Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Sebastian Smee, Black Inc./Quarterly Essay, $22.99.
“Every day I spend hours and hours on my phone … We are all doing it, aren’t we? It has come to feel completely normal. Even when I put my device aside and attach it to a charger, it pulses away in my mind, like the throat of a toad, full of blind, amphibian appetite.”
These words from Smee are so very true. Digital technology is omnipresent these days. Wherever we turn, it’s there: iPhones, iPads, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Then there’s YouTube. Of course, we can’t resist the urge to access a device, especially if it’s nearby.
In the exceptional QE72, Smee provides a new rejoinder. Digital dominance is not only complex, but considerable as well. He adds prominence to a specific trend: how values of certain things in our lives have been cast aside. It is likely that once we learn how ubiquitous technology is and what it’s doing to us we will counter with a rash of responses: indifference, perhaps despair or maybe optimism. Above all, take action.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author has a unique talent in giving depth to an argument. His allegory has precision. Whichever way we go, it is time to stop and take stock of the ramifications.
Smee succeeds, masterfully, in putting forward divergent views on this issue, but the test will be whether you can read it in one sitting and not reach for your phone. Maybe you’ll think twice before you do.
Follow the Leader: Democracy and the Rise of the Strongman
Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Laura Tingle, Black Inc./Quarterly Essay, $22.99.
“The Liberal Party has been ripped apart and our polity is the worse off for having one of its major political parties rendered largely ungovernable … Malcolm Turnbull’s fate came down to a series of judgements made not just by him, but by his colleagues, who spent much of his prime ministership failing to follow the leader and also failing in their own collective responsibility for leadership.”
Laura Tingle, well-known author and journalist, asks some discerning and opportune questions in QE71. These include what is true political leadership, and how do we get it? What qualities should we wish for in our leaders?
She capably ‘argues that democratic leaders build a consensus for change, rather than bludgeon the system or turn politics into a popularity contest. They mobilise and guide, more than impose a vision. Tingle offers acute portraits – profiles in courage and cunning – of leaders ranging from Merkel and Howard to Macron and Obama’.
