New information technology has allowed firms to monitor many low-paid workers more closely, putting downward pressure on their wages and increasing work intensity. At the top end of the income distribution, meanwhile, the new technologies have increased firm-level volatility, thereby weakening the ability of owners to monitor managerial performance, increasing the power of top managers, and contributing to an explosion in executive pay. Technological power biases have been reinforced by institutional changes, including declining rates of unionization, falling minimum wages, and changes in intellectual property rights, business regulation and anti-trust policies. The sources of inequality matter. Education will be a primary instrument if skill biases are the main source. But many workers hold jobs for which they are overeducated. This mismatch between workers’ skills and the skill requirements of the jobs can emerge naturally in an efficiency-wage model. In this setting, relative wages are insensitive to changes in the relative supply of high-skill workers; an increase in the minimum wage, by contrast, can raise employment and reduce inequality.

The book opens with a discussion of the theoretical importance of the rise of social media, focusing on the way that decreases in transaction costs of communication change the potential for populations to solve their collective action problem. In addition, it highlights the historical importance of social media as a data source, with scholars having access to the communications of the public en masse for the first time. The cheapness and accessibility of this data democratizes data collection efforts, which changes the nature of research questions that can be asked by scholars.

Fears surrounding Dear John letters have often encoded larger concerns – in civilian society and military communities – about new communications technologies that purport to bridge the gap between “over here” and “over there”: the home front and the war zone. From reel-to-reel tape recordings in Vietnam to cellular telephony, email, and social media in Iraq and Afghanistan, the double-edged character of technological innovation has fueled anxiety about the sustainability of love in wartime, and the lethality of Dear Johns in particular. Many observers of wartime’s emotional landscape have equated speed of delivery with a more devastating coup de grâce. As the digital age has brought service personnel and civilians into more continuous contact, “home” has come to appear (in the eyes of some military commentators) less a point of sentimental anchorage than a dangerous source of toxicity. But this chapter cautions against uncritical endorsement of a “ballistic” theory of communication that equates physical velocity with psychological impact. Servicemen in past wars found slow-moving mail – or protracted silence – just as hard to process as texts zapped in real-time across continents.

Formal institutional and legal reform is inadequate to achieve enhanced, effective international governance; attention must also be paid to engage the support and participation of global populations whom the institutions will serve. The foundation for a renewed United Nations must be the shared values of all those who support it, and a solid “civics” understanding of global institutions. Public education, both formal and informal, and extensive engagement with the mass media, are critical to establishing strengthened global governance. Populations around the world must be grounded in key principles of the international order—such as peaceful settlement of disputes and universal respect for human rights—to uphold these principles and the relevant institutions. Education is also needed for those who serve in enhanced global institutions and those who participate in international governance processes. Many will need new skills, new ways of thinking and particular qualities of evolved, ethical leadership relevant to their roles in complex, international environments. This chapter sketches the multiple forms of education and the related sharing of knowledge that should accompany the proposed processes of reform, to ensure the correct general cultural and practical circumstances needed for functional global governance, requiring unprecedented new levels of cooperation and investment.