Product Description

"The most persuasive forecast of the 21st century I have seen." --E.O. Wilson, author of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge and twice winner of a Pulitzer prize.In The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon, "global guru" (the Toronto Star), "genuine academic celebrity" (Saturday Night) and "one of Canada's most talked about and controversial scholars" (Maclean's) asks: is our world becoming too complex, too fast-paced to manage?  The challenges facing us - ranging from international financial crises and global climate change to pandemics of tuberculosis and AIDS- converge, intertwine, and remain largely beyond our ken.  Most of suspect the "experts don't really know what's going on; that as a species we've released forces that are neither managed nor manageable.  We are fast approaching a time when we may no longer be able to control a world that increasingly exceeds our grasp.  This is "the ingenuity gap" - the term coined by Thomas Homer-Dixon, political scientist and advisor to the White House - the critical gap between our need for practical, innovative ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas.

Through gripping narrative stories and incidents that exemplify his arguments, he takes us on a world tour that begins with a heartstopping description of the tragic crash of United Airlines Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago and includes Las Vegas inits desert, a wilderness beach in British Columbia, and his solitary search for a little girl in Patna, India.  He shows how, in our complex world, while poor countries are particularly vulnerable to ingenuity gaps, our own rich countries are not immune, and we are caught dangerously between a soaring requirement for ingenuity and an increasingly uncertain supply.  When the gap widens, political disintegration and violent upheaval can result, reaching into our own economies and daily lives in subtle ways.  In compelling, lucid, prose, he makes real the problems we face and suggests how we might overcome them - in our own lives, our thing, our business and our societies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #309346 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-23
• Released on: 2000-09-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

From Amazon.com
As the world becomes more complex, so do its problems--and the solutions to these problems become tougher to grasp, writes University of Toronto professor Thomas Homer-Dixon in The Ingenuity Gap. "As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before," he writes. Is the day coming in which our ingenuity can't keep up? Homer-Dixon fears that it is: "the hour is late," and we're blindly "careening into the future." What we face, he says, is a "very real chasm that sometimes looms between our ever more difficult problems and our lagging ability to solve them." There are moments when Homer-Dixon comes close to sounding like a modern-day Malthus, with his never-ending worries about population growth, the environment, the strength of international financial institutions, civil wars, and so on. Yet parts of this book are downright fascinating; at its best, The Ingenuity Gap reads like one of Malcolm Gladwell's stories for The New Yorker (or his book The Tipping Point).

Homer-Dixon is very good when he tackles particular problems, and his interests are wide-ranging, moving from the psychology of an airplane cockpit during a crisis to the depletion of the world's fisheries to differences between the minds of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. He also dredges up fine details. Did you know that "the largest human-made structure on the planet is not an Egyptian pyramid or a hydroelectric dam but the Staten Island Fresh Kills landfill near New York City, which has a depth of one hundred meters and an area of nine square kilometers"? There's plenty to argue with on these pages, and some readers will find Homer-Dixon's tendency to write in the first person a bit self-indulgent. Yet fans of big-think books like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and Robert Wright's The Moral Animal will find The Ingenuity Gap riveting. --John J. Miller

Books in Canada
Thomas Homer-Dixon begins The Ingenuity Gap with a harrowing analogy. We are aboard United Airlines flight 232 on 19 July 1989 out of Denver bound for Chicago when there is a catastrophic collapse of all control systems. The captain draws on all his skill and experience to stabilize the plane, but it doesn't respond. Problems cascade faster than he can think, and there is more complexity, overflow of information and uncertainty than his brain can handle. Experts on the ground give us up. By sheer random chance, the airport at Sioux City happens to be where we need it when our aircraft slaloms down to earth. Two thirds of the 296 people aboard survive, including the cockpit crew. When the airline tries to recapitulate the landing on a simulator there are 35 successive calamitous failures.

This is the plight of the world, says Homer-Dixon. All signs point to a catastrophic worldwide systems failure, and there seems little we can do. Compounding ecological, social, financial, and technological problems are too complex to be comprehended, the volume of information is torrentially unmanageable, and violence can break out anywhere at any unpredictable point in time. He speaks with calm scientific logic, not religious fervour. He has looked at the evidence and concludes that the end of the world is nigh, and there is little we can do about it. He doesn't provide dates. This is a refreshing approach to annihilation. Most doomsayers declare it's not too late provided we smarten up. The pollyannaish attitude is disconcerting and patronizing. It predicts disaster, but then tells us not to worry. Somehow the world leaders are supposed to get together and agree to eliminate all noxious emissions, poverty, disease, conflict, and their own vested interests. Industries will relinquish corporate advantage for the benefit of the world at large.

Homer-Dixon thinks they probably won't, and I'm inclined to agree. When the air is too thick to breathe and the water too poisonous to drink, the unrepentant perpetrators of the calamity will be the last to go, sedated in their fortified luxury transition resorts, doubtless taking full advantage of the benefits of cryogenics.

Some people might argue that it is improper, immoral even, to outline problems without offering clear solutions. But what if there is no possibility of solutions? Homer-Dixon is like the practical man powerless to prevent a head-on train crash, who calls out his friends to ensure they won't miss the spectacle.

Homer-Dixon tries to summarize our situation with academic sleight of hand. Ingenuity got us into the mess and ingenuity is needed to get us out. But there's a gap. The problems caused by the ingenuity we've already displayed are exceeding the ingenuity we can recruit to solve them. I don't buy this spin. It's like saying that heat made the house burn down. It doesn't even sound scientific, especially since Homer-Dixon can't describe or measure what ingenuity is. But this doesn't stop him trying to make it look like a scientific concept, with a graph. The top line on this graph, rising steeply with the passage of time, represents the ingenuity we require, and the lower line, flatter, is the ingenuity supply. Problems are increasing faster than solutions. This is the ingenuity gap.

Can't we speed up the rate of ingenuity? No, he says. The brain has reached its limit and can go no faster. Can't we stop creating problems with our ingenuity? No, events have their own momentum. We are in a state of "path dependency"-having gone so far down one particular track that it is too late to divert to any other. Besides, too many powerful people have a vested interest in opposing ingenuity in favour of the status quo.

As Homer-Dixon subsequently points out, the problem is not a lack of ingenuity, which he concedes that people in all circumstances can demonstrate whenever they have a chance, but a lack of will to rein in the havoc that our ill-considered ingenuity-or our stupidity-can often let loose. If the problem were lack of bright ideas, government and corporate research centres and think tanks would quickly find resolution. But while ingenuity is usually rapidly exploited, especially if there is a pot of gold at the end of it, alternative courses of action are silenced or suppressed.

At this point, Homer-Dixon sets his ingenuity analogy aside and becomes political and interesting. His day job is director of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of Toronto, and he travels the world collecting data and theories about the multitude of ways in which the world is going to the dogs. (Literally. He begins and ends his odyssey at Canary Wharf, Canada's monument to financial megalomania on London's Isle of Dogs.) The bulk of the book is a catalogue of how all environmental, social, financial and technological systems are growing evermore out of hand.

His enemies are the people he calls economic optimists, whom he finds everywhere. These are the experts who believe that everything will be fine because human beings are smart enough to solve all problems. They see human experience as a story of exuberance, energy and expansion surmounting hardship and misery. A combination of free markets, science, and liberal democracy will provide the incentives for entrepreneurs to solve all our problems-in the long run. But Homer-Dixon counters every argument. Anyone can extrapolate from selected trends in the past, he says, and project a rosy future.

Why are resources (all right, ingenuity) not brought to bear on many problems? One obstacle is power structures-change is just not appealing to those people most responsible for many of the current difficulties. And the other is poverty. Shortage of food, medicines, education and opportunities, especially among the young, inevitably lead to violence. Young people will fight and steal if they see no other options.

As befits a prophet of apocalyptic vision, Homer-Dixon writes with ponderous authority. He doesn't think, suspect or fear that anyone with a differing point of view is wrong; he knows they are. And anyone who agrees with what he says is right. He often refers to these people as his closest, oldest and dearest friends.

Homer-Dixon praises one friend for advice which helped him put life and excitement into his writing. The formula seems to have been to add a description of "how I spent my day" to the beginning of every chapter. But when he speaks of apocalypse, I don't really care about what he had for breakfast, or the view from his bedroom window. Homer-Dixon laboriously constructs an image of himself in every setting, producing a large cardboard cutout that he transfers from one exotic site to the next. Then he undermines his efforts to be evocative with a mannerism so consistent it must have been deliberate. Out of what may be a perverse form of political correctness, he never (until one glaring exception at the end) reveals the gender of any of the close, old and dear friends accompanying him on his many treks and missions. The result of this pronominal reticence is that it becomes impossible to visualize the scenes he so carefully describes. I can visualize a companion who is male, female, someone in between, and even canine, but I can't visualize a companion who is none of the above. Cardboard man meets invisible consort.

There is one other theme that Homer-Dixon carries through the book. On a trip to India two years earlier, he photographed a two-year-old girl sitting forlornly in a dusty village street by the Ganges, clutching a small clay pot. He feels he must return to find that waif-"the last piece of the puzzle." He rediscovers her, now aged four, still in want and squalor, but not without hope. She will go to school like her older sisters, and will at least become literate. With luck, she will live a longer and healthier life than her predecessors. This, he says, is the moment of truth.

What has he discovered? The world is full of contradictions that play themselves out at many levels in many ways, some of them frightening. "I realized that there was no single correct interpretation of the world around us, no one answer to my quest, and no single, definitive arrangement of the pieces of the ingenuity puzzle." Perhaps at the end-when he rested from all his data gathering-Homer-Dixon found what he had been seeking. Compassion. The young girl is his symbol of hope. Cardboard man becomes human. It seems he was looking for consolation rather than conclusions, and he found it in a face.

This principle could be extended to many human dilemmas. Impractical optimism is worse than compassionate pessimism. If Homer-Dixon is right, it is even more disgraceful that any members of the human race should spend the world's declining days in poverty and hopelessness. Frank Smith (Books in Canada)

From Publishers Weekly
In a virtual tour of the state of ingenuity today, Homer-Dixon reminds us that "the greater complexity, unpredictability and pace of our world, and our rising demands on the human-made and natural systems around us" make it more critical than ever that smart solutions to technical and social problems be ready at a moment's notice. If economists like Harold Barnett and Chandler Morse rely on market forces to keep the supply of ingenuity in line with demand, Homer-Dixon, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, regards such an attitude as dangerously optimistic. Recounting the details and timing of crises like the October 1987 stock market crash and the July 1989 crash of United Flight 232 in which 111 passengers died but 185 miraculously survived, he argues that only a unique confluence of people and experience lets the supply of ingenuity equal the demand to avert total disaster in each case. Given persistent imperfections in markets, breakdowns in feedback loops and the weakening of social structures that have traditionally facilitated ingenuity, he is dubious that such extraordinary conditions can be met time and again. To scare us into action, he provides hair-raising examples of the effects of collapsing systems in Third World countries he has visited and studied. Marshaling a vast amount of information from such disparate fields as economics, ecology and biology, Homer-Dixon makes his most compelling case arguing for increased efforts to nurture social as well as technical ingenuity. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Nothing is easy�
The short answer to Homer-Dixon's question in the subtitle of his book "Can we solve the problems of the future?" is: it depends. INGENUITY GAP is an exploration of a large number of major and increasingly complex problems facing human society. We will require all the ingenuity and political will that we can muster to deal with these successfully. An ingenuity gap is the difference between "the set of instructions" needed to find solutions for specific problems and the capacity of the people, community or state to take the right actions in solving them. As the problems become increasingly multifaceted the development of the matching sets of instructions require more talent and competence.

Ingenuity comes in two forms - technical and social. One without the other will not provide us with lasting solutions. Technical solutions might even lead us down a garden path without complementary social ingenuity. It is the latter that guarantees results taking economic, ecological and cultural needs into account. To make his point, Homer-Dixon explores a wide range of examples demonstrating tremendous levels of ingenuity at work all over the world - both technical and social. His contention is that they are available to us if we look properly.

H-D, or Tad as he is usually called, takes us on a tour around the planet, using concrete examples to amplify his argument. Obviously, the result is not your usual travelogue and we are not visiting popular vacation spots or tourist attractions. Visiting Vegas, London's Canary Wharf or Patna, India, he believes that a personalized approach facilitates the following of his arguments. While some reviewers have criticized that H-D places himself too much into the story, it nonetheless contributes to the readability of the often exceedingly complicated issues he is addressing. He also conveys his own learning through interviews with some of the foremost scientists in the various fields he covers: from soil scientists to climatologists, from computer science to economy and architecture.

His in depth deductions from the wide range of interviews with scientists represent one of the highlights of the book. For example, while exploring the latest research into the human brain as the central point for ingenuity development, Tad takes his questions to one of the world's leading experts on frontal lobes, Donald Stuss. His conversations with Stuss provide fascinating insights in the importance of frontal lobe abilities to process change and integrate experiences and learning. This part of the brain handles our creative and intellectual capabilities. With aging, the ability of the brain to absorb new information lessens while the ability to digest and process complex interrelationships increases. His conclusions are far reaching - changing the way we assess leadership and identify those who are best qualified to meet the challenges of our corporate and administrative hierarchies. After each of these in-depth conversations, H-D reflects on the substance of the dialogue and returns to his overall theme - how can we minimize the ingenuity gap that is widening all the time.

Tad groups his book into sections, each addressing different aspects and disciplines from which to review the ingenuity requirements of the modern world. He depicts environmental problems and those related to continuing rapid population growth, which to him is a major challenge for the planet's future. He does not have a lot of patience with the 'economic optimists' or the 'techno-hubris'. He expands on incidences which demonstrate that a single-minded and, in some way, naïve belief that technological advance alone is capable of solving the world's problems will fail.

It's impossibleto do justice here to the many strands of global analysis that Homer-Dixon presents the reader with. His many years of research, in particular into environmental scarcity and civil violence allow him to assess ingenuity gaps from many different angles. The criticism that he does not supply adequate answers and does not show a way forward, is oversimplifying what H-D is attempting to achieve. The modern world is at a level of complexity that no one person can comprehend. As a consequence, it will take the ingenuity and political will of many to address the wide range of issues confronting us. In the pursuit of answers, he urges intellectual humility and thinking outside the box. He encourages his readers to take up the challenges, explore them further, and question any simple or easy solutions being offered by political leaders. This is an important reference book to be read more than once.

Chicken Little writes a book....
Not a bad book by any means, eloquently writting, well researched, and Dixon often adds a well fit personal perspective and experience to his points. Still there just does not seem to be anything new here, large parts read like a pessimistic first year course in Earth Sciences or Economics, mosty of the "clear cutting is bad" variety. Beyond that, and the admitted "well duh!" premise of the book itself, little else stands out as anything more then speculative musings of the author that do not follow from the evidence he presents to any conclusive degree.

CAN WE SAVE MAN FROM EXTINCTION?
I first became acquainted with the extraordinary book "The Ingenuity Gap" by Thomas Homer-Dixon on Pacifica Radio, KPFK Los Angeles, on the "Free Forum" show during a one hour interview with the author. Although I am a voracious reader, I never heard such a cogent argument that the complexity and interactivity of the ecosystem, technological systems, and social and political institutions may prevent us from solving incredibly difficult problems such as global warming, declining potable water sources, declining oil supplies, depletion of our top soil, and of recent concern to us, but not new to many others, home terrorism.

Ironically the incredible advance in communication technology according to Homer-Dixon has made it much more difficult for us to combat terrorists as seen for many years with the Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka and more recent years Osama Bin Laden. They can be supplied with money from any part of the world and easily find individuals and countries willing to supply highly sophisticated and deadly arms for the right price.

It also allows small special interest groups to thwart government policies for the public good such as environmental policies and helps to keep inappropriate politicians in power.

Although "The Ingenuity Gap" has been well written, it must be read slowly to fully absorb the incredible amount of information and concepts contained in Homer-Dixon's enormously important book.