Book Review: The Physics of the Future

This was a horrible book. I gave up on it a third of the way through. I'm not sure why people give the author high marks. Perhaps his earlier works are better and he phone this one in.

The book claims to look at scientific advances in a number of fields (computers, biology, etc), and drawing from interviews with hundreds of leading scientists, make predictions about the next 90 years.

What it does instead is the worst kind of pop-science futurism. The author picks and chooses from science that supports his favorite hypotheses, and then draws them out to extreme predictions. In doing so he pays almost no attention to factors that could influence other directions, gives no insight into his calculations (if any were done) on how to get to the endpoint. I'm OK with the idea of making concepts accessible to the layperson, but the leap from there to "trust me, I'm a scientist" is one that goes too far.

In addition, the areas of the book he covered that I have some expertise in (silicon design & manufacturing, augmented reality, virtual reality) were so riddled with error, unimaginative future use cases, and misuse of terminology, that I couldn't trust him on other areas in which I'm not an expert.

To add insult to injury, he uses a horrible amount of adverb-laden hyperbole. The first chapter alone had enough "we will have the power of the gods of mythology!" mentions that I almost didn't make it to chapter two.

Not recommended!

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Book Review: The Art of Video Games

Over the course of 2010/2011, I was privileged enough to be invited by Chris Melissinos to sit on the advisory board for the Art of Video Games exhibit he was putting together for exhibition at the Smithsonian. The exhibition opened a couple weeks ago and I was unable to attend the opening due to overlap with vacation plans, but I plan on visiting it sometime in May.

In the meantime though I got a copy of the book Chris authored in parallel with it, also titled The Art of Video Games and had a delightful time going through it.

The book is a large format hardcover coffee table book. It is liberal with spacing given to artwork, screenshots and whitespace and this makes it easy and fun to flip through. The games are broken up into different eras, loosely coupled with the "generations" of home consoles, though it also covers many PC games* from those same eras.

[*If I had any contribution to the exhibit, other than voting on the games with the other board members, it was in the debate for the inclusion of PC games to the list. A few of us (John Romero and myself were most vocal) felt that it was important to represent the symbiosis of development on closed platform consoles and open platform PCs (C-64, DOS/Windows PCs, etc - though the Apple II was a notable omission) and each has helped push the progress of the other. Chris agreed and that lead to the inclusion of a number of games from those platforms, including Jumpman on the C64 - itself likely responsible for consuming 1000+ hours of my youth.]

The treatment given each game focuses in part on the game's art and gameplay, and in part on why the game was notable or revolutionary for it's time.

The book also has a number of interviews with industry luminaries including Nolan Bushnell and others. These lend a bit of context to the mindset at the time, challenges in developing the games, etc.

Its a beautiful book that every gamer should have sitting on their coffee table.

The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect

Book Review: A Visit From The Goon Squad

I just finished Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. I did it as an audio book, but went back to print form to review a couple bits (a note on why follows below).

I went into it without any expectations, going off a friend's recommendation. I had no idea it won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2011.

What I got was a really unique novel with great characters with loosely interwoven stories, a really unique format/structure for a novel, and a surprise pinch of well crafted futurism thrown in for good measure.

The story centers (if you can even call it that) around two characters, a perhaps-past-his-prime music industry exec and his assistant. However, many chapters are spent dealing with rich portraits of other characters whose lives intersect with the main two. These intersections aren't in the contrived fashion seen in many novels where all the characters are brought together in a big knotted bow at the end. Rather, they only loosely intersect, sometimes only once or twice. This makes it far more plausible and also it makes it less about driving the story and more about painting the portraits of the characters and using them to further support the main theme.

The main theme is about the passage of time (the 'goon' mentioned in the title is time itself), and its inevitable erosion of hopes and dreams, and how the people find themselves in a place they didn't expect in their lives ("I want to know what happened between A and B" one character asks).

The format of the novel is quite... novel, but not for everyone. Chapters skip back and forth between characters, back and forth in time periods, and jump between first and third person. One chapter is done as a powerpoint presentation.

The characters are the way the author paints them is top notch. Again though, if you are after a traditional format, this may not be the book for you.

One last thing: On the experimental format, be warned that this means the transition to other formats may not have made it cleanly. In the case of the audio book, the power-point chapter doesn't translate well, and isn't helped by the skeuomorph "slide show clicker" sound effect added. I've also heard that the same PPT chapter is difficult to read on the kindle. That aside, the book is still worth getting regardless of format.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Book Review: The Influencing Machine

I read Brooke Gladstone's graphic non-fiction work, The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, while on vacation this week. It's a great, superbly structured and easily digestible work on a number of complex subject matter.

The book is done in a very similar style to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. In fact Gladstone cites it as one of the inspirations for her work.

Where Understanding Comics looks at the medium of comics itself, The Infuence Machine looks at the evolution of media, journalism, and our relationship to them, as well as how we are affected by them. It also wraps up with a quick tour through popular futurist views on the future of media, which serves as a great crash course on the opinions being bounced around currently.

The subject matter is complex and yet easily digestible. This isn't because it's presented in comic form (though that helps - some of the metaphors used really help push a point across), but rather because Brookstone is superbly skilled in structuring her arguments and her examination.

It's a great read. Highly recommended.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

Book Review: Lauren Ipsum

Lauren Ipsum is a children's book with a unique take on a well-worn theme.

The book centers around a girl, Lauren Ipsum, who finds herself lost in a strange land, and then goes through a series of adventures while trying to find her way home. In this way, its not unlike Alice in Wonderland or countless others.

What sets the book apart is that all of the characters and challenges she faces along the way are all logic puzzles and computer programming concepts. She encounters a travelling salesman, for example; or needs to formulate instructions to have some minions accomplish a task. In this sense, as its billed, it is a book about computers without any computers in it.

On the negative side, I found the characters to be a little thin and underdeveloped, but perhaps this is normal for a children's book.

The real test is whether this captures kids and entertains them while perhaps also teaching them a thing or two. I have a vacation coming up during which I plan on reading this to the kids. I'll post an update regarding how it goes after that's done.

[Update: I read this to the boys (mine and their cousins) over vacation, and the LOVED it. The older boys were trying to get ahead and outguess Lauren when she was faced with a challenge, or were trying to solve the math bit in it ahead of the book. So, highly recommended!]

 Lauren Ipsum

Book Review: Reality is Broken

I've had the pleasure of speaking to Jane McGonigal a few times, and have great respect for what she's trying to do, and for the passion she brings to the task. Unfortunately, after having slogged through her book, Reality Is Broken I have to give it a fairly negative review. This is unfortunate because as I said, I think what she's trying to do is important.

McGonigal's book is centered around the concept of using games, and the collective effort people put into playing them, to impact the real world. This can run the span of everything from connecting real-world benefits into online games, to using game-like mechanics to encourage behavior in real-world activities.

I found the book suffered from three fundamental flaws:

1. No discussion of impact to the 'magic circle'. Those espousing the 'magic circle' idea will talk about how games have a fundamental property of taking place in a safe place that doesn't have real-world impact. It seems to me that the more you effect the real world, or the less trivial the effect, the less it's a game.
2. Flawed logic & poorly connected research. Jane makes many, um, enthusiastic leaps of logic, which are flawed. You can see many that I've highlighted in the Kindle app (I'll figure out how to put a link here).
3. Lack of an objective look at both sides. In looking at all the good that can be done by motivating people via games,  McGonigal really should have looked at the other side too. Can games be used to effect evil as well? As long as she's only looking at one side of the discussion, it seems flawed.

I really applaud McGonigal's goal and her passion, but I can't recommend the book.

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Book Review: The Art of the Start

I read The Art of the Start recently. I'd read some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff in the past and found it humorous and easily digestible. The book promised to address not only entrepreneurship but also intrapreneurship as well, which is a little more relevant to me.

Overall, I give the book a B+. It's accessible, and hits on the main points, and does so in Guy's usual tell-it-like-it-is fashion, with some humor to flavor it. However, it really is aimed more at entrepreneurship and the intrapreneurship part is only touched on in a couple sections briefly.

Also, I have to say that it feels like a rushed and/or sub-optimal effort by Kawasaki. There are a lot of recycled jokes and anecdotes, which is OK to a degree. There are also a lot of broken metaphors, or anecdotes that don't directly illustrate the thing Kawasaki's trying to demonstrate.

If you are trying to start a business, or are thinking about it, and want an accessible "first steps" kind of guide, the book can serve in this capacity. Other folks will probably find it less useful.

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

Book Review: Steve Jobs

I wasn't going to read the Steve Jobs biography. I figured I knew enough of his and Apple's history that I wouldn't pick up that much new. Still, so many friends recommended it, I figured I'd give it a chance.

So much has been said about it that I feel a lengthy review isn't going to add much. Instead I'll give some high level impressions and a few interesting points and leave it at that.

The biography is interesting, but overrated. Jobs was certainly an interesting, super-driven guy with a passion for well crafted product. He was also quite an asshole (which the book does admit) as well as selfish and childish (which the book touches on but less so).

While the book mentions that he was guilty of taking credit for others' ideas, it then credits him with many of others' ideas. That said, there's something to be said for recognizing good ideas from the many placed before him, and creating an environment that pushes those ideas to be better.

In the end, the lesson is that a passion for craftsmanship, perfection, and simplicity, and placing these before profit, can yield great results. We should all strive to emulate Jobs a little in this sense.

One of the best examples, I think, of that striving for perfection is glossed over at the end of the book when discussing the plans for Apple's new campus built on HP's former campus in Cupertino. The campus is going to be a giant donut-like structure that looks like this:

Given it's massive size, one could imagine that the windows, if they were say, 8' segments, would be very close to the perfect circle. However, Jobs called for *curved* glass to be made so that it would truly be a  perfect circle. Imagine the difference in cost over that size of structure.

Steve Jobs

Welcome to the future of e-commerce

From a BoingBoing post on a bookseller's experience with Amazon bots competing with one another to game prices, when they run into bot-authored print-on-demand books (that are auto-compilations of wikipedia articles and the like):

let me tell you about another book, “Computer Game Bot Turing Test”. It's one of over 100,000 “books” “written” by a Markov chain running over random Wikipedia articles, bundled up and sold online for a ridiculous price. The publisher, Betascript, is notorious for this kind of thing. 

It gets better. There are whole species of other bots that infest the Amazon Marketplace, pretending to have used copies of books, fighting epic price wars no one ever sees. 

So with “Turing Test” we have a delightful futuristic absurdity: a computer program, pretending to be human, hawking a book about computers pretending to be human, while other computer programs pretend to have used copies of it. A book that was never actually written, much less printed and read.

The internet has everything.

Indeed it does.

Book Review: Have Spacesuit Will Travel

Have Space Suit, Will Travel is a Robert A Heinlein young adult novel written back in 1958. I spotted it on the shelf in at the library (in audio book form) and picked it up on a whim. I've reviewed a fair number of science fiction books over the past few years, but most of them have been fairly recent. It was interesting to go back to something from the ‘classic’ era of sci-fi, to give perspective.


The story is pretty typical for works written during the cold war and the space race. Boy dreams of going to space, luck aligns such that he does (via alien abduction), and he and a side-kick end up saving the entire human race. Through this lense, we hear the societal worries of that time: Can mankind overcome his savage nature? Will we nuke ourselves out of existence before that can happen? We also hear, as a YA novel, Heinlein trying to plant the seed with the reader to try and generate an interest in the wonders of science.

There are some surprisingly prescient views of the future in this example of Heinlein’s work. There’s an Internet-like knowledge repository, Crowd-sourcing of legal judgments, and a few other gems.

People critique the book for being dated, but I still liked it. I'm going to let my 8-yr old son tackle it on our upcoming vacation (he'll have a lot of airplane time) and see what he thinks.

Have Space Suit, Will Travel

Book Review: The Age of Turbulence

It took me a while to get through Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence , but it was well worth it.

The book can be thought of as a combination of three things, in overlapping parts. First, Greenspan's autobiography, focusing on the parts of his upbringing and career that led to his chairing the federal reserve. Secondly, a modern history of economics, US economic policy and of the past seven presidential administrations with which he worked, and of his assessment of the state of international economics and its major players. Third, it serves as his assessment of where things are heading, reviewing the major drivers that in his view affect his forecast of the next twenty five years (through 2030 - the book was published in 2007)

One of the two things I liked most about the book as the behind-the-scenes look at his relationship with all the Presidents he got the chance to work with (Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II). He cites Clinton as the smartest, followed by Nixon (though he found him paranoid and with a worrisome mean streak), and he had some fairly scathing words for G.W. Bush and his policies erasing the budget surpluses that Clinton had helped grow.

The other thing I liked most was that I found the book to be a good crash course in world economics, given from the perspective of someone who developed relationships with many of the world's leaders and/or their chief economists. His view of the future may or may not be correct (see criticisms below) but his view of the factors shaping the future comes from a perspective few others can offer and seems to stand up to scrutiny.

The major criticisms of the book that most seem to raise come from two perspectives. First, he's an unabashed believer in free-market capitalism, and many think his ideology clouds his judgement. This may be the case, but regardless I think he's able to see things with some degree of objectivity. He is above all data-driven, which in most cases keeps his ideology in check.

That said, the second major criticism of the book, related to the above, is that his belief in minimally-regulated free markets, was a major contributor to the housing crisis of recent years, and that even at the time of writing as it seemed the economy was on the edge of a cliff, he didn't see it. This may be true, but I saw a silver lining in this aspect. It's in this aspect of the book that you can see confirmation bias at work, and I found it a sobering reminder than even those with deep expertise are susceptible - perhaps even more so - to such failings.

It's a pretty hefty book to get through but I thought it worth doing so.

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

SOPA Rhetoric

It's been interesting to watch the activism around the Stop Online Piracy Act, the entertainment industry lobby's latest ill-conceived attempt at legislating against the inevitable. As many have pointed out, SOPA and it's cousin PIPA threaten the open internet and won't do much to curb piracy anyhow. You should let your gov't representatives know how you feel about it, and also give to the EFF or other organizations doing something about it. You can do both here.


One thing I find interesting is the rhetoric that the entertainment lobby is using is pretty effectively (with ignorant folk like those in government anyway) to turn this into an "America vs THEM" story. The four words being used repeatedly are "foreign criminals" and "american jobs" - namely that the former are stealing the latter.

Now, to be fair, part of what these proposed actions do IS aimed at giving the industry some tools to combat piracy from foreign sites, but they can also be used against Americans. On the other side, the victims they aim to protect aren't all American. They are artists that may be from other countries, and the content owner companies who are multi-national anyway.

Anyhow, it's just remarkable how on-message they are with those four words, and that our government reps haven't seen right through the rhetoric.

Book Review: The Information Diet

Based on a friend's plugging it, I got pointed to The Information Diet, and thought it a suitable choice for first book of the year (well, among the first anyway, given that I have other ones going in parallel on paper/phone/audiobook).

I like the basic premise but thought the book was flawed in a couple of ways - so much so that I can't really recommend it, or at least caution would-be readers so they know what they are getting into.

The basic idea behind the book is that, given the quantity of information we have access to every day, it is easy to passively consume the easiest, but not necessarily the best, information. The author uses an analogy between modern food production giving us cheap, easy access to fat- and sugar-laden foods we crave, and, modern media production giving us cheap, easy access to titillating, easy-to-consume media. He argues that just as we encourage people to not eat too much, eat the right stuff, and understand where their food comes from, the same is true for the media as well.

I really like the analogy, but in stretching it out to a book, he both bloats it and stretches it beyond credibility. As well, he uses the book to cover a number of topics that stray from the "how" of information consumption and into advocating his view on politics. I agree with some of his views, but I just don't believe they belonged in this book.

Also, while there were some good tips on his "how" portion of the book, the author spent far too much time on the minutia of email filters, ad blockers, etc.

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption

Grading my 2011 predictions

It's always a good idea to go back and look at calls I made and see whether I was out to lunch or not. I'll keep these in brief and elaborate where necessary, so it may help to first read the original post if you are interested.

Grading: 0 if wrong, 1 if right, 0.5 if partly right, with explanation

1. 0.5 "Bespoke design and devices of emotional attachement" - I predicted we'd see more Apple-like design and this would extend down to personalized design even to the individual level. I'm taking a half point on it because we did see some from the top down with all the laptop and camera manufacturers embracing design as a higher priority, and at the same time the bottom-up end of things like Kickstarter projects (e.g. pay a little more to get a custom color or your name engraved on it)
2. 1.0 "Appstore fatigue" - I think I was correct on this one. I participate in a few 'behind the scenes' mail lists with developers, and many of them are comparing notes on whether an appstore for a given platform or device has proven itself before they leap in. I also get the sense that consumers are ho-hum about hearing that yet another device is including an app store with the same apps they've already bought elsewhere.
3. 0.5 "Stereo3D will reach a point of undeniable lack of success" - Taking a half point here because there have been numerous pieces calling attention to the lack of success, but there's still an air of 'wait and see', plus some claims that they are doing well in some regions outside the US. US press seems to be acknowledging that the tech isn't moving people as expected (1, 2)
4. 1.0 "3D Printing will take off" Though admittedly I was vague here by the "as measured by..." piece. Still shapeways, Tinkercad, MyRobotNation, 3D printable remote control cars, and numerous entries in the low-cost printer market... it's clearly a growing area of interest. Supposedly Makerbot has some big announcement coming next week at CES.
5. 1.0 "Gamings Physical & Virtual Worlds meet" - This was already underway but has been making further progress. The examples I listed last year are still there, and new ones have been introduced, as well as existing toys getting a virtual element to them (e.g. American Girl has added an online component). Probably the best example I've seen to date is Skylanders, which my kids are currently obsessed with.
6. 0.5 "Apple has a game platform" Apple more openly acknowledges games as a leading category in their app store, and is catering to developers with feature requests and the like. They still haven't directly taken on the consoles or handhelds with their core customers yet. 
7. 1.0 "The Post-PC era will officially arrive". I think this is true - not in the sense that PCs are dead (they are doing great) - but in the sense that there are computing and media-consumption devices that are designed to function without PC tethering. tablets, phones, etc, seem to have made this transition.
8. 0.5 "Brands-as-memes": There are cases of this happening, but Angry Birds is still so exceptional I can't point to it as a trend when the others are so much smaller.
9. 0.0 "e-reader apps and services will see an explosion of innovation": I still think this could happen, but so far the leaders in e-reading have been pulling ahead based on vertical integration and digital distribution leadership (Amazon, Apple), not by building a more innovative reader. Shame.
10. 1.0 "Cracks in gaming's walled garden": It's still early, but HTML5 games on iOS are a leading example here.
11. 1.0. "HTML5 begets real apps": LucidChart, Tinkercad, many other examples.
12. 0.0. "Android Consolidation": There hasn't been consolidation, and like I pointed out the app landscape while perhaps not bleak is at least very messy. Rather than consolidation though, we're seeing a few guys break out as leaders from the rest of the me-toos. e.g. Kindle Fire.
13. 0.5. "Games market analysts will struggle to segment an amorphous landscape": I think I was right here, but in retrospect it's hard to see how to grade it.
14. 1.0. "No official Kinect for PC": Development kits yes, but no consumer product.
15. 1.0. "Tablets as a Producer Platform": We are seeing tablet-targeted text editors, photo apps, visualization apps, etc.

So, 10.5 out of 15. Not bad but could do better.

2011 in Books

At the end of last year, I set a goal of getting through 36 books for this year. I exceeded that, completing 44.  They were pretty evenly divided among formats: 15 audio books, 12 e-books, and 17 in printed format. Interestingly though, the breakdown by format was not evenly distributed among topic areas. (e.g. all the fiction I read was in e-book format, where the bulk of the business books were in print). Of those I read in e-book format, most were consumed on the Kindle app on iPad, occasionally syncing and reading on iPhone.


For next year, I'm setting a goal of 48 books. I also want to plan my to-read pile a little better (e.g. some of the audio books I read were random picks at the library as I was under time pressure before a trip), and to be more willing to give up on books that aren't living up to expectations, rather than slogging through them.

As with last year, I'm grouping by topic. One asterisk for recommended books, two for highly recommended. Links are to my reviews, which in turn have links to Amazon or other place to buy.

The summary on recommendations is as follows: My favorite non-fiction book of the year is The Master Switch which I recommend everyone read, and Super Sad True Love Story is my fiction pick of the year. I'll also recommend Escape Velocity if you work at any company of over a hundred employees in which you want to effect change.

Business

• The Master Switch (**)
• Escape Velocity (**)
• Business Model Generation
• Resonate
• How to Lie with Statistics
• Evil Plans
• Poke the Box
• The Whuffie Factor
• Panic
• Liars Poker
• Linchpin
• Do The Work
• Age of Persuasion
• The Undercover Economist

Politics/History

• The Assault on Reason
• 1776 (*)
• The Ascent of Money (*)
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
• Outrageous Fortunes
• My Life
• Edward Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (**)
• Republican Noise Machine
• Havana Nocturne
• Churchill (*)
• The Age of Gold
• Team of Rivals (*)
• Alexander The Great And His Time (*)
• The Next Decade

Culture

• Life
• The Art of Living According to Joe Beef
• The Wave (*)

Technology

• We, Robot (*)
• Best of Technology Writing 2010
• You are not a gadget
• The Filter Bubble (*)

Fiction

• Super Sad True Love Story (**)
• Rule 34
• Ready Player One
• Reamde
• Paintwork (*)
• The Technician (*)
• Anathem (*)
• The Tomorrow Project (*)

Graphic Novels

• SVK (*)

Book Review: The Technician

I was up until 2am last night, unable to put down my friend Casey Muratori's new book, The Technician.

It's a really fun and quick read, with a little something for everyone. It mixes together equal parts action, comedy, tear-jerking and interesting characters and still manages to have something to say.

The book introduces us to Michael, a government operative who is very good at what he does, which is mostly killing people. Michael is good at what he does because he has an Aspergers-like attention to detail coupled with a detachment from any level of connection with the people around him (especially those he's putting bullets in).

While Michael doesn't care much for people, he cares very much for his collection of cats. This becomes a problem because he can't be trotting around the globe assassinating people if he needs to be home in time to give his cats their specific regimen of meds and vittles.

In order to keep Michael productively destructive, the government agrees to hire him an assistant to help care for his cats. There's a good bit of hilarity here when the government automatons are thrown out of their comfort zone in doing something as routine as hiring a pet-sitter.

The fun really gets going when Michael decides that if an assistant is ok, then there's no reason that he can't commandeer other government resources for the purpose of helping local strays, whether it be night-vision googles, or, say, a spy satellite.

The book will produce both laughs and tears, and is a page turner in both cases. Casey uses the backdrop to make a point about the way we treat both people and animals, and as an indictment of all who justify doing things they believe are morally wrong by playing the role of 'small cog in a big machine' - the key assertion being that we always have a choice.

The Technician

As an aside, I can't help but recall a conversation Casey and I had a few years back while I was doing XBLA business development at Microsoft and he discussing an upcoming indie game project. We were discussing a few of the changes to the distribution terms that Casey had heard were going into effect, and I was saying while I didn't like them, the decision had been made above my head and that I didn't have a choice in the matter. Can you guess what he told me?

Book Review: Paintwork

Paintwork was a quick fun read. It's a collection of three loosely related novellas stories, all of which are science fiction with an augmented reality premise.

The first story, for which the book is named, follows a near-future graffiti artist who tags corporate AR billboards with his own custom QR codes, overwriting advertising with custom AR artwork. All is fine until someone starts tagging his works within minutes of his doing so, making him wonder if it's an inside job from within the graffiti community.

The second story, called Paparazzi, is a story about gaming culture and celebrity, with a unique take on gold-farming, and some AR stuff thrown in for good measure. It had an interesting twist at the end that made it's premise quite unique, but I found it the weakest of the three stories.

The third story, Havana Augmented, was a real gem. The story centers on some Cuba-based gamer/hacker types who, without legitimate access to technology or game content, hack their own black-market access to leading MMOs. In the process, they innovate in ways the game authors never imagined, open Cuba to investment capital interests, and go on to wage augmented-reality virtual war in the streets of Havana. I loved the vivid picture the author painted and where he ended up taking the story.

This is great near-term sci-fi, with thought provoking near-future pictures of what some of these technologies may bring, combined with action-packed stories with surprising twists.

Paintwork

Book Review: Escape Velocity

This was one of my favorite business books of the year. I've been a disciple of Geoffrey Moore ever since reading Crossing the Chasm and the fantastic Inside the Tornado. Moore is skilled at distilling complex machinations of markets and organizations, getting them down to their fundamental systems, and then explaining those in crystal clear form.

In Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past, he turns his attention to the question of why companies are unable to innovate, arguing that a major factor is their being trapped by the pull of their past and current product efforts. He argues that the way budgeting & planning work at most large organizations, headcount & spending are allocated among existing efforts first, and that afterward anything left for innovating in new areas is meager at best. Having worked at a couple such companies, I was struck by how accurately he portrayed the details of this process and problem.

Moore goes on to propose a framework for tackling this problem in four parts.

First, he describes this budgeting dilemma and proposes that the key areas for innovation, once identified, get planned for outside of the rest of the budget planning process, and that the company make highly assymetrical bets on these in order to acheive 'escape velocity'.

Next he provides a framework for identifying company and competitor areas of strength in a hierarchy of domains of category power, company power, market power, offer power. I found this framework useful for discussion of competitor offerings. He makes the case that your breakthrough will come from focusing on a key differentiator in one of these domains, and identifying which is key.

He then goes on to provide a really useful model for categorizing types of innovation, breaking things into differentiation vs neutralization (innovation efforts in matching competitor offerings) vs efficiency vs waste (innovation efforts spend in areas that won't be leveraged or that don't align with the one area you've picked to differentiate). This framework too, I found really useful, and intend to employ it at work.

Finally, he presents a well structured blueprint for how to go put all this into action. He does so for both volume-operation vs service-oriented businesses (the tactics are different for each). His model suggests that there are three key phases for these efforts (invention, deployment, and optimization), and that the efforts for each should be handled by completely different management teams with different skill sets. He also outlines the structure for a transition team and process to move the product efforts between these three phases.

Throughout the whole book there are many, many case examples, and I liked that - with one exception - he called upon himself to avoid the temptation of using Apple in case examples (too easy).

Moore has an uncanny ability for structuring order out of the chaos that exists in high tech business. This is a masterwork, and a must-read for anyone in management or planning at any company of a few hundred employees or greater. However, even those other roles or at small companies will, I think they'll get a lot out of the framework tools for evaluating their place in the market, or their competitors. I highly recommend this book.

Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past

Book Review: The Filter Bubble

I got turned onto The Filter Bubble after viewing the author's TED talk on the same subject.

The TED talk gives you main idea, and that's probably sufficient. The book dives into a lot of interesting detail, some of which isn't exactly related to the core thesis, and that's part of the problem I had with it. The idea is sound but the book is a somewhat meandering exploration of the idea... along with other things the author is interested in but that are unrelated.

The thesis is as follows: In order to better serve users, search providers, social networking sites, and other information sources are providing personalized data feeds - feeds tuned to their preferences. As these become our primary sources of information, it results in a feedback loop where we only see what we like, and what we see influences what we like. He borrows danah boyd's analogy of an all-sugar-and-fat diet (it might be what you crave, but it's not good for you), encouraging us to think about ways to eat our digital veggies.

This is not new of course. The advent of television brought about similar paranoia. However, there's no denying that it's true to some degree and the fact that it can be dialed in to each individual user makes it credible. The paranoia is seductive to give into. Even if you don't there's some interesting stuff in the book, though there are also some flaws.

Pros:

• I learned a lot about how modern internet advertising & site personalization work. I'd heard of companies like Axiom but didn't know what they do.
• The book does a good job painting a picture of some possible outcomes of personalized search and personalized advertising (e.g. think of tailored political ads, for example, and the complexities of holding them accountable to telling the truth).
• He does a good job explaining some basic concepts around programming and technology in layman's terms. Not much use to me, but I might think of recommending it more easily to a relative or non-techie friend.

Cons:

• The author delves into a lot of other areas having little to do with 'filter bubbles'.
• Those areas that do are taken too far, and consist mostly of his own 'what ifs', rather than consulting research and/or data on the subject.
• The solutions proposed are weak. Telling people they should try to consume responsibly, out-smart the personalization-bots, etc, all seem like they'll fail and/or fall of deaf ears. Suggesting maybe there could be an ombudsman or some regulation seems like a bit of a cop out without proposing how those might work.

I guess I'd say most will be better off watching the TED talk to get the basic idea, and then reading the book only if they want see how deep the rat-hole goes.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You

Book Review: The Age of Gold

I recently got through the audio book version of The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream, and while it started out a little slow, it picked up partway through and there were a couple things I really enjoyed about it.

The book is a history of the California gold rush, starting with John Marshall's initial discovery in 1848, through the goldrush itself, and through to the construction of the railways connecting east and west coasts. The book presents the history by following several individual's stories, some of whom came overland, some of whom came by ship, crossing at the Panamanian isthmus. It ends by telling what became of all those individuals, ranging from cases where they ended up destitute to cases where they went on found lasting legacies (e.g. Leland Stanford went from mining supply sales to railroad tycoon to founder of Stanford University)

The stories the book tells have numerous humorous anecdotes and interesting factoids. For example, when mining companies started using nitro glycerin to blast through rock, the used Wells Fargo to ship it to them - only they didn't tell them WHAT was in the boxes they were shipping. After a few sudden disappearances of post offices, they decided it might be a good idea to disclose the contents.

What I liked best about it was that it connected various other pieces of American history that I've read about elsewhere. From some of the 49-ers following the Oregon trail, to the part California played in funding part of Lincoln's efforts in the civil war, to role the gold rush would have in America's support for the gold standard, for me this book was like that piece of the jigsaw puzzle that lets you connect two large patches you've been working on in isolation.

Finally, the author makes the argument in the end, somewhat convincingly, that the gold rush was a major contributor in forging the entrepreneurial spirit that would see America become the world's leading economy in the following fifty years.

The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream