America when it was not.
The two brothers and sister risk their lives at each check point in their treacherous journey to bury their father in his ancestral graveyard.
At each check point, they explain the reasons for carrying a dead body cross country while it begins to smell. “You have to do something if you don’t want to die” becomes the mantra of Bolbol, i.e. the youngest son who is trying to fulfill his father’s last wish. Flash backs remind listeners of what happens to one’s beliefs about right and wrong when powerlessness against tyrannical leaders is the measure of life. The older brother, Hussein, is influenced by belief in power and is often in conflict with his younger brother as they take their father’s body to his home village.
The two brothers and a sister have lived sorrowful lives because of their country’s leadership. What Kalifa shows is how alone every human being is in a country led by leaders who care only about their power. Until or unless leaders in Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Gaza come to understand the harm they are doing to their societies, only sorrow remains for their people.
The greatest threat of A.I. is that the ubiquity of information will turn people and countries against each other.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Feeding the Machine (The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.)
By: Mark Graham, Callum Cant, James Muldoon
Narrated By: Orlando Wells
Mark GrahamCallum CantJames Muldoon
Graham, Cant, and Muldoon have backgrounds that offer an educated opinion about the impact of artificial intelligence on the world labor market. Graham is a Professor of Internet Geography affiliated with the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Cant is a researcher and labor rights advocate for workers in the gig economy. Muldoon is an Associate Professor in Mangement and Head of Digital Research at a think tank on modern technologies.
“Feeding the Machine” reminds one of the Industrial Revolution in its early stages.
The fear of loss of jobs because of machine replacement led to the Luddite movement that destroyed machines manufacturing products. The quality of machine-produced product may not have met craftsman standards, but production cost was so much less, the public preferred the lower-cost product. As the industrial revolution grew, the quality of production improved, and many craftsmen lost their jobs. Many of these craftsmen had to find new jobs. Some became users of machines to produce product. The transition was undoubtedly difficult because it required changes in the way people work. Rather than working for themselves, they had to work for manufacturers that produced products with machines. Craftsman had to work regular hours for a wage rather than sell product based on their exclusive labor. Karl Marx in “Das Kapital” explained that capitalism devalued worker’s contribution to society because they were not compensated fairly for their work based on profits earned by company’ owners.
Workers began to unionize to increase their political power and influence on managers of companies owned by entrepreneurs.
The results of unionization have been to begin equalizing wages and company profits. That equalization is a battle between corporate profit needed to stay in business, reasonable return to company owners, and livable wages for workers. When any of these three are out of balance, companies either go bankrupt, or find an acceptable balance that serves the needs of all.
Information is energy in today’s A.I. world., just as steam was in the industrial revolution.
As one listens to “Feeding the Machine” which claims A.I. produces poor quality energy is like early steam engines that provided inadequate energy. Who can say that A.I. “energy” will not improve just as steam engines improved? One becomes skeptical about the authenticity of the authors’ opinion. It seems too soon to believe A.I. power will not improve human life, just as steam engine power improved product quality and lowered consumer prices.
The authors make valid points about the impact of A.I. on workers.
Workers are often paid a pittance for repetitive work that is mind numbing because of the need to monitor digital information for its accuracy and quality. Is that significantly different than the repetitive motions needed by workers on a production line for manufactured goods? Henry Ford changed the way cars are produced by creating assembly line work that gave repetitive jobs to workers. Is that repetitive work much different than digital inspection by workers of A.I. production?
The many examples the authors give of remote workers’ wages for digital accuracy in Africa and other poverty-stricken areas of the world is heart rending. These new laborers are paid small wages that assure continued poverty. Economic inequality is a crime against humanity. Improving education seems the only sure way of defeating economic inequality. Education is a long road to travel but there seems no solution for economic insecurity without it.
Having traveled to Africa, seeing firsthand a dedicated teacher in a class of school children, one feels there is hope that the world’s economic insecurity will end.
Ford was a conservative right-wing businessperson by any measure. He supported Hitler because he was an authoritarian that resurrected a faltering German economy. However, Ford recognized workers were consumers and despite low wages for automobile workers of his time, he chose to raise wages. Ford recognized workers were also consumers. That remains true today. It seems reasonable to presume, unlivable wages will rise for digital workers around the world for the same reason the conservative Ford raised his worker’s wages.
This is not to say, what the author’s write is wrong about workers in Africa that are exhausted from repetitive work at an A.I. company but that the world is at a crossroad similar to the industrial revolution.
The world will change based on the weight of people’s discontent. The greatest threat of A.I. is that information ubiquity will turn people and countries against each other. The result may be a nuclear holocaust that changes the world and societies in a way that is impossible to predict.
The war in Ukraine.
The authors go on to explains how A.I. dehumanizes society. Creating a world-wide’ assembly line for product production allows companies to reduce their production costs by hiring workers around the world who are eager to have an income to improve their lives. The consequences to companies in the host country are improved profits. The consequence to host countries’ workers are layoffs and loss of income. A country of wealth has tools to mitigate worker layoffs, poorer countries do not. Laid off workers have better chances of finding new jobs in wealthy countries. This is not to minimize the consequence but to suggest the world is benefited more than harmed by A.I.
A point made by the authors that played out in the actor strike in America is that actors should be compensated for any work generated by A.I. images or voices of actors.
A.I. that generates false images should be penalized for misrepresenting real people without their consent. Another caution suggested by the authors is that A.I. can recreate art that is equivalent to todays and past literary and visual artists. That seems somewhat hyperbolic but if it is true, society has the tools to penalize those who choose to use A.I. to deceive the public. A.I. is only a tool of society. It is a source of energy that can destroy but also improve the lives of humanity. The authors note only minds are truly creative. A.I. is a recreator of the past, not the future. The use of A.I. by humans improves creative potential.
IN THE LAST CHAPTERS OF “FEEDING THE MACHINE”,THE AUTHORS SOUND AN ALARM BY NOTING THE CONTROL EXCERCISED BY INTERNET MOGULS WHO DIRECT THEIR EMPLOYEES TO CODE ALGORITHMS TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THEIR COMPANIES. THIS IS A SMILAR POWER EXERCISED BY ROBBER BARONS OFTHE LATE 19TH CENTURY. DEMOCRACRATIC CAPITALISM COPED WITH ROBBER BARON’S HEGEMONIC POWER THROUGH GOVERNMENT HEARINGS AND OVERSIGHT. ELECTED OFFICIALS SEEM WILLING TO COPE WITH MEDIA BARONS OF THIS CENTURY IN THE SAME WAY.PUBLIC HEARINGS AND GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT OF MEDIA MOGULS ARE BEING CONDUCTED TODAY.
“2666” is a well written book by an author who has read and understood more about society than many who have lived long lives in America.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“2666”
By: Roberto Bolaño
Narrated By: John Lee, Armando Duran, G. Valmont Thomas, Scott Brick, Grover Gardner
Roberto Bolaño (Author, 1953-2003, died at the age of 50, Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist.)
“2666” is a journey around the world. One begins the journey as though one is sinking into inescapable quicksand. Roberto Bolaño dazzles one’s imagination. Its granular mix of western society captures one’s imagination. The book’s narrators trap “2666” listeners in a story of modern times.
Bolaño infers sex is an equal opportunity exploiter.
He suggests communism and socialism are distortions of Marxism and shows capitalism as a form of enslavement. Women’s societal inequality extends to physical abuse in many societies and, at an extreme, to murder. Bolaño’s many characters illustrate the way in which he believes these are societal truths.
The first part of Bolaño’s story tells of three highly educated people who travel for business and pleasure based on their professions and desires.
They are academics steeped in literature who lecture on poetry, philosophy, and great writers. They meet in different areas of Europe as a trinity of lovers, two men and one woman that form an emotional and sexual threesome. The woman appears the more dominant of the three with the two men abandoned for a time because of a younger lover in the woman’s life. The two men continue to travel together and apart but pursue a licentious life with women, some of which are paid for their sexual favors. The author seems to explain sexual desire is characteristic of all human beings, both male and female. Human desire can be exploitive, companionable, and/or a way to make a living.
Bolaño’s travels extend to Mexico and the United States after his literary journey through Europe.
He shows every form of government, whether communist, socialist, or capitalist fails to treat its citizens equally. He infers Marxist theory may hold an ideal of equality but suggests communism, socialism, and capitalism only distort the ideal of a classless society. Materialism, the struggle for recognition, and the value of labor are chimeras, i.e., wished for ends that are illusory in every known form of government.
Bolaño’s trek to Mexico reveals its poverty and the hard life of a country of the rich and many poor.
He focuses on a notorious record of women being murdered in Mexico by an unknown killer and rapist who may be one man or two. The grim view of Mexico dwells on the investigation of these horrific crimes. In the process, the listener is told about prison life in Mexico, a probable killer of the women and another that may still be on the loose. The murders of women continue. An FBI agent from America is involved in the investigation. This is a hard section of the book because of its repeated explanation of crimes against women, but it offers a view of Mexico’s poverty and the unfair, unequal treatment of women and others in the world.
The last chapters of Bolaño’s work are a flash back to WWII and Germany’s attack of Russia after Stalin’s mistaken alliance.
There are flashes of brilliance in this flashback, but the length of the novel begins to wear thin. “2666” is a well written book by an author who has read and understood more about society than many who have lived long lives in America, a land of opportunity with many of the faults noted in Europe and North America.
Science will lead or lose the “Real…” world of human beings.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Real Americans” A Novel
By: Rachel Khong
Narrated By: Louisa Zhu, Cric Yang, Eunice Wong
Rachel Khong (American writer and editor.)
(Ms. Khong’s book is an entertaining listen but a little too long except for listeners who are most interested in the story. Others are interested in its societal meaning and often discount its entertainment value.)
The main characters in Khong’s novel are Lily Chen, Matthew, Nick Chen, and May. In one sense, the author’s story is about the randomness of life. We are born from fertilization of a male sperm with a female egg. In our world, the randomness of being born is based on chance encounters of violence or seduction. (The reference to violence and seduction is not meant to suggest the nuance of relationship can be ignored, e.g. love comes from the act of seduction, not from violence.) In the 21st century, violence and seduction remain but in today’s science, state and institutional influence bear down on human procreation. The science and possible future of genetics is Khong’s theme in “Real Americans”.
“Real Americans” is about a young college graduate making her way in New York city, a capitol of opportunity in America.
As a poor young graduate, New York city is a ticketed opportunity for American success and failure. Khong’s story is particularly interesting because the main character, Lily Chen, is born American to well-educated parents who emigrated from China. She does not speak Chinese. She is living the life of a young, intelligent American trying to support herself by whatever job she can find in New York City.
Lily’s mother and father are geneticists.
Like the trials and rewards of Cinderella, the trials of Lily’s life are transformed by the wealth of a prince. What makes “Real Americans” more than a fairytale is its theme that life’s beginnings are a matter of violence or seduction, including state and institutional complicity. (“State and institutional complicity” refers to acts of government and business that discriminate based on prejudice or narrow emphasis on income rather than ethics.)
Lily seems to have luckily met Matthew; an immensely wealthy heir to an American medical conglomerate founded by his family. They marry after an on again, off again relationship.
After their marriage, Lily has two pregnancies that do not come to term and chooses to have invitro insemination to have a successful pregnancy with the birth of a son they name Nicco. Matthew and Lily go to China on a business trip where Lily chooses to visit the college where her mother became a geneticist. She meets a professor who knew her mother and is told a story that initially puzzles her about what her mother was like when she was young. She finds her mother, as a student geneticist, was a risk taker and magical thinker.
The next one learns is that Lily divorces her husband and moves from New York to Tacoma Washington, an island between Seattle and its capital to raise her son by herself.
Lily’s mother had met Matthew’s family before Matthew began dating Lily. She knew Matthew’s father who began a hugely successful medical company that researched genetics. (The significance of her mother’s knowledge of the genetic research of Matthew’s family is at the crux of Lily’s feeling of betrayal.) The theme of the author’s story begins to take a turn. Lily leaves Matthew. (She leaves because of the bias of Matthew’s family in using Lily as a surrogate for pregnancy without disclosing their personal interest.)
As her son grows to manhood, she refuses to tell him the name of his father, where he lives, or the history and wealth of the family in which he was born. The remainder of Khong’s book is the story of the circumstances surrounding the birth of her son, how he learns of his father, and what led to her divorce from Matthew.
Khong is writing about the pandora box of genetics which opens the world to designer babies. She seems to conclude, regardless of birth circumstance, care and nurture make people “Real…”. Science will lead or lose the “Real…” world of human beings. (Understanding the science of genetics and the potential for manipulation of human life is a god-like power with all the ramifications of genetic inheritance that can aid or destroy human life.)
The concern one may have about the interconnected world is that it homogenizes society. Anand’s interconnected world implies free-will is a fiction.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Content Trap” A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change
By: Bharat Anand
Narrated By: Jason Culp
Bharat Anand (Author, American economist, Professor of Business administration at Harvard Business School.)
Bharat Anand offers a compelling explanation of how connection has become as important as “…Content…” in the digital age. His point is not to say content is irrelevant but without understanding digital interconnectedness, Anand infers profits, personal achievement, and commercial success are diminished or lost.
In the digital age, Anand argues if success is measured by profit, longevity, or fame, the key to success is adapting to interconnectedness.
Anand argues business managers and companies will fail if they do not adjust to changes in the way the public sees, understands, and uses the digital world. To give examples of his point, Anand notes the adjustments made by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and the Fox TV network that have changed their business models to adjust to a digital world. Anand explains the digital world is a ubiquitous force (interconnected by computers, smartphones, and the internet) used by insightful individuals and businesses to achieve their goals.
Apple initially focused on product design and utility and earned a reputation for excellent product.
However, as the product evolved, Anand notes Apple’s specialization in quality meant less to their success than the connectivity to sources of information, entertainment, and people. The iPhone became ubiquitous and highly profitable when they improved Apple connectivity among iPhone’ users. They expanded that connectivity with their iTunes creation, audio book features, and various internet media offerings.
Microsoft specializes in software development tools that can be used by individuals and businesses to improve their communication skills and connectedness inside and outside their business.
Microsoft’s software enhances interconnectedness and communication while providing useful information to banks, affiliates, and users to understand the value of their business and how they may or may not complement each other’s performance. Microsoft expands their interconnectedness with an annual subscription system that appeals to repeat users of Microsoft’s updated software.
Google substantially improves their reach into the digital age by choosing to pay Apple $20,000,000 a year to use their search engine.
Though that is challenged by the government as a monopolization of trade, it illustrates the truth of Anand’s observation about the value of interconnectedness among companies in today’s digital world as a way of improving profits, growing, and assuring longevity.
Amazon ranks as one of the leading retailers and suppliers of consumer goods in America.
Bezos introduces many marketing innovations based on interconnections with customers that include many consumer enhancements. Amazon created its own storage and delivery service to directly compete with same day availability of product that showed customers could get product as fast as they could by going to a box retailer. Amazon capitalized on book selling by creating a portable library with Kindle that lowered NY Times’ best-selling books at half or less than the recommended retail price.
Fox television rose to compete with the big three television networks by buying the rights to NFL football at a price far beyond what the networks at that time were willing to pay. Digital age football fan connectivity gave Fox the power and influence to become the 4th major tv network in America.
Anand’s point is that adaptation, rather than opposition to evolving human connectivity, is the key to success. Identifying what is happening in the world and adapting to societal inevitabilities offers opportunities to keep pace with change and prosper. Anand is not saying content does not matter but that content is improved by adapting, rather than resisting or fighting evolving societal norms.
Anand addresses a favorite publication of many, “The Economist”, an international newspaper that has weathered the storm of newspaper disappearance in the 20th and 21st century.
Anand notes “The Economist” has prospered since the 19th century, despite the collapse of the newspaper industry in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He argues it survives and prospers because of editorial development of international’ news through consensus of its experienced and educated writers. One might accept his observation but with reservation because of a recent survey request from the “Economist” for reader response.
The “Economist” survey form is daunting because it infers a pricing scheme based on digitalization of its articles. Having received the survey, some (like me) choose to throw it away.
The appeal of “The Economist” is in its editorial opinion of the world. Those who have traveled around the world are fascinated by the editorial opinions of a group of educated generalist opinion writers. Their survey may have been to solicit better reader connectivity, but it read like a prescription for higher prices for publication.
The threat of digitization of the “Economist” may ruin its appeal to many readers. It seems the “Economist” would change if it follows what seems the intent of their survey. The “Economist” survey seems like a digitization of their work to make it more connected to an untraveled public. They risk falling into the trap of “breaking news” rather than an insightful editorial opinion about non-western cultural policies and beliefs. They would be following the lead of many newspapers that couldn’t adjust to the interconnected digital world and had to close their doors.
Anand’s book is interesting and seems largely correct about the road to economic success, i.e., people and companies adjusting to the reality and understanding of an increasingly interconnected world.
The concern one may have about the interconnected world is that it homogenizes society. Anand’s interconnected world implies free-will is a fiction.
Hager’s history of the drug industry illustrates the strength and weakness of human nature whether one is a capitalist, socialist, or communist.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Ten Drugs” How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
By: Thomas Hager
Narrated By: Angelo Di Loreto
Thomas Hager (Author, science historian, editor, publisher, Oregon native, received master’s degree in medical microbiology and immunology from the Oregon Health Sciences University.)
“Ten Drugs” is a critical view of today’s drug industry, its drug discoverers, the medical profession, and its manufacturers. Hager explains opium is proven to have been used by Mesopotamian Sumerians in 3400 BCE but older than its known cultivation. The Sumerians called it “hul gil” which means “joy plant”.
Thomas Hager begins with opium and its discovery thousands of years ago when the bitter taste of a poppy seed capsule is tasted by a curious African’, Egyptian’, Greek’, or Roman’ Homo erectus.
Wide use grew to affect national relations between China and the western world in the opium wars of 1856-1860. China’s Qing dynasty lost territorial control of Hong Kong to Great Britain when opium became a cash cow for international trade.
Hager explains how opium offered both risk and reward to the world. It threatened society with addiction and overdose while offering surcease of pain for the wounded or health afflicted.
Addiction significantly increased among the Chinese during and after the opium wars. After many tries to prohibit opium, it was in the early 20th century that addiction was internationally condemned. It was the People’s Republic of China in 1949 that launched an aggressive anti-opium campaign that dramatically reduced opium purchase and use in China. Later, Hager infers China’s success in eliminating the trade is by murdering its dealers and penalizing its users. Ironically, Hager notes former President Trump called for the death penalty for drug dealers to combat America’s drug crises, a policy only likely to be implemented in an authoritarian country.
The first opium war in China, 1841.
Hager infers China’s success in eliminating the trade is by murdering its dealers and penalizing its users.
Hager explains the history of opium evolved into drug derivatives like morphine, laudanum, and codeine to offer pain relief from a variety of medical maladies. These derivatives were effective but still carried the risk of addiction. Hager explains later that addiction is related to nerve system receptors at a molecular level that create a craving for the effects of particular drugs. Opium and its derivatives eventually became regulated because of their addictive character. In America, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 marked the beginning of strict control of opium’s derivative prescriptions in the U.S.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823, English physician and scientist who discovered the use of cowpox to inoculate against smallpox.)
Hager moves on to vaccination. Interestingly, Hager explains the discoverer of inoculation by transfer is not Edward Jenner (1749-1823), a British physician called the Father of Immunology. It was a wealthy English woman named Lady Mary Worley Montague who learned of the use, of what became known as vaccination, in Turkey. She had survived a smallpox infection. Ms. Montague accompanied her husband, who was the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire in 1716.
Ms. Montague learned of a Turkish custom of transferring infected smallpox exudate to healthy children to give them a milder form of smallpox. That transferred exudate inoculated the young from getting a fatal dose of the disease in later life. Smallpox is estimated to have killed over 300,000,000 people (a statistic roughly equivalent to every person alive in the U.S. in the in the 1990s). The Turkish custom of inoculation was found highly effective.
Lady Mary Worley Montague who learned of the use of vaccination in Turkey. Earlier in her life, she had survived a smallpox infection.
In her return to England, Ms. Montague widely disseminated information about the success of the Turkish custom to prevent smallpox. Edward Jenner chose to use cowpox as a substitute tissue for smallpox vaccination of his patients. Jenner found cowpox infected tissue was equally effective in immunization and less dangerous than the using smallpox exudate. Jenner’s discovery of cowpox vaccination in 1796 became widely accepted but nearly 80 years after Ms. Montague’s worldwide promotion of Turkey’s vaccination procedure. Jenner’s vaccination success led to the World Health Organization’s claim that smallpox eradication could be achieved through an international inoculation program. Smallpox is alleged to have been eradicated as a disease in 1980.
The next drug identified as important by Hager is sulfa, a major cause of death from infected open wounds.
The common cause is a bacteria called Streptococcus. Bayer Corporation, a dye manufacturer in Germany, decides to enter the drug industry because their investment, facilities, and research scientists were ideal for entry into research and manufacture of drugs. They compound a drug called Prontosil that is discovered as a sulfa based chemical compound that successfully kills Streptococcal bacteria that cause fatal infections from open wounds. Bayer’s discovery saved many lives as WWII was gathering in the 1930s. Ironically, one of the saved lives is FDR’s son who had a severe streptococcal infection in 1936.
Hager notes personal mental illness and social dysfunction are perennial maladies that plague society through the 21st century.
Isolation and various therapies have been used to address mental illness. In early days, asylums were created to isolate patients who could not cope with daily life. Palliative treatment ranged from isolation to Freudian consultation, to electroshock, to newly discovered drug treatments. Though not mentioned by Hager, a little research shows the first significant breakthrough drug was lithium in 1949.
John Cade (1912-1980, An Australian psychiatrist discovered the effects of lithium carbonate as a mood stabilizer in 1948.)
Lithium was actually discovered in 1817 but did not get used for mental illness until 1948 when John Cade, an Australian psychiatrist, found that lithium carbonate stabilized mo0d and reduced the severity of manic episodes in patients.
Though Hager doesn’t mention lithium, he notes the French chemist Paul Charpentier identified antihistamine in 1950 as an antipsychotic to aid his patients’ erratic behavior. The use of Thorazine became a common drug synthesized by Rhone-Poulenc Laboratories in France. It was released in the 1950s and considered a major breakthrough in psychiatric treatment. It had a calming effect on severely schizophrenic patients by attacking excess dopamine production in the brain.
The major criticism Hager has of drug manufacturers and the medical industry is in the inherent influence of money, power, and prestige that distorts honest evaluation of drug effectiveness and side effects.
The drug industry depends on the success of their research for new drug discoveries to maintain the cost and improve the value of their businesses. However, human nature gets in the way of every human being. The lure of more money, power, and prestige enter into evaluative judgements and descriptions of tests for new drugs. The financial success of a drug that mitigates or cures particular societal ills make millions, if not billions, of dollars for drug manufacturers. Drug manufacturers are not eleemosynary institutions. They are in the business of making money and preserving their longevity while enriching themselves and their stockholders. Hager argues human nature distorts the truth of drug efficacy with tailored reports of a drug’s true benefit and potential for harm. He offers statins as an example of drug manufacturers’ misleading promotions.
Hager reviews the history of statins and correlations drawn by the medical industry about their efficacy in reducing heart ailments.
He suggests clinical studies by manufacturers often distort the entire effect of statins in preventing heart attacks. Statins are designed to reduce cholesterol in the blood stream. However, many studies that correlate cholesterol with heart disease are only partly related to heart attacks while having measurable side effects that diminish human cognition, memory, and potential organ damage, i.e, liver and kidney damage. Hager cautions those who take statins not to stop without discussing it with their physicians. However, Hager recounts an unsolicited personal contact that suggested he should be taking a statin because he is over 60 and had a brain vessel bleed in his earlier medical history. The contact recommended Hager take a statin based on that history. Hager notes that he felt his private medical history had been hacked, and that the contact is evidence of drug industry promotion of statins for profit more than public benefit.
In Hager’s last chapters, he explains how the drug industry is being attacked for influence peddling. In drug manufacturers drive for profits, they offer incentives to the medical profession (e.g. trips to conferences in exotic resorts, personal solicitations from sales reps, etc.) to use specific drugs in their practices.
In the end, Hager argues there are exceptions to the medical industries drive for profits by telling the story of British researchers Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein who made a discovery in 1975 that changed the focus of drug manufacturer to what is called monoclonal antibody drug development. Kohler and Milstein found a process for creating drugs that have fewer side effects by creating antibody drugs that exclusively attack diseases at a molecular level. The irony of their discovery is Kohler and Milstein chose not to patent their discovery. If they had patented their discovery, they could have gained income for every company who chose to create monoclonal antibody drugs.
British researchers Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein
Research is growing to create drugs that more precisely address the known molecular cause of disease without affecting the general health of patients. Not surprisingly, today’s manufacturers of monoclonal drugs use Kohler’s and Milstein’s process while requiring patents for their drugs.
Hager’s history of the drug industry illustrates the strength and weakness of human nature whether one is a capitalist, socialist, or communist.
One chooses how they live life, but death is nature’s or God’s choice, a thing beyond human’ control.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Theater of War” What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today
By: Bryan Doerries
Narrated By: Adam Driver
Bryan Doerries (Author, Artistic Director of Theater of War Productions, an evangelist for classical literature and its relevance to today’s lives.)
The title and book cover of “The Theater of War” is as puzzling as Bryan Doerries’ beginning vignette of his personal life. Doerries graduates from Kenyon College where he majors in the classics. He goes on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the University of California. “The Theater of War” recounts Doerries’ journey to become cofounder, artistic director, and historian for creation of a theatrical teaching tool about life and death. The trigger for his understanding comes from the last days of his personal relationship with Laura Rothenberg who dies at 22 from cystic fibrosis. Her death is the introduction to why “The Theater of War” is created.
Doerries and Phyllis Kaufman are co-founders of “The Theater of War” Productions. Ms. Kaufman was the producing director from 2009 to 2016. She died at the age of 92 in 2023 but was instrumental in organizing production events, coordinating actors, and ensuring practical aspects of theatrical presentations.
“The Theater of War” is about the living and how to deal with permanent disability or death. Death comes in many forms from different causes but as the Latin expression says “Memento mori”, “Remember you must die” because death is a part of every life. Doerries explains how famous Greek tragedies were, and still are, teaching tools for those who have life and death influence over others. What “The Theater of War” creates are acted reproductions of classic Greek tragedies for living life when you or someone you know is permanently disabled or killed.
With the help of actors like Adam Driver (who narrates the book), the great tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus are presented to military, penal, and nursing audiences across America.
Combat veterans, prisoners, and terminally ill patients face extreme conditions of life. Combat may end in death or future disability. Prison life is about loss of control of oneself and being under the control of others. Terminal illness is also about loss of control of oneself when one is diagnosed as destined for death.
The suicide of Ajax as depicted on an ancient vase in the British museum in London.
Sophocle’s tragedy, “AJax”, offers the truth of psychological trauma and moral injury from battle. In despair, Ajax kills himself because he feels deeply humiliated by the gods for not being given the armor of Achilles who is killed in the Trojan war. Achilles’ armor was given to Odysseus rather than him.
Sophocle’s “Philoctetes” explains the pain and personal isolation that comes from the physical and emotional damage from war. Today, it is diagnosed as PTSD.
Sophocles “Antigone” deals with civil disobedience, justice, and conflict between personal and state ethics. These conflicts are reflected in mobs of unruly citizens demonstrating against what they perceive is wrong.
Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound” reflects on the unfairness of a penal system that infringes on human rights.
The recited dramas offer cathartic release and potential change to those who are personally affected by their situational experience. That is the purpose of the presentations. Doerries creates theatrical readings of these classics before military, penal, and nursing personnel.
The presentations lead to questions and answers about the truth of societal disagreement, death’s inevitability, and how to live with their consequences.
Some military generals and prison guards are offended by the implications of their mistakes, but the plays recitals provide a forum for discussion that offer potential for improved human understanding and societal decisions and action.
The Greeks understood dying is part of life. One chooses how they live life, but death is nature’s or God’s choice, a thing beyond human’ control.
Communism has failed in every country that has tried to institute what their rulers believe is in the best interest of their citizens.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Red Famine” Stalin’s War on Ukraine
By: Anne Applebaum
Narrated By: Suzanne Toren
Anne Applebaum (Author, journalist, historian, wrote Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction with “Gulag: A History”.)
As an accomplished historian, Anne Applebaum offers an insightful view of the 1917 Russian Revolution and its rule over Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe. Her history is a reminder of the Stalin’ atrocity which is being reinvented by Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine. The striking difference is that Putin, unlike Stalin, cares less about stealing Ukraine’s agricultural productivity than Russia’s return to a dead past. Applebaum’s history leads one to conclude that Russia’s twenty first century youth, its oil wealth, and political influence are being wasted by Putin. The past never precisely repeats itself, but Putin is committing many of the same mistakes made by Lenin and Stalin in the early 20th century.
Ukraine is an independent nation with its own evolving culture.
Applebaum’s history shows that only through covert and overt repression could Ukraine become a part of the Russian nation. Putin’s war may succeed in the short term, but Ukrainian independence will reassert itself when Russia’s leadership realizes the cost of repression is greater than the benefit of colonialization. Just as Israel will realize it cannot eradicate an idea by cutting off heads of its leaders, Russia will not erase a culture by murdering nationalist defenders.
Holodomor, The Ukrainian Famine That Killed Millions in 1932-33.
Applebaum addresses the history of the 1921′ and early 1930s’ famines in Ukraine to reveal the anguish felt by some, if not all, native Ukrainians. The Russification of Ukraine began with the 1917 revolution. Lenin, and later Stalin, were dealing with the many difficulties of establishing a new form of government in a nation accustomed to monarchal control. They viewed communism through the eyes of a people accustomed to totalitarian control. Lenin, with the help of associates like Stalin, preached the fiction of social and economic equality that gives every citizen compensation according to their abilities and needs. That impossible objective melded with Russia’s history of monarchal control of its citizens.
Lenin, and then Stalin, use their power to lead and govern, like the Russian Czars of its past, but with the curtain of communism to hide their ambition.
Applebaum’s story of Ukraine’s treatment in the Lenin’ and Stalin’ years (and today’s Putin’ years) reveals the cruelty and consequence of totalitarian rule. Applebaum focuses on two famines in Ukraine’s history, the famines of 1921-23 and 1932-33. The first famine is caused by drought, consequences of WWI and the complicated change in Russian governance after the 1917 revolution. By the time of the so-called famine in1932-33, Russia’s new form of government had stabilized with one ruler exercising control over the interpretation and actions of a communist government. By 1927, Stalin had become the undisputed leader of Russia.
Ukraine is considered the breadbasket of Europe.
In 1922, Stalin views Ukraine as a source of food to stabilize Russian control of what became known as the U.S.S.R.
Stalin, like Mao in China, believed collectivization of farmland and its cultivation would improve agricultural production in Ukraine. Like the experience in China, farm collectivization had the opposite effect. It reduced production and demotivated farmers. When production declined in Ukraine, Stalin ordered Russian troops to confiscate grain and the livestock of Ukraine citizens in the 1932-33 so-called famine. Arguably, that famine is manmade, not caused by nature but by Stalin’s decision. Stalin ordered confiscation of Ukrainian food and livestock provisions for the Russian people. Stalin created a famine and caused the death of an estimated 4,000,000 Ukrainian citizens.
Like Stalin in 1932, Putin chooses to murder Ukrainian citizens without concern about war’s inhumanity.
Communism has failed in every country that has tried to institute what their rulers believe is in the best interest of their citizens.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 
