Work

If you are a writer, or know one, there is no doubt you would have heard the statement ‘My book could have done better but the marketing was crap.’ The romance of publishing a book is alive and well and regularly clouds the reality of having achieved significantly with one’s labour and imagination (and a supportive publisher). Publishing a book rarely changes one’s life – but it can break your heart if you expect it will.

1. Living ‘Where do writers get their ideas from?’ This a question that comes up regularly for writers who find…

This Changes Everything builds on Klein’s anti-capitalist critique. In her sly way, Klein is honest enough about the disguised Marxism of her project. Rather than proceed with a straightforward assault on neoliberalism – perhaps she assumes we have read The Shock Doctrine first – Klein instead takes us into the Heartland of the Deniers, visiting right wing climate denial conferences, where the tinfoil hat wearers are only too happy to tell her why they fear climate science so much.

Eisenlauer identifies a number of predefined paths into which Facebook channels its users’ activities – status updates, comments, ‘likes’, shares – and suggests that in doing so, Facebook moulds the interactions between people to such an extent that, in any conversation between two of its users, it can be said to comprise a ‘third author’.

The authors specifically exclude ‘culture’ from their account of ‘how universities can be useful to individuals and societies’ because they are trying to take a pragmatic view of the situation. This certainly presents a simpler view of the situation universities face – a less confusing view – but it is not pragmatic, because the benefits universities provide to individuals, communities and nations are civic as well as economic, and these two are related to each other.