Interview with Steve Hamm, author of The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action
Steve Hamm, author of The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action recommends a great list of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Steve's book:
Review from Book Depository:
When the world reemerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems likely that it will have transformed irrevocably. Can societies already reeling from climate change, income inequality, and structural racism change for the better? Does the shock of the pandemic offer an opportunity to pivot to a more sustainable way of life?
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The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action
Early in the crisis, a global volunteer collaboration called Pivot Projects was formed to rethink how the world works. Some members are experts in the sciences and the humanities; others are environmental activists or regular people who see themselves as world citizens. In The Pivot, the journalist Steve Hamm-who embedded in the enterprise from the start-explores their efforts and shows how their approach provides a model for achieving systemic change. Chronicling the group's progress along an uncharted path, he shows how people with a variety of skills and personalities collaborate to get things done.
Through their work, Hamm examines some of today's most important technologies and concepts, such as systems thinking and modeling, complexity theory, artificial intelligence, and new thinking about resilience. The book features vivid, informal profiles of a number of the group's members and brings to life the excitement and energy of dynamic, smart people trying to change the world.
Part journal of a plague year and part call to action, The Pivot tells the remarkable story of a collaborative experiment seeking to make the world more sustainable and resilient.
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Easons €28.00
Book Depository €24.89
Waterstones £22.00
Wordery $23.01
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
I think one of the most important non-fiction books of the past few years is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. We are familiar with the malign effects that Facebook has had on American politics—enabling clustering of like-minded people into echo chambers that reinforce non-fact-based opinions and contribute to the rise of neo-fascism into the mainstream. Zuboff’s book goes deep into an analysis of how Facebook and other digital giants gather information about us and use it against us. Her core thesis is that the surveillance capitalists don’t just want to know everything about you, including what you will do in the future; they want to deny you agency, to control you, and to make you their mental slaves. In my view, she isn’t exaggerating. Government leaders must step in and stop this.
Review From Book Depository: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us. Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits. (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
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Easons €10.49
Book Depository €13.42
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $14.14
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
Right now I’m reading Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta, an Australian with aboriginal roots. Only recently, I began recognizing the importance of indigenous wisdom, especially as it is passed to us by living elders from various native groups around the world. As we seek solutions to our monumental climate-change and social-devolution problems, we can get sound guidance from people who live in balance with nature. Plus, Yunkaporta has a really cool way of telling stories using simple illustrations.
Review from Book Depository:
This remarkable book is about everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits to Schrodinger's cat. Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?
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Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Sand Talk provides a template for living. It's about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everybody and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it's about Indigenous thinking, and how it can save the world.
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Book Depository €15.57
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $14.42
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
My favorite childhood book is Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I read and re-read it when I was about 8 years old. The book was first published in 1930, and the edition I had must have come to me from my mother, who was born in 1924. I loved the outdoors when I was a kid. (My career-preference test results in high school pegged me as a future forest ranger.) This novel is the story of the children of two families who summer in Great Britain’s Lake District. The children are allowed to run wild, unsupervised, as they sail small boats, camp out at night, fish, explore, compete with one another and, finally, team up to take on an imaginary foe. A few years later, my family began spending two weeks every August at the summer home of my aunt. It was near a lake in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. For those two weeks each year, we lived the lives of the Swallows and Amazons.
Review From Book Depository
The Walker children - also known as Captain John, Mate Susan, Able-Seaman Titty, and Ship's Boy Roger - set sail on the Swallow and head for Wild Cat Island. There they camp under open skies, swim in clear water and go fishing for their dinner. But their days are disturbed by the Blackett sisters, the fierce Amazon pirates. The Swallows and Amazons decide to battle it out, and so begins a summer of unforgettable discoveries and incredible adventures.
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Swallows and Amazons
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Book Depository €11.19
Book Depository €11.21
Waterstones £7.99
Wordery $10.65
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
I prefer reading on paper (only if it is new because I am allergic to dusty old books, unfortunately). However, because I am now a minimalist when it comes to acquiring physical things, I read mainly on my Kindle. The fact that I can increase font sizes is a big plus.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
My favorite bookshop is Grey Matter Books, a used bookshop in New Haven near the Yale University Campus. (There is a sister shop in Hadley, Mass.) What makes this shop special is that the owners frequently purchase books from individuals or estates of individuals who have or had exquisitely good taste. For instance, last year they purchased and put on sale books from the library of J. Hillis Miller, who was at one time a core member of the Yale School of literary criticism. The collection included books inscribed to him by the likes of colleagues Harold Bloom and Paul de Man. As I mentioned above, I am now a minimalist when it comes to collecting physical things, I mainly look at books there rather than purchasing them, and the fact that the store will buy books from customers for credit is a bonus.
Many thanks to Steve for recommending a great list of books! Please don't forget to check out Steve's book The Pivot: Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Columbia University Press (The Pivot), Profile Books Ltd (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism), Text Publishing (Sand Talk), Vintage Publishing (Swallows and Amazons).
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