Dalton Conley has a new book.

Conley makes a prescient analysis of how technology and free markets have transformed American life, comparing the mid-20th century American with the present-day incarnation.

These are two very different animals -- one compartmentalized and motivated by the traditional American ethos of success, and the other a psychological hybrid of impulses connected to work, pleasure, materialism and consumption. The results of this brilliant and, at times, chilling comparison, are manifest not only on these pages but in real life.

Cheap and easy credit, he writes, has been a major reason why the United States recently dipped into negative savings for the first time since the great depression. Conley examines how, technology has altered how Americans earn and spend money, playing out the behaviors characteristic of late capitalism, or simply an evolving economic system that, by attaching a price to virtually everything from child rearing to dating, has helped devalue people, the work they do and the material goods they desire.

A sociological mirror, this book is equal parts cautionary tale, exercise in contemporary anthropology and a spiritual and emotional audit of the 21st century American.

From the archive:

I’m not thinking the way I used to think.

Also:

Do you understand the difference between "Is it worth buying?" and "Can it be sold?"

Recently:

A radically different order of society based on open access, decentralized creativity, collaborative intelligence, and cheap and easy sharing is ascendant.

Elsewhere, USA: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety

In the social economy, relationships are the new currency.

From the archive:

Psychologists found that lovers frequently thought their partner should know what they want without the two of them having to talk.

I genuinely think I have learned more from my mistakes than I learned from my successes. It's absolutely critical that when working on any project you develop relationships with the people so you can hear what it is that they're really thinking.

People allow low-quality relationships developed in virtual reality to replace higher-quality relationships in the real world.

Innovations are double-edged swords that transform relationships among people, as well as between human societies and the natural world. Only through successful cultural appropriation can we manage to control the hubris that is fundamental to the innovative, enterprising human spirit.

For Paulo Coelho, digital is about relationships. Coelho certainly has nothing against selling books. But he also believes in giving them away. He is a pirate.

I will, at all costs, avoid this generic procedure.

The Conversation Prism

Neil Howe published a new book last year.

The Graying of the Great Powers offers the first comprehensive assessment of the geopolitical implications of "global aging"--the dramatic transformation in population age structures and growth rates being brought about by falling fertility and rising longevity worldwide. It describes how demographic trends in the developed world will constrain the ability of the United States and its traditional allies to maintain national and global security in the decades ahead. It also explains how dramatic demographic change in the developing world--from resurgent youth bulges in the Islamic world to premature aging in China and population implosion in Russia--will give rise to serious new security threats. While some argue that global aging is pushing the world toward greater peace and prosperity, The Graying of the Great Powers warns that a period of great geopolitical danger looms just over the horizon. Neither the triumph of multilateralism nor democratic capitalism is assured. The demographic trends of the twenty-first century will challenge the geopolitical assumptions of both the left and the right.

From the Major Findings:

The world is entering a demographic transformation of unprecedented dimensions.

The coming transformation is both certain and lasting. There is almost no chance that it will not happen—or that it will be reversed in our lifetime.

The transformation will affect different groups of countries at different times. The regions of the world will become more unalike before they become more alike.

In the developed world, the transformation will have sweeping economic, social, and political consequences that could undermine the ability of the United States and its traditional allies to maintain security.

In the developing world, the transformation will have more varied consequences—propelling some countries toward greater prosperity and stability, while giving rise to dangerous new security threats in others.

Throughout the world, the 2020s will likely emerge as a decade of maximum geopolitical danger.

The aging developed countries will face chronic shortages of young-adult manpower—posing challenges both for their economies and their security forces.

An aging developed world may struggle to remain culturally attractive and politically relevant to younger societies.

The Graying of the Great Powers

The new year begins with an interesting example of sovereign geography as applied to movement through the atmosphere: a Ugandan baby girl was born aboard an airplane en route from Amsterdam to the United States – and so was given Canadian citizenship, because the plane was flying over eastern Canada at the time.

From the archive:

A health director ... reported this week that a small mouse, which presumably had been watching television, attacked a little girl and her full-grown cat ... Both mouse and cat survived, and the incident is recorded here as a reminder that things seem to be changing.

Air Born

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

From the archive, a bit of Gladwell:

The relation between the number of people who aren’t of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio.

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite.

I know from personal experience that the last thing you want, in that awkward decade when you are trying to figure out who you are and where you are headed, is the pressure of being under the constant observation of cranky grown-ups who wonder why you aren’t unloading the dishwasher for them more often.

I understand the appeal [of Stephanie Meyer]. At Clementine’s age, I too would have been able to smell Edward and feel the delicious iciness of his breath on the back of my neck.

Recently:

When a man changes his natural body odor it can alter his self-confidence to such an extent that it also changes how attractive women find him.

From a year ago:

As one female social scientist noted in Science Magazine, "Reinventing the curriculum will not make me more interested in learning how my dishwasher works."

Also:

I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

Have you seen Låt den rätte komma in?

I Wish I Could Read Like a Girl

Some people enjoy running into an occasional primate or farm animal while shopping. Many others don’t.

Rory Stewart offers a kind tip:

Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined.

Nathan Myhrvold:

Some people are just not interested in natural history, I guess.

I suppose -- but for those who are, here's a tip from the archive:

New anthropological evidence suggests that snakes, as predators, may have figured prominently in the evolution of primate vision — the ability, shared by humans, apes and monkeys, to see the world in crisp, three-dimensional living color.

Also:

The squirrel kept running and finally stopped when it realized there was still nowhere to go.

From the archive:

California, a state that faces ongoing water quality issues, appears to be working diligently to curb any runoff into water sources.

Also:

Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish.

All Shapes and Sizes

When did the phrase "save money" come to mean buying something at a discount, rather than not spending money at all?

Just wondering ...

From the archive:

Layaway ... what’s that again?

Saving

Subscribers to The New Yorker have free access to every page of every issue.

Yay!

Now you can read Calvin Trillin's triple-gold-star Three Chopsticks, on street food in Singapore. (And by you, I mean, you subscribers.)

The New Yorker Digital Reader

Tom Friedman:

What book will our kids write about us?

"The Greediest Generation?"

"The Complacent Generation?"

Or maybe: "The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card."

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today.

We should be talking about "bail," not "bailouts."

Peter Schiff:

We need a serious recession in this country, and the government needs to get out of the way, and let it happen.

Tom Friedman, in 2005:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Imagine an austerity rebellion.

Have you read Anathem?

The Real Generation X