Morality by Design – Book Review by Literary Review of Canada:
“Wade Rowland’s Morality by Design is also a cri de coeur, a kind of twenty-first-century Ten Commandments. Human morality ought to inform technological design, Rowland contends, so that it has known and knowable limits. There should be instinctual oversight of digital endeavours — by virtue of virtue itself.The book is beautifully written, with sparingly few platitudes. And Rowland, a communications scholar from York University, has put his finger on the type of response that almost always surfaces when technological achievement outpaces our sense of how best to apply new techniques and methodologies. Think of recombinant DNA technologies and the genomic revolution: because we could, we did things (and still do) that, whether by design or not, delimited a new sense of what it means to be human. We’re still working out the consequences of the Crick-Watson-Franklin-Wilkins discovery of DNA structure a lifetime ago. We’re simply incapable of digesting such advances overnight. They require massive adaptive resources and time — gobs of it.Right now in Silicon Valley, managers of the big tech companies are striking committees to address, in part, what Rowland is rightly demanding: an ethical framework for engineering design, as if human beings truly matter. Rowland might well approve of these attempts at self-reflection in the digital heartland: he cogently argues that we all need to undertake ethical decisions out of our own right reason — our innate moral infrastructure, to borrow from Bruder.His approach is eerily close to the thinking of the Yale University atheist and ethicist Martin Häggland, who also reasons that a moral approach to designing a life can be derived from first principles. Häggland’s central notion is that if there’s no afterlife, we’re actually in a better position — under a greater imperative — to treat one another as we ourselves would like to be treated. The approaches dovetail; Rowland’s chapter on the “alchemy of capitalism,” in particular, is a stellar exegesis on why human failings need not lead — linearly, if at all — to human failure in how we collectively create value.We can reason our way to a better solution, less noxious, more humane. The question, for Rowland, is whether we have the effort and discipline required: an amalgam of reason and passion, of political acumen and empathy.”
Reviews of Canada Lives Here:
“This most recent book by Rowland on the topic of CBC/Radio-Canada succeeds at cutting through the hype of digital media while avoiding excessive romanticizing of the senior service’s past. The stated aim of Canada Lives Here is to make a case for the protection and rejuvenation of Canada’s public broadcaster, and Rowland offers up a passionate and detailed defence of the radio and television service.”
J-source
Reviews of Saving the CBC:
“This book should be read by everyone who gives a damn about Canada and the publicly owned broadcaster that unites us in telling our own stories on radio and television. Wade Rowland convincingly documents the slow, politically directed erosion of the CBC and he has the expertise to show us how to save, and expand, this vital component in Canadian life. Will we listen to him? I hope to God we have enough sense to do so.”
Farley Mowat
Reviews of Greed, Inc.:
“…a sound, compassionate, persuasive survey of a history and misconceptions that have led…to our present amoral mindlessness.”
National Post
Reviews of Spirit of the Web:
“…thoroughly and trenchantly chronicles the vagaries of information technology …a spirited, stimulating and sophisticated network of stories…philosophical and original.”
Winnipeg Free Press
More reviews of Spirit of the Web
Reviews of Galileo’s Mistake:
“Galileo’s Mistake is a lofty and ambitious philosophical exploration, and Rowland’s considerable gifts as a writer make the book pleasurable and captivating. Rowland skilfully weaves history, biography, science writing, and philosophical overviews into the comfortable familiarity of a travel narrative.”
“Galileo’s Mistake has the lazy ease of a multi-course Italian dinner, at once relaxing and enriching”.Quill & Quire
More reviews of Galileo’s Mistake
Reviews of Ockham’s Razor:
“Part travelogue, part philosophical treatise, part random musing — perhaps it’s more helpful to call it equal parts Plato, Robert Pirsig and Peter Mayle — it is a book of metaphysical rummaging, of thoughtful meandering.”
The Globe and Mail