If you’re three decades into your working life and have a gnawing sense of dread that you haven’t saved enough for retirement, you’re not alone.

The publication this month of Niall Ferguson’s new book The Square and the Tower has illuminated both the power of networks and the human tendency to overstate the power of networks. For longer than one might expect, tech enthusiasts, corporate executives, social scientists, and military theorists have proclaimed that networks will revolutionize some, if not all, aspects of human existence, generally for the better. As Ferguson’s book explains in devastating detail, their lofty visions have been repeatedly confounded by reality.

A Democratic state representative on Monday called for support for a bill to officially outlaw female circumcision in Pennsylvania and to make such acts, called "female genital mutilation," a felony.