The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives by FrancesCairncrossReview by: Eliot A. CohenForeign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1997), p. 157Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048298 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 01:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 01:11:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Recent Books

of the Cold War in Berlin?the period up to the building of the Berlin Wall.

The lacunae are numerous (there is very little here, for example, from the Soviet side on the operations of Soviet military

intelligence), and Bailey's efforts to recon

cile his coauthors' views of reality do not

always succeed. Nonetheless, this is a

major contribution to the intelligence history of the Cold War.

The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will

Change Our Lives, by franc?s

cairncross. Boston: Harvard

Business School Press, 1997, 294 pp. $24.95.

The cheery optimism of the "digerati" pervades this book, culminating in the

happy assertion, "Humanity may find that peace and prosperity are born from the death of distance." It is an article of faith with the author that the communica

tions revolution will have overwhelming and generally benign effects on how businesses function, governments rule, and individuals live their lives. Firms will

respond more quickly to market cues, cit

izens will understand governments better, children will know more about foreign lands. Philosophers and anthropologists

may wince in disgust, but it is a faith common among the cyber-elite. The

book is a competent survey of the modern

communications revolution, elementary in some parts and confidently speculative in others. The author's useful list of asser

tions, ranging from the banal to the im

probable, taken together form a checklist of conventional prognostications. One

finishes the book wondering, however,

whether human nature may not prove less

tractable and predictable than soothsayers of the information revolution believe.

Chinese Views of Future Warfare. EDITED BY MICHAEL PILLSBURY.

Washington: National Defense

University Press, 1997,421 pp. $22.00 (paper).

Politicians and journalists sound the alarm about a rising China, yet within the Pentagon, something approaching complacency reigns. Casting

a knowing

eye on obsolescent technology and the

economic corruption of the People's Liberation Army, American intelli

gence and defense analysts have pooh

poohed China's potential as a serious

military power. This volume, which

brings together the writings of many of China's leading military thinkers, should moderate such disdain. Despite the clumsiness of some of the transla

tions, these articles taken from Chinese

military journals provide a window into Chinese military thinking that reveals some considerable sophistication about modern warfare and particularly the problem of "defeating a

powerful

opponent with a weak force in a high tech war." To be sure, Chinese soldiers, like their counterparts elsewhere, resort

liberally to platitudes and trivialities

(for example, "the law of the victory of the superior"), and some of their pre

scriptions surely fall short of Chinese

capabilities?for the moment. Still, a

useful reminder that some in the pla, at any rate, take their profession

seriously indeed.

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 800-255-2665.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS November/December 1997 [*57]

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 01:11:52 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions