具体描述
From the visionary bestselling author of The Second World and How to Run the World comes a bracing and authoritative guide to a future shaped less by national borders than by global supply chains, a world in which the most connected powers—and people—will win.
Connectivity is the most revolutionary force of the twenty-first century. Mankind is reengineering the planet, investing up to ten trillion dollars per year in transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure linking the world’s burgeoning megacities together. This has profound consequences for geopolitics, economics, demographics, the environment, and social identity. Connectivity, not geography, is our destiny.
In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle and the South China Sea to explain the rapid and unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets—a race China is now winning, having launched a wave of infrastructure investments to unite Eurasia around its new Silk Roads. The United States can only regain ground by fusing with its neighbors into a super-continental North American Union of shared resources and prosperity.
Connectography offers a unique and hopeful vision for the future. Khanna argues that new energy discoveries and technologies have eliminated the need for resource wars; ambitious transport corridors and power grids are unscrambling Africa’s fraught colonial borders; even the Arab world is evolving a more peaceful map as it builds resource and trade routes across its war-torn landscape. At the same time, thriving hubs such as Singapore and Dubai are injecting dynamism into young and heavily populated regions, cyber-communities empower commerce across vast distances, and the world’s ballooning financial assets are being wisely invested into building an inclusive global society. Beneath the chaos of a world that appears to be falling apart is a new foundation of connectivity pulling it together.
作者简介
Parag Khanna is a leading global strategist, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is a CNN Global Contributor and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is also the Managing Partner of Hybrid Reality, a geostrategic advisory firm, and Co-Founder & CEO of Factotum, a boutique content strategy agency.
Parag is co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012) and author of How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011) and the international bestseller The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), which was translated into more than twenty languages. In 2008, Parag was named one of Esquire's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century," and featured in WIRED magazine's "Smart List."
目录信息
读后感
用户评价
这本书的文风，用“冷峻”来形容或许还不够贴切，它更像是一种超然物外的疏离感。作者的语气总是保持着一种审视者的高位，对他所描述的一切现象，无论是社会变革还是技术迭代，都持有一种近乎于冰冷的分析态度。缺乏人情味和代入感，使得书中那些本应触动人心的议题，读起来也只是数据和模型的堆砌。情感的缺失让那些宏大的命题变得干瘪无力，仿佛在观看一场极其精密的、但完全没有配乐的纪录片。我期望能从文字中感受到作者的热情或挣扎，哪怕是一丝对未来的忧虑，但得到的只有精准的词汇选择和严密的（虽然是自我循环的）逻辑推导。对于渴望与作者产生情感共鸣的读者而言，这本书提供不了任何温暖的支撑，它更像是一块打磨得光滑但毫无温度的玻璃，映照出世界，却不传递任何温度。
要完整理解这本书的某些段落，我怀疑是否需要先掌握作者自己创造的一套符号系统。书中频繁使用比喻和隐喻，但这些修辞手法往往不是为了阐明道理，反而是为了进一步复杂化本已复杂的概念。同一个词汇在不同的语境下会发生微妙的意义偏移，这使得对文本的固定解释变得异常困难。我常常需要借助外部资料去查证作者引用的那些看似常识的典故，结果发现，作者对这些典故的解读往往是极其个人化和非主流的。这与其说是在构建一个知识体系，不如说是在建立一个“作者的世界观穹顶”，读者必须先学习如何欣赏这个穹顶的独特构造，才能勉强理解其内部的运作规律。因此，这本书的门槛高到令人望而却步，它更适合作为某种学术圈内的“圈内笑话”或“内部语言”的载体，而非面向大众的启蒙读物。
坦率地说，这本书的编辑和校对工作似乎是草草了事。语句的重复现象在书中随处可见，同一个观点，可能在相隔几页后，会以几乎一模一样的措辞被再次强调，这极大地拖慢了阅读节奏，让人不禁怀疑编辑是否认真审阅过稿件。更严重的是，一些关键图表和插图的标注缺失或与正文描述存在明显的矛盾，这在讨论复杂系统时是致命的缺陷。我花费了大量时间去试图调和这些文本和视觉元素之间的不一致，结果发现，很多时候唯一的解释是排版上的疏忽。这种对细节的粗糙处理，严重削弱了整部作品的专业性和可信度。一本严肃的论著，理应在每一个细节上都经得起推敲，但遗憾的是，这部作品在最基础的制作层面，暴露出过多令人遗憾的瑕疵，使得阅读过程中的体验大打折扣，仿佛在观看一幅宏伟蓝图上有着明显笔误的草稿。
这部作品的文字犹如迷宫，每一次深入都带来新的困惑与迷惘。作者的叙事方式极其跳跃，仿佛在不同的时空中随意穿梭，读者需要极大的专注力才能勉强跟上其思路的脉络。章节之间的衔接常常显得生硬而突兀，让人感觉像是在阅读一叠被打乱的笔记，而非精心编排的长篇论述。书中充斥着大量晦涩难懂的术语和仿佛从某个专业期刊中直接摘录下来的长句，即便是对相关领域略有涉猎的人，也常常需要停下来反复咀嚼，试图破译其中的深层含义。更让人感到挫败的是，许多看似重要的论点，在被抛出后便不了了之，如同空中楼阁般缺乏坚实的论据支撑。读完整本书，留下的印象是那种努力咀嚼了大量信息，却最终难以消化吸收的疲惫感，好比品尝了一桌摆盘精美却味道失调的分子料理，视觉上充满期待，味觉上却感到失落。这本书更像是一场作者自我表达的狂欢，而不是一次真诚的知识传递。
我不得不说，阅读体验简直是一场精神上的攀登。这本书的结构松散得令人发指，它似乎根本没有一个可以被清晰识别的核心主旨。每一章都像是一个独立的迷你演讲，主题涵盖范围之广令人咋舌，从古代哲学碎片到最新的量子力学猜想，再到对某个小众历史事件的微观剖析，作者似乎想将他大脑中所有知识点一股脑倾泻而出。然而，这种“包罗万象”恰恰成了致命伤。缺乏一个清晰的论证框架，使得那些闪烁着智慧光芒的片刻显得如此孤立无援。我尝试用思维导图来梳理其中的关系，但很快就放弃了，因为任何试图将这些点连接起来的努力都会被作者下一段风格迥异的文字轻易瓦解。读这本书，需要读者自带一套极强的内在逻辑系统，自己去构建作者未能提供的桥梁，这对于大多数寻求清晰阅读体验的读者来说，无疑是一项艰巨的任务，读完后，我感觉自己像是在一个巨大的、没有指示牌的图书馆里迷路了很久。
正在读中文版。
关于未来全球趋势的解读和预测，大部分是干货，值得一读。This book is available on my Douban Homepage, you can get it by yourself.
这个世界现实地让人窒息，而作为平常人，我们能做的也许是过好自己的人生。。。
作者的成名作，放在成书当年挺有创见。西方根深蒂固的民族国家逻辑仍然在，这就决定了作者还不能正视东西方的真正差异，更难解释现象背后的形成机制和提供解决方案。
正在读中文版。
