Reflection of Joël Dicker's "The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair"

Joël Dicker’s novel “The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair” is set in the summer of 2008 in the town of Somerset, New Hampshire.  On August 30 1975, the disappearance of fifteen year old Nola Kellergan shook Somerset to its core. After thirty-three years, Nola’s body is dug up in the famous writer Harry Quebert’s backyard with an original copy of his legendary novel, and it is discovered that Harry had in the summer of 1975 a love affair with Nola. Marcus Goldman, Harry’s friend, decides to prove Harry’s innocence but in Somerset nothing is as it seems.

An ongoing theme in the novel is the depiction of love and its consequences. It is not simply about a forbidden love between a man in his thirties and a fifteen year old girl, but other representations of love. Love between family members, unrequited love, love expressed in destructive ways and so on. It is interesting how the main character, Marcus Goldman, is shown as an indirect opposite of this theme; a 28-year old successful writer with no girlfriend and no friends, apart from Harry Quebert.

However, a lonely person in this case is objective to unethical incidences apart from the other residents of Somerset. This corresponds to situations in real life, where if you are an “outsider” you can assess the morality of actions in difference of when you are a part of a group. Also, the novel brings up the constrictions of what is considered morally and ethically okay with consequences of love. What is justifiable when it comes to actions of love? The line between love and destructive actions of obsession, jealousy and bitterness are all thin threads to walk.

How Dicker has chosen to weave together Goldberg’s, Quebert’s and other characters’ perspectives gives the book a deepened story telling. It makes you involved in all of the characters actions and motives leading up to Nola’s disappearance and the years following. Involving multiple characters and their stories could confuse the reader, if it were not for Dicker’s simplified language. The focus is on the build-up of whether Harry Quebert killed Nola, and a complex language could confuse the reader and take away some of the excitement.

In my opinion I do sometimes appreciate a novel with longer sentences with a bit of complexity, because of the artistic and contemplating aspect of the written language. However, because of the nature of thrillers where a build-up of excitement is characteristic, it is hard for me to argue against this novel since it truly is a so-called “page turner”.  If the novel only contained Goldman’s point of view, the reader would lose insight into the different characters’ motives and the reader to speculate into the moral issues at hand. 

Online reflection 2 - Will automation take away all our jobs?

In his TED talk, David Autor (2016) brings up the paradox about how the development of machines to do work for us has not made us unemployed and redundant. Examples like tractors and the assembly line has improved productivity within agriculture and industries significantly, still the number of employed Americans have risen alongside.

Autor (2016) claims there are two ideas to why that is: the first is called the O-Ring, the name originating from the part of the space shuttle Challenger which malfunctioned and caused the shuttle to explode. The O-Ring means that even though every other part of a product/service/construction is perfect, it is only as strong as the links between the components. Thus this requires multiplicity in service offerings and not a uniformity. We as humans are the O-Rings contributing with our expertise, knowledge and creativity which are traits that cannot be automatized. The second idea is "Never Get Enough", which stands for the never-ending aspiration to thrive and develop our society and our selves. Combined, these ideas convey that human ingenuity is basically endless and humans will not be doomed to redundancy among a world of machines.

Humans might not be replaced by machines according to Autor. However, humans might feel that they are being replaced by machines and experience automation as a threat to their livelihood. Autor takes up the example of farmers decreasing radically in the early 20th century but not being excluded from the workforce by going to high school (which became a mandatory school system due to this change in decreasing need of farmers).

However, this change did not happen over night and losing a job which you probably have had all your life and contributes to how you identify yourself can make a negative view on automation. To those people which practically lose their jobs (but are able to gain a new one with more complexity) can only see their part in this scenario, which could cause stress and negative views on how society is developing. From the bigger picture, we can see that it is an improvement to effectiveness and productivity so therefore it could be important to work with conveying the positive effects to everyone. It ultimately means that society benefits from automation, even though not every individual does.

I do however agree with Autor's idea that human creativity and expertise can never be replaced. Machines can be programmed with functions that humans have mastered and perfected - but when machines are offered as services, humans become more important to be available to aid when automation falls short of what a service needs to complete or fulfill.

Human ingenuity, even though it is hard to imagine, is endless considering how much technology has developed in the last 20 years. The same basis for all of these technological inventions is that humans have from their own mind created them. So it is impossible for me today to say how the future is going to be, what type of employments will disappear and what opportunities will emerge. However, to have the trust that humans will always have job opportunities because of never ending developing of technology and society is comforting, since I am educated within business administration where there is continuous talk of how work could be replaced by machines.

Online reflection 1 - Exploding myths about the gig economy

In their article "Exploding myths about the gig economy", Bughin and Mischke (2016) discuss different aspects of the independent work force in economies and how it is hard to evaluate its upsides and downsides because of wrongfully depiction from out-of-date statistics. Since technology has evolved in such a rapid speed compared to traditional economic theories of growth, it most likely has resulted in an out-of-date way to consider how individuals now can earn income and contribute to economic growth through more than one singular choice of livelihood. Economic models are built on assumptions of traditional ways to earn an income, which policymakers are most likely to follow for simple, comprehensible legislation. However, since the independent work force is increasing due to both extensive technology developments and an increased wish for autonomy and flexibility can cause traditional economic models to become outdated too alongside old legislation since policymakers have a significant impact on economic growth.

Due to varying rates of independent workers by choice Bughin and Mischke (2016) found between countries, it would be interesting to look closer at whether satisfaction of independent work is a factor which corresponds with economic growth. Since the authors do not bring up how satisfaction of independent work by choice is affected by a country's economic state it could be an issue to further investigate. Spain for instance has an independent working force of 58% and compared to Sweden's and the UK's percentage of 74% it is worth to notice whether these percentages would change correspondingly with an economy's well-being. Otherwise, it could reflect on an issue harder to define, for instance cultural aspects differentiating between countries as well. This reflects back onto Bughin and Mischke's main concern with the independent work force; it is an issue hard to measure but a topic of discussion worth having.