This book came out in 2025. I assumed that as it came out at the height of confidence of the AI boom, that it might have a counter narrative to the negative sentiments of labour displacement and political turmoil that has entered the collective psyche since late 2025. However, I found it to be a rather bleak book. It was not really centered on the AI technology issues, although AI was mentioned. It really catalogs the shortcomings of human character as our societies grow. This can hardly be a new phenomenon. They noted that societies behaviour changes because there is no frontier. The lack of frontier, means that we stop trying to create new things and start fighting over what we have or rather what we had.  This does seem to ignore the very rapid development of AI. 

There were some real insights.  The authors observed that the administration of research, that should should be wildly experimental, have become bureaucratic and stifling.  It had good recommendations for how to administer a countries research portfolio more in line with a venture capitalist, but in general I did not feel that it had a recipe for how we can improve outcomes.  

There was one phrase buried in there that really resonated with me.   "The purpose of a system is what it does."  This is apparently originally from Stafford Beer, a British management consultant who noted "There is no point claiming the purpose of a system is to do that which it consistently fails to do.".  The observation reveals that the purpose you had in your head when designing a system may be different from the objectives that the system demonstrates once built.