American Consequences - July 2017

LITERARY INSIGHT from PRESENT & PAST

Don’t Say We Weren’t Warned “Can we ring the bells backwards? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a March of Science. But who shall beat the drums for its retreat?” Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833 Oliver Wendell Holmes on the subject of Charles Babbage’s design for a so-called “analytical engine” to do mathematical computations: “What a satire is that machine on the mere mathematician! A Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to make a blunder; which turns out results like a corn-sheller, and never grows any wiser or better.” The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858 “Money is a serious thing; and when gone cannot be had back by a shuffle in the game, or a fortunate blow with the battledore, as may political power, or reputation, or fashion.” AnthonyTrollope Framley Parsonage, 1862 “People with more education are more frequently victims of fraud than those with less education.” 1995 report by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice “By moving at the speed of light, electronic money has become the most powerful financial, political, and social force in the world. Money has become... like God: totally abstract and without corporeal body.” JackWeatherford, THeHistoryofMoney, 1997

WHATWE’RE READING NOW Golfer Phil Mickelson was implicated in a three-way insider-trading scandal that ended with the two other principals facing many years in prison. Mickelson’s fate? He just walked away – and he didn’t even have to testify. Phil’s Insider-Trading Escape , Golf Digest “We’re throwing all the tools you’d use for curing cancer at making a mai tai.” One Man’s Quest to Make 20-Year-Old Rum in Just Six Days , Wired It’s easy to dismiss the digital currency as an outlandish, even dangerous, fad. Don’t. Even if Bitcoin ultimately falls apart or crashes, its underlying blockchain technology is likely to disrupt financial markets for years to come. Beyond Bitcoin: How Blockchain Is Changing Banking , Barron’s Three maps and data visualizations showing 200 years of immigration to the U.S. Who Came to America, andWhen? , Visual Capitalist Video: On the iPhone’s 10th birthday, former Apple executives Scott Forstall, Tony Fadell, and Greg Christie recount the arduous process of turning Steve Jobs’s vision into one of the best-selling products ever made. How the iPhoneWas Born: Inside Stories of Missteps and Triumphs , The Wall Street Journal

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