Capitalism 3.0 gets its title from Peter’s contention that we need to “upgrade our operating system.” According to Peter, Capitalism 1.0 — when demand outstripped supply — ended around 1950. At that point, we entered our current Capitalism 2.0 — “surplus capitalism” — which “devours nature, widens inequality, and fails to make us happier in the end.” In this era, corporations can take advantage of public rights and properties, externalize their costs to the commons, and distort democracy, disrupting the role our government’s intended to play.

The rest of my review’s here.

A different vision of Japan, with lots of drugs, vomiting, painful experimental sex, general chaos, and a feeling nihilism.

So Dave Eggers writes in his foreword that he wants the works in this collection to “have something to say about the world at the moment, and that they not be too long or about the relationship problems of wealthy people in Manhattan.” Well perhaps too much has been written ‘bout the relationships of wealthy people in Manhattan, but this intro basically weighs down the writing in the collection with the responsibility of “social relevance”—something difficult to appreciate when so explicitly sought after in a “we’re not serious but you should take us seriously” sort of anthology.

It doesn’t help that the collection then starts out with a story centered on minority working class people - mostly latino - working at a print shop in Queens. Then we get a story ‘bout a matadora - you know, the struggle between tradition, family, ethnic consciousness and personal identity. The next story stars a girl who works at Burger King, and the one after that stars a guy who eats fast food and - again—works at a print shop.

All of that, after a “we’re purportedly silly but you should take us seriously” sort of intro about “social relevance” gets almost laughable. That’s not to say that some of the individual stories aren’t interesting, or that they don’t have both social and aesthetic merit. What I”m saying is that the joy of reading short stories gets a bit lost when one’s rather forcibly told to pay attention to current social meaning.

I mean, I like Eggers’ own books, for the most part. I like what the guy’s doing with 826 Valencia, and I like the idea of an indie pirate store. But I’m also left feeling this collection of nonrequired reading works too hard to frame itself as an antidote of sorts to what Eggers perhaps considers a current literary landscape that’s too littered with preoccupations with the white and rich. I empathize with the impulse, but I’m also put off by the anthology’s attempt to define itself not simply as itself, but as a pale opposite facing a monolith. This anthology perhaps creates a somewhat noticeable angry shadow that stands counter to the status quo, but it nevertheless remains comfortablyin the shadow, and seems more a self-congratulatory effort that impotently rails against what is than a real attempt to create an alternative.

These essays have some interesting moments, but won’t actually teach you how to be alone…. Some railing against our technified consumer culture, erosion of both public and private spheres, etc.

A sort of poetic-theoretical book that examines “the surrealist look” as one that “faces both ways, crossing the boundaries of expectation both public and private.”

A now-dated book, but perhaps interesting to read from a historical perspective, to compare with what’s currently being talked about in the environmental movement.

“Visibility is a trap.”

A good introductory book to Foucault’s theories.

Drive alone into a gated community in the suburbs, to park in a private, 2-car garage and hole up in a secret internet room. This is what our wealth has bought us, according to activist and author Bill McKibben: Ways to better seclude ourselves. In America, it’s lonely being rich.

Yet McKibben isn’t preaching a simple “money won’t bring you happiness” message (though that’s a part of it). In his new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, McKibben is most concerned about our sense of self in a “hyper-individualized world,” a world in which we’ve been conditioned to deprioritize personal connections with other human beings in the pursuit of individual success, monetary or otherwise.

The rest of my review here.

We all know dinosaurs went extinct. What we don’t know, exactly, is what we humans can learn from such catastrophic extinctions. Much of the value of historical knowledge and analysis lies in our ability to use that past information to shape our collective futures, yet what can we learn from the very distant past — the history that happened long before human civilization?v

More of my review here.

You know how once in a while, you get that irresistable urge to make friends with worms? Me neither—though since I read The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms earlier this week, I’m seriously considering giving the wriggly ones a little home on my balcony.

Worms are cool because they help compost your veggie trimmings—and perform other near-miraculous feats, as I found out in The Earth Moved.

The rest of my review’s here.