Description: Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses his new book Making Globalization Work as part of the Authors@Google speaker series.
Making Globalization Work is a book written by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, who also wrote Globalization and Its Discontents and several other books.
The first major protest in Seattle, Washington against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its role in promoting economic globalization came as a surprise to many, considering the positive impacts globalization was supposed to bring.
According to Stiglitz, this was the first step in a wide-spread recognition that globalization was all “too good to be true.” Along with globalization comes a myriad of concerns and problems, says Stiglitz.
The first concern being that the rules governing globalization favors developed countries, while the developing countries sink even lower. Secondly, globalization only regards monetary value of items, rather than other factors involved; one being the environment.
The next concern is how developing countries are controlled by globalization and the negative effects it can have on their democracies. Developing countries borrow a large amount of funds from other countries and the World Bank which essentially causes them to give up the benefits of their democracy because of the strings attached to the loan repayment.
The fourth concern regarding globalization is the notion that it does not live up to its original expectations. Globalization was advertised to boost countries economically; however, it has not shown improvement in developed nor developing countries.
Last but not least, the new system of globalization has basically forced a new economic system on developing countries. This new economic system is seen as the “Americanization” (Stigilitz, Page 9) of their policies as well as culture. This has caused quite a bit of damage financially as well as resentment.
In addition to these concerns, Stiglitz highlights that individual persons and whole countries are being victimized by globalization.
“Globalization had succeeded in unifying people from around the world—against globalization. Factory workers in the United States saw their jobs being threatened by competition from China. Farmers and developing countries saw their jobs being threatened by the highly subsidized corn and other crops from the United States.
Workers in Europe saw hard-fought-for job protections being assailed in the name of globalization. AIDS activists saw a new trade agreement raising the prices of drugs to levels that were unaffordable in much of the world.
Environmentalists felt that globalization undermined their decade long struggle to establish regulations to preserve our natural heritage. Those who wanted to protect and develop their own cultural heritage saw too the intrusions of globalization (Stiglitz, 2006, p. 7).
Stiglitz then goes on to provide an overview of how we might “reform” globalization, by noting representatives of the world’s national governments attended the Millennium Summit and signed the Millennium Development Goals, pledging to cut poverty in half by 2015.
Additionally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had previously been focusing more on inflation, rather than employment and income; however, they have shifted their focus in hopes of reducing poverty. Stiglitz states that countries who seek financial assistance have in the past been asked to meet an outrageous number of conditions, in exchange for the aid.
This was one of the most common complaints towards the IMF and the World Bank. They have heard these complaints and have since greatly reduced the conditionality.
The G8 group met for their annual meeting in 2005 and had agreed to write off debt owed by the 18 poorest countries in the world as an attempt to help with the global poverty issue.
The aspiration to make trade fair, (a) originally, opening the market was done in hopes of helping the economy; however, the rights between the developing and developed countries have been skewed, and (b) the last trade agreement actually put the poorest countries in a situation in which they were worse off then to begin with.
Stiglitz focuses on the limitations of liberalization briefly to say the policies of liberalization never lived up to its expectation, the developing countries were not able to follow through with the policy because the countries were not liberalized enough to produce growth.
Finally, Stiglitz also argues that protecting the environment is one of the most important issues and countries must work together to lessen the effects of global warming.
Successful development in countries such as India and China has only increased energy usage and also the use of natural resources. People from all over the world must adjust their lifestyle in order to reverse the effects of global warming.
In order to see more success through globalization, global governance must make reforms. The voices of all, internationally, must be heard, rather than having the voice of the developed countries speak over those of the developing countries.
ShareDescription: Author Ryan Boudinot discusses his new hit book The Littlest Hitler as part of Google’s Authors@Google speaker series.
Publisher Comments: Bette wore what I had come to secretly call her Star Trek uniform, a hideous white suit jacket with too-pointy collars. From her face hung a beard of bees. Everyone’s seen these things on TV or in National Geographic.
Some farmer standing shirtless in his field, a stalactite of writhing insects dangling from his grinning face. But on Bette, though. Our account manager for digital media. I wasn’t even aware she raised bees.
Welcome to the world of Ryan Boudinot, where a little boy who innocently dresses up as Hitler for Halloween suffers the consequences. (“The Littlest Hitler”); a world where a typical office romance is destroyed by the female half’s habit of coming to work covered in live bees (“Bee Beard”); where jacked-up salesmen go on murderous, Burgess-like rampages (“The Sales Team”); and the children of the future are required to kill off their parents — preferably with an ice pick — in order to be accepted to the college of their choice (“Civilization”). You may never want to leave.
In each of these fearless, hilarious, and tightly crafted stories, Boudinot’s voice rings with a clarity rarely seen in a debut collection.
He speaks to a generation that has tried to seem disaffected but can’t help wishing for a better world.
His characters shake their heads over the same messes they’re busily creating, or lash out angrily at a sex-and-violence-saturated culture.
But they can never entirely lose their sense of fun, however perverse it may be.
ShareDescription: Emily Scott Pottruck discusses her book Tails of Devotion as part of Google’s Authors@Google speaker series.
As an avid pet lover, I set out on a journey to meet other animal devotees to prove to my husband that I am not as uniquely crazy as he thinks I am.
Of course, I found many: we are a very large club. The photographs and notes within this book tell the tales of some of the relationships between pets and their companions. Let me begin with ours.
In February 2000, Andy, my first born, a five and a half pound Yorkshire Terrier, was attacked by a 100 pound Husky. At first, the doctors thought his neck and back were broken. They wanted to put him down but they soon realized that they would have to put me down at the same time.
During this traumatic ordeal, my friend Amy posted a notice of Andy’s accident on a Yorkie chatboard. Within minutes I received e-mails from Yorkie owners from as far as Israel and France.
Virtual strangers in a virtual community, giving me a warm sense of belonging to a group who understood our pain. Thus the inspiration for this book: the devotion between people and the animals that we live with, care for, and are cared by.
In all, more than 50 families shared their stories of their relationships with their beloved pets. During the photo sessions, I watched each person’s face relax and smile as he or she talked about the animals in their family.
Marsha described the different moods and idiosyncrasies of Oscar, her “grand rabbit,” with the same degree of parental knowledge as Connie had about Mr. Peeps, her cat. There are those brave and caring souls who rescue sick, injured, neglected, or abandoned pets who are destined for certain death.
Kay and Yoshigo have built a haven for stray cats that covers their entire yard. What a sight to behold: a woman in her seventies, squatting as she dips under the protective netting in the yard to give each cat a treat or a hug.
ShareDescription: Steven Levy discusses his new book The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness as part of Google’s Authors@Google speaker series.
On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology — if not necessarily for its dominant market share — launched a product with an enticing promise: You can carry an entire music collection in your pocket.
It was called the iPod. What happened next exceeded the company’s wildest dreams. Over 50 million people have inserted the device’s distinctive white buds into their ears, and the iPod has become a global obsession.
The Perfect Thing is the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple’s iPod, the signature device of our young century.
Besides being one of the most successful consumer products in decades, the iPod has changed our behavior and even our society. It has transformed Apple from a computer company into a consumer electronics giant.
It has remolded the music business, altering not only the means of distribution but even the ways in which people enjoy and think about music. Its ubiquity and its universally acknowledged coolness have made it a symbol for the digital age itself, with commentators remarking on “the iPod generation.”
Now the iPod is beginning to transform the broadcast industry, too, as podcasting becomes a way to access radio and television programming. Meanwhile millions of Podheads obsess about their gizmo, reveling in the personal soundtrack it offers them, basking in the social cachet it lends them, even wondering whether the device itself has its own musical preferences.
Steven Levy, the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and a longtime Apple watcher, is the ideal writer to tell the iPod’s tale. He has had access to all the key players in the iPod story, including Steve Jobs, Apple’s charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom Levy has known for over twenty years.
Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn’t get it right, and how Jobs was able to convince the bosses at the big record labels to license their music for Apple’s groundbreaking iTunes Store. (We even learn why the iPod is white.)
Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod’s click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues — technical, legal, social, and musical — that the iPod raises.
Borrowing one of the definitive qualities of the iPod itself, The Perfect Thing shuffles the book format. Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod.
The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. “Shuffle” is a hallmark of the digital age — and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era.
ShareDescription: On October 30, 2006 Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, visited Google’s NYC Campus.
In this presentation he discusses the Lovemarks concept, some of Saatchi’s most entertaining and powerful advertisements and his most recent book: The Lovemarks Effect.
Kevin’s Bio can be found here: http://www.saatchikevin.com/TheUnofficialKR_Bio/
ShareDescription: The New York Times bestselling author of The Other Woman returns with a wry tale of two women who discover the grass is not always greener on the other side of the Atlantic.
Vicky Townsley is single, solvent, and seriously successful. Features director of the hugely successful Poise! magazine, she has an amazing flat, good friends, a fantastic wardrobe … in short, everything — except the life she wants: marriage, children, and a house in the country.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Amber Winslow has a stone mansion in Connecticut, two kids (and a full-time nanny), the requisite golden retriever, and a busy charitable commitment for the local Women’s League.
But she hasn’t quite found the fulfillment she had expected from being a wife and mother. When she spots an intriguing contest in Poise!, Amber never expects to be picked.
Swapping Lives is a riotous and poignant look at what happens when two women, both of whom think their bliss lies elsewhere, walk in each other’s shoes for a month only to discover that happiness is closer than they’d ever thought.
A rich, clever, and sharply observed chronicle of the true lives of women, Swapping Lives is a must read for the modern mademoiselle that will again squarely position Jane Green in a preeminent place in women’s fiction.
ShareDescription: With World War II finally coming to an ending, Jake Geismar, former Berlin correspondent for CBS, has managed to wangle one of the coveted slots for the Potsdam Conference.
His assignment: a series of articles on the American occupation of postwar Berlin. His personal agenda: to find Lena, the German mistress he left behind at the outbreak of the war.
When he stumbles onto a murder — an American soldier has washed up on a lake shore on the conference grounds — he thinks he has found the key that will unlock his Berlin story.
What he finds instead is a larger story of corruption and intrigue reaching deep into the heart of the occupation and a city not only physically but morally devastated, where children scavenge for food in the rubble, sex can be had for a cigarette, and the black market is the only means of survival.
Berlin at zero hour is like nowhere else — a tragedy, and a feverish party after the end the world. And nothing is simple-not the murder of a soldier and not any of the lives, American and German, that Jake encounters as he tries solve it.
More unsolvable still is the larger crime that hangs over everything in 1945, a crime so huge it seems beyond punishment.
At once a murder mystery, a love story, and a riveting portrait of a unique time and place, The Good German is a historical thriller of first rank.
ShareDescription: A Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist for the past three decades, Steve Wozniak, Founder, has helped shape the computing industry with his design of Apple’s first line of products the Apple I and II and influenced the popular Macintosh.
For his achievements at Apple Computer, Steve was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, the highest honor bestowed America’s leading innovators.
In 2000 Steve was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment for “single-handedly designing the first personal computer and for then redirecting his lifelong passion for mathematics and electronics toward lighting the fires of excitement for education in grade school students and their teachers.”
Making significant investments of both his time and resources in education, Wozniak “adopted” the Los Gatos School District, providing students and teachers with hands-on teaching and donations of state-of-the-art technology equipment.
Wozniak founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was the founding sponsor of the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose.
Steve is currently a member of the board of directors for Jacent, a developer of cost-effective telephony solutions, and Danger, Inc., developer of an end-to-end wireless Internet platform.
ShareDescription: On June 8, 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine were last seen climbing toward the summit of Mt. Everest. Clouds soon closed around them, and they vanished into history.
Ever since, mountaineers have wondered whether they reached the summit, twenty-nine years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. On May 1, 1999, Conrad Anker, one of the world’s strongest mountaineers, discovered Mallory’s body, frozen and naturally mummified at 27,000 feet on Everest’s north face.
The condition of the body, as well as the “artifacts” found with Mallory, are important clues in determining his fate. Seventeen days later Anker free-climbed the Second Step, a ninety-foot sheer cliff that is the single hardest obstacle on the north ridge.
Anker’s climb was the first test since Mallory’s of the cliff’s true difficulty. From the Second Step, Anker led teammate Dave Hahn to the summit under treacherous conditions.
Reflecting on the climb, Anker explains why he thinks Mallory and Irvine failed to make the summit, but also expresses his awe for Mallory’s achievement with the primitive equipment of the time.
ShareDescription: Indian born artist-educator-activist Subhankar Banerjee uses photography to raise awareness about issues that threaten the health and well-being of our planet. Since late 2000 he has focused all his efforts on indigenous human rights and land conservation issues in the Arctic.
His photographic work has been instrumental in the ongoing conservation efforts of the ecologically and culturally significant areas of the American Arctic, including, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Teshekpuk Lake wetlands, Utukok River uplands, Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
He works closely with the Gwich’in and Inupiat indigenous communities of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, and most recently with the Yukaghir and the Even indigenous communities of Siberia.
His Arctic photographs have been exhibited in nearly forty one-person and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including solo exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.
In 2009 his work will be exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Hopkins Center for Arts, Dartmouth College and The CoalMine Fotogalerie, Volkart Foundation House, Winterthur (Zurich), Switzerland and in the group exhibition IMPACT: Living in The Age of Climate Change that will open in Copenhagen at the Statens Museum for Kunst (Danish National Gallery of Art) and Nikolaj (Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center) and will travel to Iceland, Norway, and Sweden through 2010.
In Fall 2008 he will be a visiting artist at the Future Arts Research at Arizona State University in Phoenix and a visiting scholar at the College of Humanities at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City and in winter 2009 artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College, Hanover.
Subhankar has given over fifty lectures including at the United Nations, and Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia Universities. He has received an inaugural Greenleaf Artist Award from the United Nations Environment Programme and an inaugural Cultural Freedom Fellowship from Lannan Foundation.
He serves on the advisory board of Blue Earth Alliance. Most recently he has started photographing near his home in New Mexico. Subhankar and his wife Nora live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
ShareDescription: At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution a powerful general fathered two sons. Tan was born to the general’s wife and into a life of comfort and luxury.
His half brother, Shento, was born to the general’s mistress, who threw herself off a cliff in the mountains of Balan only moments after delivering her child. Growing up, each remained ignorant of the other’s existence.
In Beijing, Tan enjoyed the best schools, the finest clothes, and the prettiest girls. Shento was raised on the mountainside by an old healer and his wife until their deaths landed him in an orphanage, where he was always hungry, alone, and frightened.
Though on divergent roads, each brother is driven by a passionate desire—one to glorify his father, the other to seek revenge against him. Separated by distance and opportunity, Tan and Shento follow the paths that lie before them, while unknowingly falling in love with the same woman and moving toward the explosive moment when their fates finally merge.
Brothers, by bestselling memoirist Da Chen, is a sprawling, dynamic family saga, complete with assassinations, love affairs, narrowly missed opportunities, and the ineluctable fulfillment of destiny.
ShareDescription: Rey Ramsey is chief executive officer of One Economy Corporation. Co-founded by Mr. Ramsey in 2000, One Economy Corporation leverages the power of technology and information to connect low-income people to the economic mainstream by bringing broadband into their homes, producing public-purpose media, and training and employing youth to enhance communities’ technological capacity. Learn more at www.one-economy.com.
Mr. Ramsey led the organization’s growth from four employees working in basement to a global organization that has taken root on four continents. Since 2000, One Economy has helped bring broadband access into the homes of over 300,000 low-income Americans. More than 14 million people have visited One Economy’s multilingual web properties and hundreds of youth have delivered nearly 50,000 hours of service to their communities.
Mr. Ramsey has spent years creating innovative partnerships between nonprofits, government and the private sector. Mr. Ramsey is the author, with Ben Hecht, of the book ManagingNonprofits.org: Dynamic Management for the Digital Age (John Wiley & Sons).
Prior to the founding of One Economy, Mr. Ramsey served as president and chief operating officer of the Enterprise Foundation. Before joining Enterprise, Mr. Ramsey served in the cabinets of two governors of Oregon as the state’s director of housing and community services and practiced law.
Mr. Ramsey serves on many boards, including the Schnitzer Investment Corporation, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and the Washington Jesuit Academy, where he is vice-chairman. He was the chairman of Habitat for Humanity International from 2003-2005. He holds a bachelors degree in political science from Rutgers University and is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School.
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