
The Unaccountability Machine
Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind
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Narrated by:
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Peter Dickson
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By:
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Dan Davies
About this listen
'A corporation, or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence. It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad.'
When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
Management cybernetics was Beer's science of applying self-regulation in organisational settings, but it was largely ignored - with the result being the political and economic crises that that we see today. With his signature blend of cynicism and journalistic rigour, Davies looks at what's gone wrong, and what might have been, had the world listened to Stafford Beer when it had the chance.
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Good summary
- By Medz on 01-28-25
By: Henry Farrell, and others
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Hacking the Unconscious
- By: Rory Sutherland
- Narrated by: Rory Sutherland
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Original Recording
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Advertising guru Rory Sutherland is a world-leading proponent of behavioural economics. In Hacking the Unconscious, he looks at how this emerging science is used by marketers to influence us and challenges us to reassess which ideas we hold dear.
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This isn’t a book
- By Alex on 04-27-24
By: Rory Sutherland
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Recoding America
- Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
- By: Jennifer Pahlka
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pahlka
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
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Very good, minimally partisan.
- By 95Rb35 on 11-25-23
By: Jennifer Pahlka
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The Longevity Imperative
- How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives
- By: Andrew J. Scott
- Narrated by: Michael Chance
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Thanks to increases in life expectancy, we can now expect to live for a long time. Most of us would welcome an extra day in the week, so why do so many of us view the prospect of additional years with fear and skepticism? The reason is simple: society is not currently structured to support long lives. Rather than thinking in terms of the needs of a rising number of older people, we must instead support the young and middle-aged to prepare differently for the longer futures they can expect.
By: Andrew J. Scott
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Means of Control
- How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
- By: Byron Tau
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring.
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Political biased for absolutely no reason
- By Red on 09-28-24
By: Byron Tau
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Fluke
- Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
- By: Brian Klaas
- Narrated by: Brian Klaas
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas takes a deep-dive into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: but for a few small changes, our lives—and our societies—could be radically different.
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This book should be listed as fiction
- By Ned D. May on 05-29-24
By: Brian Klaas
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Money Men
- A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth
- By: Dan McCrum
- Narrated by: Dan McCrum
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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When investigative journalist Dan McCrum first came across Wirecard, the hot new tech company that looked poised to challenge Silicon Valley, it all looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up all over the world, and they were reporting runaway growth. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum began to dig deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more compelling than he could have imagined.
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Interesting book but…
- By Rock Climber on 06-11-23
By: Dan McCrum
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Why War?
- By: Richard Overy
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight. Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was "a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war." Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud's conclusion that the "death drive" made any deliverance impossible.
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War is Peace
- By Anonymous User on 01-23-25
By: Richard Overy
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Manias, Panics, and Crashes (Seventh Edition)
- A History of Financial Crises
- By: Robert Z. Aliber, Charles P. Kindleberger
- Narrated by: Alister Austin
- Length: 19 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a scholarly and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system.
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Lack of theoretical underpinning
- By Dr. Terence M. Dwyer on 09-20-21
By: Robert Z. Aliber, and others
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The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World . . .
- Essays
- By: David Graeber, Nika Dubrovsky - editor
- Narrated by: Jacques Servin, Savitri D
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote David Graeber. A renowned anthropologist, activist, and author of such classic books as Debt and the breakout New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), Graeber was as well-known for his sharp, lively essays as he was for his iconic role in the Occupy movement and his paradigm-shifting tomes.
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An important read
- By zoia krioukova on 01-28-25
By: David Graeber, and others
Illuminating.
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