A follow-up to the author's prescient bestseller, first published in
1982, that alerted the public to the likely impacts of information
technologies and the emergence of a post-industrial society.
When Sleepers, Wake! was released in Australia, it immediately became
influential around the world: it was read by Deng Xiaoping and Bill
Gates; was published in China, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden; and led
to the author being the first Australian minister invited to address a
G-7 summit meeting, held in Canada in 1985
Now its author, the polymath and former politician Barry Jones, turns
his attention to what has happened since--especially to politics,
health, and our climate in the digital age--and to the challenges faced
by increasingly fragile democracies and public institutions.
Jones sees climate change as the greatest problem of our time, but
political leaders have proved incapable of dealing with complex,
long-term issues of such magnitude. The Trump phenomenon overturns the
whole concept of critical thinking and analysis. Meanwhile, technologies
such as the smartphone and the ubiquity of social media have reinforced
the realm of the personal. This has weakened our sense of, or empathy
with, 'the other', the remote, and the unfamiliar, and all but destroyed
our sense of community, of being members of broad, inclusive groups. The
COVID-19 threat, which was immediate, and personal, showed that some
leaders could respond courageously, while others denied the evidence.
In the post-truth era, politicians invent 'facts' and ignore or deny the
obvious, while business and the media are obsessed with marketing and
consumption for the short term. What Is to Be Done is a long-awaited
work from Jones on the challenges of modernity and what must be done to
meet them.
