What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives by MichaelDertouzosReview by: Richard N. CooperForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1997), p. 155Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048294 .

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Recent Books

restrictions on imports, both by self

interested parties and increasingly by

well-meaning social groups that erroneously view imports as a threat to their favored

social programs, from Social Security to

environmental protection. Krauss is no

fan of the welfare state, seeing too much

generosity as a threat to growth, but he

correctly and cogently argues that diverse

national welfare or environmental objec tives are not incompatible with free trade.

One problem with tract writing is that

forcefiilness of expression and simplicity of argument may sacrifice important nuance or, even worse, distort facts or

produce ludicrous statements. Krauss

scores relatively well here, but he is not

immune. In his diatribe against the state,

he tells us that spending on education

and health in East Asia truly is investment in human capital, but where education

and health are financed by high tax rates,

they often turn out to be consumption. In general, of course, they

are both. And

he is evidently unaware that South Korea s

top marginal income tax rate was 70

percent right through its period of rapid growth, dropping to a still high 55 percent in 1989.

What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives.

BY MICHAEL DERTOUZOS. San

Francisco: HarperEdge, 1997,

336 pp. $25.00. Written for the non-technician by the

director of the mit Laboratory for

Computer Science, this book sketches

the history of electronic control and

communication and describes the current

state of play on such futuristic items as

telephones that translate to and from

foreign languages and "bodynets" that

serve all a person's electronic needs for

information. The book is informal, even

chatty, and fun to read?reflecting the

author's fun in writing it.

While most of the book is devoted to

the world immediately around us, there

is some discussion of the impact of the

Information Age on international relations.

The author is persuasive on the ultimate

breakdown of international barriers to

the flow of information, despite the tech

nical possibilities for barring unrestricted

access to the Internet, but unpersuasive on the widening gap between rich and

poor. The book is replete with common

sense. The author chides both techies, for their exaggerated claims for the future

of a world based on electronics, and hu

manists, for their unwarranted lament

over an alleged loss of humanness.

Dollar and Yen: Resolving Economic

Conflict between the United States and

Japan, by ronald i. mckinnon

and KENiCHi OHNO. Cambridge: mit Press, 1997, 2^6 pp. $39.50.

This book is written by economists

mainly for economists, and is technically

demanding. But much is comprehensible to non-economists. The authors examine

the troubled U.S.-Japanese economic

relationship over the last 40 years, ex

plaining much of the tension in terms of

different economic structures and perverse domestic economic policies, not malevolent

Japanese behavior toward imports. It is

worth reading for this interpretation. The important idea here is that the yen dollar exchange rate, viewed by most

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, fax 203-966-4329.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS November/December 1997 [155]

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