The Internet has had a huge impact on channels of communication and information, reaching across time and space to connect the world through globalisation. In this Internet-led world, story links to story, windows open on new stories and no overall authority establishes priority. This sense of globalisation has raised many questions for contemporary American Novelists, primarily the usefulness or redundancy of narrative and its potentially adaptive function.
Evolution meets game theory in this upbeat follow-up to Wright's much-praised The Moral Animal. Arguing against intellectual heavyweights such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and Franz Boas, Wright contends optimistically that history progresses in a predictable direction and points toward a certain end: a world of increasing human cooperation where greed and hatred have outlived their usefulness. This thesis is elaborated by way of something Wright calls "non-zero-sumness," which in game theory means a kind of win-win situation.
Since the very beginning of astronomy, people have looked up sky and constructed patterns the constellations out of the almost random scattering of stars in the night sky. The fact that the constellations are still used today reflects not their historical origins, but their usefulness in identifying bright stars in the rotating dome of the sky.
Review Bill Bright, ex editor, Language in Society Mesthrie's outline is well thought out, and he is a sound scholar. ... a volume that meets high scholarly standards, and will be of great usefulness to readers seeking a reference book in sociolinguistics.
