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Antidotes to the six horsemen of the Trumpocalypse

Here’s one of my deeply held beliefs. We owe it to ourselves to take best advantage of the insights and experiences of those who have gone before us. Where researchers have seen more clearly or understood more deeply than their predecessors or contemporaries, we should pay special attention to their words and concepts. Where these researchers have written books that make accessible key aspects of their hard-won expertise, we should prioritise finding the time to read these books.

But in 2016, not everyone agreed that expertise is worth attention. Experts are over-rated, we heard. The elites deserve a comeuppance.

That sentiment is an ominous echo of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and its opposition to the “four olds” – a revolution which, between the years 1966-1976, resulted in horrific damage to the country and many millions of deaths. A later candid assessment by the Chinese government described that period of wilful ignorance as being

Responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic.

I have no truck for those rabble-rousers who declared in 2016 that “we have had enough of experts”. I choose expertise every time, over wishful thinking, hearsay, and dogmatism. I choose to keep on educating myself in the arts of critical thinking, rather than bowing my honest opinion to the rants of the populist press or the false certainties of the demagogues in our midst.

At a time where the six dreadful horsemen of the Trumpocalypse are gathering speed – when perverse interactions are growing more unpredictable between radical over-confidence, divisive boasts of “my tribe first”, enthralment to personal egos, trigger-happy vindictiveness, shameless lying, and fake news designed to inflame rather than to enlighten – we need calm, rational, evidence-based thinking more than ever.

The hard thing, of course, is knowing where true expertise really lies. It can be difficult to distinguish the trustworthy experts from self-declared “experts”. And it is important to perceive the limitations of the expertise of any one person or any one discipline. Thankfully, these tasks can be aided  group intelligence, as we collectively develop an appreciation for which writers are the most reliable in particular areas.

In that spirit, I list below the books that I read and rated as “5 stars” during 2016 on GoodReads. I tend to rate books that highly if:

• They contain novel material which addresses highly important themes
• They are well-written – giving good evidence and rationale for the points of view they advance
• They maintained my interest all the way to the end of the book.

Hopefully my brief reviews will provide some inspiration to guide you in your own reading, research, and projects during 2017. Do let me know.

(Click on any book cover below, to visit the GoodReads page for the book.)

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Written by Yuval Noah Harari. Of all the books on my list, this is the one that provides the largest perspective. This book explains how the three terrible scourges which have confronted humans throughout history – plague, famine, and war – will be replaced in the 21st century by three huge new projects, labelled as “immortality”, “happiness”, and “divinity”. Here are three brief quotes from Harari’s book on these grand projects:

• “Struggling against old age and death will merely carry on the time-honoured fight against famine and disease, and manifest the supreme value of contemporary culture: the worth of human life… Modern science and modern culture don’t think of death as a metaphysical mystery, and they certainly don’t view death as the source of life’s meaning. Rather, for modern people death is a technical problem that we can and should solve”
• “Being happy doesn’t come easy. Despite our unprecedented achievements in the last few decades, it is far from obvious that contemporary people are significantly more satisfied than their ancestors in bygone years. Indeed, it is an ominous sign that despite higher prosperity, comfort and security, the rate of suicide in the developed world is also much higher than in traditional societies… The bad news is that pleasant sensations quickly subside and sooner or later turn into unpleasant ones… This is all the fault of evolution. For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness”
• “In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods. Not just because these are divine qualities, but because in order to overcome old age and misery humans will first have to acquire godlike control of their own biological substratum… If we ever have the power to engineer death and pain out of our system, that same power will probably be sufficient to engineer our system in almost any manner we like, and manipulate our organs, emotions and intelligence in myriad ways. You could buy for yourself the strength of Hercules, the sensuality of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena or the madness of Dionysus if that is what you are into.”

Harari’s book also makes plain that these projects risk enormous upheavals in society – potentially facturing humanity into “the near gods” and “the near useless”. Even that thought isn’t the largest in the book. He writes near the end:

• “The Internet-of-All-Things may soon create such huge and rapid data flows that even upgraded human algorithms cannot handle it. When the car replaced the horse-drawn carriage, we didn’t upgrade the horses – we retired them. Perhaps it is time to do the same with Homo sapiens…”
• “When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism.”

I therefore pick Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow as the single most profound book of 2016.

Note: I presented a personal review of this book near the start of a London Futurists event on the 4th of October. Here’s a video recording:
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The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease

Written by Daniel E. Lieberman. This book shares with Homo Deus the fact that it has an enormous scope. It casts a careful eye back over the long prehistory of human (and hominid) evolution, and draws fascinating conclusions about problems of disease and health experienced by people in the 21st century.

The book presents a wealth of compelling evidence about the various stages of evolution between ape and modern-day human. It also introduces the concepts of “dysevolution” and “mismatch diseases”. Aspects of human nature that made great sense in our previous environments sit uneasily in the new environments in which we now exist. This includes aspects of our physiology and aspects of our psychology.

To what extent can these aspects of our physiology and psychology be re-engineered, using 21st century skills in genetics, nanotech, 3D printing, smart drugs, and so so? Lieberman is cautious in drawing conclusions, suggesting that we’ll find it easier to re-engineer our environment than to reengineer ourselves. His view deserves attention, even though I believe he underestimates the pace of forthcoming technological change.

The Industries of the Future

Written by Alec J. Ross, who spent four years working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Hilary Clinton when she was Secretary of State for Defence. The style of writing is highly accessible to people in political roles – whether in office, in the civil service, or in an advisory capacity.

The subjects Ross covers – including robots, genomics, cryptocurrency, cyberwarfare, big data, and the Internet of Things – can also be found in books by other futurists. But he provides a refreshingly international perspective, highlighting ways in which different parts of the world are adapting (or failing to adapt) to various technological trends. He also has a candid view on potential downsides to these technology trends, alongside their potential upsides. He gives plenty of reasons for believing that there will many large changes ahead, but he emphasises that the actual outcomes will need careful shepherding.

If Hilary Clinton had become the US President, I would have felt comfortable in knowing that she could draw on insight about future trends from such a well-informed, balanced advisor. This is not an author who offers brash over-confidence or wishful thinking.

Bitcoin: the Future of Money?

Written by Dominic Frisby. Bitcoin, along with its underlying “blockchain” technology, remains the subject of a great deal of speculation as 2016 draws to a close. I read a number of books on this topic in the last 12 months. Of these books, this was the one I enjoyed the most.

Frisby has a pleasant conversational style, but also has an eye for the big picture. Bitcoin/blockchain is too important a topic to ignore. The biggest disruptions it creates may well be in areas outside of present-day mainstream focus.

London Futurists will be returning to Bitcoin and/or blockchain several times in the months ahead. Watch this space!

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts

Written by by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind. This book provides a comprehensive account of how technology and automation are transforming work within professions such as law, auditing, education, architecture, healthcare, accounting, and the clergy.

The writers – a father and son – have been researching this field since the 1980s. They have interviewed leading practitioners from numerous professions, and are fully aware of the arguments as to why automation will slow down in its impact on the workforce. They assess these arguments at great length (perhaps almost too fully), and give strong reasons why all professions will, on the contrary, be significantly transformed by ever-more powerful software in the decades ahead. As they make clear, this is not something to be feared, but is something that will provide low-cost high-quality expertise to ever-larger numbers of people – rather than such expertise being accessible to the wealthy.

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

Written by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. This book makes a powerful case that movements for political change need to find a powerful over-arching positive vision. Merely “occupying” and “criticising” isn’t going to take things very far.

The vision offered in this book is that automation, rather than being seen as a threat to jobs, should be embraced as a precondition for a new society in which people no longer need to work.

Note: the authors gave a presentation about their ideas at a London Futurists event on the 20th of August. Here’s the video recording from that event:

The Economic Singularity: Artificial intelligence and the death of capitalism

Written by Calum Chace. This book is the third on my list that focuses on technological unemployment as caused by automation and AI (artificial intelligence). Of the three, it’s probably the easiest to read, and the one that paints the widest context.

Like Srnicek and Williams (the authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work), Chace foresees that technological unemployment may portend the end of capitalism. Whether this forthcoming “Economic Singularity” will be a positive or negative development remains to be seen. The Economic Singularity therefore shares some of the characteristics of the “Technological Singularity”, which Chace also covers in this book.

Note: the author gave a presentation on his ideas to London Futurists on the 8th of October. Here’s the video recording:
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The Gene: An Intimate History

Written by Siddhartha Mukherjee. This book covers the history of ideas and experiments on the subject of genetic inheritance, from the thinkers of ancient Greece right up to the latest research. Along the way, the author weaves in accounts from the medical experiences of his own family members that suffered from inherited diseases. He is a compelling story-teller. He is also an accomplished cancer physician, with training from Stanford University, University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School, and Columbia University Medical Center.

I was familiar with many of the historical episodes from my own prior reading, but I learnt a great deal from the additional material assembled by Mukherjee – for example about the attempts at different times by eugenics enthusiasts to alter society by human interference with “natural selection”. The book is particularly strong on the interplay of nature and nurture.

I also appreciated the way the author highlighted the drawbacks of the haphazard quality control  in the early experiments in gene replacement therapies – experiments with tragic consequences. The lack of care in these experiments led to an understandable institutional backlash which arguably set back this field of therapies by around a decade.

By the time I read this book, I had already published my own book “The Abolition of Aging: The forthcoming radical extension of healthy human longevity”. I was relieved to find no reason to alter any of the conclusions or recommendations in my book as a result of the magisterial quantity of research reviewed by Mukherjee.

The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution

Written by David Stipp. During the course of writing my own book “The Abolition of Aging” I consulted many books on medical treatments for anti-aging. I read this particular book all the way through, twice, at different stages of my research.

Stipp has been writing on the subject of medicine and aging for leading publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Fortune since the early 1980s. Over that time, he has built up an impressive set of contacts within the industry.

Stipp’s book is full of fascinating nuggets of insight, including useful biographical background details about many of the researchers who are pushing back the boundaries of knowledge in what is still a relatively young field.

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

Written by David Brion Davis. This sweeping account of the history of slavery draws on many decades of the author’s research as one of the preeminent researchers in the field. The book interweaves heart-rending accounts with careful reflection. This is a story that includes both dreadful low points and inspiring high points of human behaviour. There’s a great deal to be learned from it.

Davis quotes with approval the prominent Irish historian W.E.H. Lecky who concluded in 1869 that:

The unwearied, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery very may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous acts recorded in the history of nations.

The thorough analysis by Davis makes it clear that:

• The abolition of slavery was by no means inevitable or predetermined
• There were strong arguments against the abolition of slavery – arguments raised by clever, devout people in both the United States and the United Kingdom – arguments concerning economic well-being, among many other factors
• The arguments of the abolitionists were rooted in a conception of a better way of being a human – a way that avoided the harsh bondage and subjugation of the slave trade, and which would in due course enable many millions of people to fulfil a much greater potential
• The cause of the abolition of slavery was significantly advanced by public activism – including pamphlets, lectures, petitions, and municipal meetings
• The abolition of slavery cannot be properly understood without appreciating the significance of moral visions that “could transcend narrow self-interest and achieve genuine reform.”

On reason I read this book was to consider the strengths of a comparison I wanted to make in my own writing: a comparison between the abolition of slavery and the abolition of aging. My conclusion is that the comparison is a good one – although I recognise that some readers find it shocking:

• With its roots in the eighteenth century, and growing in momentum as the nineteenth century proceeded, the abolition of slavery eventually became an idea whose time had come – thanks to brave, smart, persistent activism by men and women with profound conviction
• With a different set of roots in the late twentieth century, and growing in momentum as the twenty-first century proceeds, the abolition of aging can, likewise, become an idea whose time has come. It’s an idea about an overwhelmingly better future for humanity – a future that will allow billions of people to fulfil a much greater potential. But as well as excellent engineering – the creation of reliable, accessible rejuvenation therapies – this project will also require brave, smart, persistent activism, to change the public landscape from one hostile (or apathetic) to rejuveneering into one that deeply supports it.

American Amnesia: Business, Government, and the Forgotten Roots of Our Prosperity

Written by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson. Many of the great social reforms of the last few centuries required sustained government action to make them happen. But governments need to work effectively alongside the remarkable capabilities of the market economy. Getting the right balance between these two primal forces is crucial.

The authors of this book defend a very interesting viewpoint, namely that the mixed economy was the most important social innovation of the 20th century:

The mixed economy spread a previously unimaginable level of broad prosperity. It enabled steep increases in education, health, longevity, and economic security.

They explain the mixed economy by an elaboration of Adam Smith’s notion of “the invisible hand”:

The political economist Charles Lindblom once described markets as being like fingers: nimble and dexterous. Governments, with their capacity to exercise authority, are like thumbs: powerful but lacking subtlety and flexibility. The invisible hand is all fingers. The visible hand is all thumbs. Of course, one wouldn’t want to be all thumbs. But one wouldn’t want to be all fingers either. Thumbs provide countervailing power, constraint, and adjustments to get the best out of those nimble fingers.

The authors’ characterisation of the positive role of government is, to my mind, spot on correct. It’s backed up by lots of instructive episodes from American history, going all the way back to the revolutionary founders:

• Governments provide social coordination of a type that fails to arise by other means of human interaction, such as free markets
• Markets can accomplish a great deal, but they’re far from all-powerful. Governments ensure that suitable investment takes place of the sort that would not happen, if it was left to each individual to decide by themselves. Governments build up key infrastructure where there is no short-term economic case for individual companies to invest to create it
• Governments defend the weak from the powerful. They defend those who lack the knowledge to realise that vendors may be on the point of selling them a lemon and then beating a hasty retreat. They take actions to ensure that social free-riders don’t prosper, and that monopolists aren’t able to take disproportionate advantage of their market dominance
• Governments prevent all the value in a market from being extracted by forceful, well-connected minority interests, in ways that would leave the rest of society impoverished. They resist the power of “robber barons” who would impose numerous tolls and charges, stifling freer exchange of ideas, resources, and people. Therefore governments provide the context in which free markets can prosper (but which those free markets, by themselves, could not deliver).

It’s a deeply troubling development that the positive role of enlightened government is something that is increasingly poorly understood. Instead, as a result of a hostile barrage of ideologically-driven misinformation, more and more people are calling for a reduction in the scope and power of government. This book describes that process as a form of collective “amnesia” (forgetfulness). It was one of the most frightening books I read in 2016.

In describing this book as “frightening”, I don’t mean that the book is bad. Far from it. What’s frightening is the set of information clearly set out in the book:

• The growing public hostility, especially in America (but shared elsewhere, to an extent) towards the idea that government should be playing any significant role in the well-being of society
• The growing identification of government with self-serving empire-building bureaucracy
• The widespread lack of understanding of the remarkable positive history of public action by governments that promoted overall social well-being (that is the “amnesia” of the title of the book)
• The decades-long growing tendency of many in America – particularly from the Republicans – to denigrate and belittle the role of government, for their own narrow interests
• The decades-long growing tendency of many others in America to keep quiet, in the face of Republican tirades against government, rather than speaking up to defend it.

I listened to the concluding chapters of American Amnesia during the immediate aftermath of the referendum in the UK on the merits of remaining within the EU. The parallels were chilling:

• In the EU, the positive role of EU governance has been widely attacked, over many decades, and only weakly defended. This encouraged a widespread popular hostility towards all aspects of EU governance
• In the US, the positive role of US governance has been widely attacked, over many decades, and only weakly defended. This encouraged a widespread popular hostility towards all aspects of US governance. The commendable ambitions of the Obama government therefore ran into all sorts of bitter opposition.

I wrote the following in July, in a Transpolitica review article “Flawed humanity, flawed politics”:

The parallels might run one step further. To me, and many others, it was almost unthinkable that the referendum in the UK would come down in favour of leaving the EU. Likewise, it’s unthinkable to many in the US that Donald Trump will receive a popular mandate in the forthcoming November elections.

But all bets are off if the electorate (1) Feel sufficiently alienated; (2) Imbibe a powerful sense of grievance towards “the others” who are perceived to run government; (3) Lack a positive understanding of the actual role of big government.

I take no pleasure in what turned out to be the prescience of those remarks. That was a prediction where I did not want to be correct.

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future

Written by Yanis Varoufakis. This book has some striking parallels with American Amnesia: the author provides an gripping survey of many parts of history that have consequences for the present time. Varoufakis focuses on the development of the European Union.

Time and again I discovered in the pages of this book important new aspects of events that I thought I already knew well, but where it turned out there were key connections that I had missed. In short, the book is full of powerful back stories to the current EU situation.

Whilst supporting many of the ideals of the EU, Varoufakis is an incisive critic of many of its aspects. Like the supporters of Brexit, he sees plenty that is deeply dysfunctional about  the current organisation of the EU. However, he believes that fixing the EU is both more practical and more desirable than turning our backs on it, and hoping to benefit from its likely subsequent unravelling. Varoufakis is one the leaders of the DiEM25 movement that describes itself as follows:

DiEM25 is a pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats.

We believe that the European Union is disintegrating. Europeans are losing their faith in the possibility of European solutions to European problems. At the same time as faith in the EU is waning, we see a rise of misanthropy, xenophobia and toxic nationalism.

If this development is not stopped, we fear a return to the 1930s. That is why we have come together despite our diverse political traditions – Green, radical left, liberal – in order to repair the EU. The EU needs to become a realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity for all Europeans. We must act quickly, before the EU disintegrates.

I expect the influence of DiEM25 to grow during the next few months, as the public discussion about the future of Europe becomes more contentious. They’re holding a public meeting in London on the evening of Friday 27th January:

A troubled Britain is on its way out of a troubled European Union. Disintegration and xenophobia are in the air. The government in London is in disarray. But so is every other government in Europe, not to mention the European Commission whose authority is tending increasingly towards zero.

The only forces to be gathering strength everywhere are those of what might be called a Nationalist International, spreading their belligerent reach to Trump’s America. Bellicose nativism is on the rise propagating a thinly-veiled discursive ethnic cleansing. Even sections of the Left are succumbing to arguments in favour of retreating behind the nation-state and stricter border controls.

Srećko Horvat, a Croat philosopher, Elif Shafak, renowned Turkish novelist, and Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, bring to this conversation an intriguing perspective. As intellectuals who know Britain well, they understand first hand the perils of nationalism, disintegration, isolationism and marginalisation. They will place post-Brexit Britain in a context informed by a view of Europe and Britain from the continent’s opposite ‘corner’, sharing insights from Greece’s tensions with Brussels and Berlin, Yugoslavia’s disintegration, and Turkey’s fraught relationship with a Europe that both courts and marginalises it.

Moderated by Owen Jones, a passionate campaigner for a quite different Britain in a quite different Europe, it promises to be an evening that restores confidence in Britain’s and Europe’s humanist and internationalist potential.

I’m looking forward to it!

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Written by Bill Browder. Any vision for a better future needs to include an assessment of the power and intentions of the regime of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Since there are many dark clouds on the international horizon, it’s understandable that some thinkers are clutching at straws of hope that Putin could become a reliable partner in the evolution of the international system. Perhaps. But any such thoughts need to be well aware of the horrific dark side of the Kremlin. We would be foolish to risk rose-tinted spectacles in this case.

This book provides ample documentation of many truly shocking abuses of power in Russia. Browder has an intriguing personal back story, which takes up the first half of the book. This part of the book explains how Browder’s investment fund Hermitage Capital, came to be the leading non-Russian participant in Russia companies following the wave of post-Soviet privatisations. It also explains Browder’s fierce legal conflicts with some of the Russian oligarchs, as Browder sought to prevent further fleecing of the assets of companies in which he had invested.

For a while, it seems that Putin supported what Browder was doing. But then Browder became an increasing annoyance to the Kremlin. What happens next is astonishing. Of all the books I read in 2016, this was the most gripping.

Browder is sometimes described as “Putin’s No. 1 enemy”. The book provides considerable justification for that claim. The story is by no means over. Browder continues to speak publicly about his story: I saw him speak at the Wired 2016 event in November in London. I commend the Wired organisers for having the breadth of vision to provide Browder with a key speaking slot.

Politics: Between the Extremes

Written by Nick Clegg. Clegg is the former leader of the Liberal Democrat party who was deputy prime minister of the UK from 2010 to 2015. His subsequent fall from power, as the LibDems were trounced in the May 2015 general election, was harsh and bitter. Huge numbers of former supporters of the party turned against it.

Nevertheless, Clegg is one of the most thoughtful politicians in the UK today. His book includes candid assessments of the mistakes he made, and his regrets for not doing things differently. One of the biggest regrets is not paying more attention to matters of communication: the LibDems frequently failed to get the credit for important contributions to the coalition government. As such, the party was out-manoeuvred by more powerful forces.

The book is an eloquent appeal for greater “liberalism” in politics – less certainty and dogmatism, more tolerance of diversity, more openness to new opportunities, and more willingness to embrace tricky coalitions. Despite the notes of sadness in the book, there are real grounds for optimism too.

Clegg comes across in the book the same as I have observed from several public events where I have seen him speak at close hand – as an eminently likeable person, honest about his mistakes, with a passionate belief in better politics and a willingness to build bridges. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of him in 2017.

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

Written by Jeff Sutherland. No matter how much we improve our foresight skills, we’re still likely to encounter surprises as our projects unfold. The world is full of uncertainty. We therefore need to improve our agility skills in parallel with our foresight skills. Agility gives us the ability to change our focus quickly, in the light of better feedback about likely future scenarios.

Scrum is one of the most influential sets of practice for agile working. This book, by one of the co-creators of Scrum, makes it clear that Scrum has wide applicability beyond the context of software development in which it initially grew to fame. Sutherland provides a host of telling examples of how large, cumbersome projects could be transformed into sleeker, more effective vehicles by the application of Scrum ideas such as sprints, scrum masters, transparency, estimation, waste management, and pivots.

If anyone ever feels overwhelmed by having too much to do – or too much to think about – the ideas in Sutherland’s book could help you break out from being bogged down in analysis-paralysis.

In my own futurist consulting activities, I’m finding that professional audiences are showing increasing interest in the few slides I sometimes include on the topic of “Agile futurism”. Perhaps I ought to flesh out these slides into a new service offering in its own right!