The Ingenuity Gap: How Can We Solve the Problems of the Future? - Hardcover

Homer-Dixon, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224050532 ISBN 13: 9780224050531

Publisher: Cape, 2000

Synopsis

In this text, the author shows us how, in our complex world, our own rich countries are no longer immune from the ingenuity gap, and we are all caught dangerously between a soaring requirement for ingenuity and an increasingly uncertain supply. Is our world becoming too complex and too fast-paced to manage? This book looks at the challenges facing human society in the 21st century, from international financial crisis and global climate change to the problems of tuberculosis and AIDS. The "ingenuity gap" is the gap between our need for practical solutions to complex problems and the actual supply of those solutions.

About this title

Review

In Speed and Politics the French thinker Paul Virilio famously developed the theory that speed defines today's world. The communications revolution makes the world smaller, faster and infinitely more complex. In his fascinating new book The Ingenuity Gap, White House advisor Thomas Homer-Dixon, takes this argument a stage further, claiming that "if our societies are to manage their affairs and improve their well-being, they will need more ingenuity, that is, more ideas for solving their technical and social problems. But societies, whether rich or poor, can't always supply the ingenuity they need at the right times and places. As a result, some face an ingenuity gap: a shortfall between their rapidly rising need for ingenuity and their adequate supply" Homer-Dixon's updated version of Darwin's theory of evolution rests on brain power, and the need for "copious ingenuity to address the commonplace challenges around us". What follows is an absorbing but rather fruitless attempt to measure and quantify ingenuity, and Homer-Dixon's accounts of how ingenuity has responded to a series of contemporary problems, stretching from pollution, global warming and the crisis of the global economy, to the dark side of artificial intelligence and information technology. However, this is a very long book for such a bold and snappy thesis, that veers between rather dubious forms of social engineering and utopian liberalism, as Homer-Dixon concludes rather hopefully that "as ingenuity gaps widen the gulfs of wealth and power among us, we need imagination, metaphor and empathy more than ever, to help us remember each other's essential humanity". Not a particularly novel or ingenious solution. --Jerry Brotton

Review

"[C]losely reasoned, accessible, and lucid . . . . [A] welcome reality check." --"The Washington Post
" "No other new concept . . . so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization as does 'ingenuity gap.' [Homer-Dixon] is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience." --Robert D. Kaplan
"This remarkable work, based on an impressive amount of scholarship, travel, and interviews, is the most persuasive forecast of the twenty-first century I have seen."--Edward O. Wilson
"[R]emarkable . . . compelling, original . . . . This book's intellectual scope is truly sweeping." "The Memphis Commercial Appeal
"

[C]losely reasoned, accessible, and lucid . . . . [A] welcome reality check. --The Washington Post
No other new concept . . . so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization as does ingenuity gap. [Homer-Dixon] is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience. --Robert D. Kaplan
This remarkable work, based on an impressive amount of scholarship, travel, and interviews, is the most persuasive forecast of the twenty-first century I have seen. --Edward O. Wilson
[R]emarkable . . . compelling, original . . . . This book s intellectual scope is truly sweeping. The Memphis Commercial Appeal
"

Edition details

• Publisher: Cape
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224050532
• ISBN 13: 9780224050531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496