I cannot over-state the value of this book to anyone who has a complex and expensive problem but cannot afford to get the author there personally. While the book is no substitute for the genius, the intuition, the experience, and the sheer “quiet energy” that the author can bring to any endeavor, it is not just a starting point, it is more than enough to get you through your first self-organized event, and the results are sure to astonish as well as excite about the potential benefits of having the author lead the next session.
Here is how it works in a nut-shell, and I put this into the review because I am not happy with the minimalist marketing information the publisher has provided but happy that Look Inside the Book is activated–use that feature!
1) Everyone who cares is invited to a meeting in a space large enough to accommodate the group. Many events will charge a fee to cover the space, the food, and the travel costs of the facilitators, some events can be free especially if internal. HOWEVER, the diversity of who is invited (i.e. including outsiders, clients, journalists, the lowest ranking maintenance people), THIS MATTERS….A LOT.
If I told you I just saw a great movie named “2012: Time for Change” you may think I’m talking about the 2009 Roland Emmerich disaster movie. That flashy flick was wildly successful at the box office, but it’s described as “cinematic waterboarding,” and worse, by most critics. So how did it make $567 million? Maybe it tapped into that nagging little voice we all have, which says that if we do not change how we live, we face planetary catastrophe, a global environmental meltdown, in full-color HD.
“2012: Time for Change” is different. It’s a lively, smart documentary that weaves a more hopeful vision from over 200 voices and visionaries. The film works as a kind of collaborative brainstorm: Yes, we are destroying the planet, with our patterns of consumption, competition, war and blindness. The Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and even now tornados in Brooklyn show that the Earth has just about run out of patience with us human beings.
This book, edited by urban sociologist Saskia Sassen, takes a unique look at the phenomenon of globalization in terms of inter-connected cities held together by commercial ties, telecommunications, and commonality of interests. The book provides some important insights about the role of cities in globalization. Sassen and her colleagues appear to view globalization as creating a networked type of organization with cities serving as nodes and international telecommunication systems serving as connectors. This is a remarkable concept.
Yet the book is seriously flawed by the use of improper or imprecise terminology by its contributors. Terms like `networks', `nodes', and `architecture' are thrown about without much regard for what those terms actually represent. Their constant misuse in this book makes for very confusing reading and obscures the very valid points that the book strives to make.
Although the book was published in 2002 none of its contributors apparently have ever heard of the misnamed Global Telecommunications Network. This is the generic title for a compilation of independently owned and operated international telecommunication (carrier) networks. These networks incorporate domestic and international carriers each of which consists of transmission lines (largely fiber optic cable and satellite) coupled with relays, switching centers and various sub-stations. Nor do any of the authors understand the content carried by these networks is provided by various public and private service providers such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and SWIFT (a private banking service provider). Since the inter-connectivity between cities (and nations) pretty much depends on access to the Global Network, as does international commerce, this is a serious error of omission.
Also there are far too many statements in this book that simply make no sense in terms of telecommunications infrastructures. For example, Stephan Graham informs the reader that “the public, national telecommunication regimes that were ostensibly about throwing electronic networks universally across national space economies are being materially and institutionally splintered” and being replaced by “global strategies.” One can only guess that Graham is trying to say that national telecommunication networks are being absorbed into the Global Network. The seeming inability to use precise terminology leaves the reader confused.
To its credit the book becomes stronger when it moves from the theoretical to concrete examples in Part II (Cross Border Regions) and Part III (Network Nodes) with studies of specific cities. Yet here too one runs into puzzling use of terminology such as in the Beirut study by Huybrechts which he sub-titled “Building Regional Circuits.” `Circuits' in this context is meaningless when what he is referring to is re-establishing Beirut's import-export role as the principal international port in the regional economy.
In the end Sassen appears to have developed a valid way to describe globalization, but failed to establish either a standardized terminology or a valid model of a networked type of organization. As a result this book makes an unnecessarily weak case for globalization as best represented as a networked type of structural organization.
Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read”
October 10, 2010
Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback
I'm putting this book into the 6 Star and Beyond category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, for two reasons: it has a proper definition of what business should be about–creativity and humanity; and it strives to focus the innovator on passion versus drive, life versus “the kill.”
The book was first published in 2000, and I only get to it now because it was explicitly recommended to me by a Hackers Conference colleague to help me in grappling with my “what next” explorations.
The book impresses from the first page, the opening quote from Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (Oxford World's Classics) which I might have to read next. It took an enormous amount of creative focus to find this quote, I will just provide the first half here:
Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irrestibly real and attractive to us–for that moment only. Not the fruit of the experience, but experience itself, is the end.
For me, this was perfect prologue, and a have a note shortly into the book, “the zen of advanced information technology leadership.
This is a carefully crafted and elegantly presented book with exactly the right amount of white space, integrated emails, and real-life annecdote, and the bottom line is clear: bet on the vision and take the risk. Go for the big idea that changes the world or at least tries to change the world, do NOT “do” the web play as a path to being rich or anywhere other than being “there.”
Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. “We pigs are brainworkers. The whole
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management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.” While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. –Joyce Thompson
Phi Beta Iota: Morality is how civilizations transmit the hard lessons of the past. Both Communism and Fascism–including Faux Democracy Of, By, and For the Corporations and Banks, lack morality. The only antidote to corrupt elites is educated non-violence, as both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison among others understood so well. This web site is an attempt to inspire public intelligence in the public interest.
Thomas Jefferson: A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.
James Madison: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
*Starred Review* Could the U.S. be on the brink of becoming a Third World nation? Syndicated columnist Huffington argues that overspending on war at the expense of domestic issues and the alarming decline of the middle class are troubling signals that the U.S. is losing its economic, political, and social stability—a stability that has always been maintained by the middle class. She pinpoints the beginning of the decline to the Reagan era, with its denigration of a government safety net. But she is nonpartisan in assigning responsibility to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for supporting monied interests over those of the middle class; she then takes aim at Obama for expending more money to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. She also points to loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, and globalization, all with emphasis on corporate profits at the expense of workers. Although the U.S. has faced similarly fearful times during the late 1800s and the Great Depression, the middle class was not threatened, as it is today. She offers possible solutions for the decline, including creating jobs to rebuild national infrastructure, reforms in home and credit lending, and tighter restrictions on Wall Street. An engaging analysis of troubling economic and political trends. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Huffington Post founder is sure to get some media traction with her assertion that the American Dream is an outdated concept. — Vanessa Bush
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The US economy has disintegrated, and with it into the abyss plummet the blueprints of neoliberal economists, whose theories about “the free market” have now gone the way of medieval alchemy. No voice has been stronger, no prose more forceful, than that of Paul Craig Roberts in predicting collapse. His weekly columns in CounterPunch have won an audience of millions around the world, grateful for a trained economist who can explain lucidly how the well-being of the planet has been held hostage by the gangster elite. Now Dr. Roberts has written the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the twenty-first century ever put between book covers. He traces the path to ruin and lays out the choices that must be made. There is the “empty world” of corporate exploitation, abetted by the vast majority of economists; or the “full world” of responsible management and distribution of our resources. Amid crisis, this is the guide you've been waiting for.
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The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals. Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a “police state that is creeping up on us from many directions.” There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash. There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth. And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects. The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy. The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose: “We the People have vanished. Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites.” The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring “an intellectual rebirth,” may yet go the way of “German Nazis and Soviet communists.” Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable. In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it “a devastating indictment of our current system of justice.” Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left–and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas
TThe author and I reconnected on LinkedIn and he had the publisher send me a copy of this book. I would not normally have bought it for myself, thinking it a “tourism” or “travel” kind of book, and I would have been very very wrong. The sub-title, “and the Dream of Capitalism,” might better read “Case Study in Emirate Capitalism at Its Best.”
This book starts very early in the history of Dubai, back when it was such a hole that no one even knew it was there or wanted to go anywhere within thousands of miles of it. The early part of the book persuaded me that the author has done some deep, serious, utterly professional and thorough homework, and the books reads easily, with gifted turns of phrase that educate and often inspire.
Putting the book down just now (and recommending the paperback that comes with a second epilogue for 2010) I reminded myself to recommend this book as a case study for both business and public administration graduate courses, as well as recommended reading for undergraduates. I certainly believe the author himself should be invited–and very well paid–to interact with the most serious and gifted of business and public administration adult students, both on and off the record. This book is a GOLD MINE of insights into what worked in an environment where, as the author describes so beautifully, the leadership knew that lawyers are generally worthless and bureaucracies are pathetic things to be dismissed. For that section alone this book goes into the Beyond 5 Stars (6 Stars and Above) and will be so rated at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
This book will be cataloged there in Capitalism, not just regional or country, in Leadership, and in a number of other categories as well. I have not, in as long as I can recall, had the pleasure of reading a book about a people, a place, a leadership, and a time that is as detailed, as harmonized in the telling, as instructive, and as enjoyable as this one.
The level of detail is EXTRAORDINARY and yet not burdensome. The detail is present as the filigree to the main wall, the story told in well-planned segments. The detail gives life to this book. This book is both educational and inspiring.
I am NOT “down on Dubai” and I don't think the author is either. In 58 years of travel and 48 years of reading–the last thirty focused on non-fiction, I have not seen any book do a better job of capturing the essence, in detail, of a culture, a place, and a living time.
The book ends with very serious challenges to Dubai being presented in a professional, responsible manner. The leaders of Dubai are clearly extraordinary people with extraordinary sensibilities, and I suspect they will rise to these challenges, not the least of which are spoiled citizens receiving $55,000 a year, and an energy and carbon footprint that could alone take down the Earth if proliferated. But even here, one sees the beauty of Emirate Capitalism as I choose to call it: every building now has to meet the LEEDS standard, and other measures are being put into place. Having said that, one must also recognize that Emirate Capitalism can be brutal to some, a form of robber=baronism, and that now that the world is in an economic decline, Dubai's leaders are going to have to think twice as boldly, listen to twice as many advisors, and be twice as tough and focused as they have been, if they are to survive.
If you are going to Dubai, if you know anyone at all in Dubai, if you own shares in any company based in Dubai, if you even THINK you might one day fly OVER Dubai, buy and read this book (the paperback, but frankly, although I got the new epilogue in Xerox form, it does not add that much, so for those of us that love hard-copy covers, go with the hard copy and forego the new epilogue, which I am suggesting to the author be put on line so as not to diminish sales of the remaining hard copies.
The author covers the Iran-US and other regional issues well enough, but this is not a book about politics, it is a book about Emirate Capitalism that should be studied for the next century, along with other books that needs to be written about Arab Capitalism as–and if–Arab Capitalism can be inspired by Emirate Capitalism.
This book needs a sequel, perhaps one that expands north and south and brings us all up to date on Emirate Capitalism, Iranian/Persian Capitalism (it does exist), and Arab Capitalism.
As one person cited in the book points out, Dubai is both the most magnificent fastest built marvel of the Earth, and also a microcosm of everything that is wrong with Western engineering ignorant of ecological economics or “true cost” of goods and services. Dubai is an OPPORTUNITY. City of Gold is the opening act–I cannot wait for the sequel. This is “jolly good stuff” and an absolutely riveting read–and not one to be skimmed over, either. This is a serious book for serious people.
I am not going to link to other books here. This book has no peers. Visit Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog for the 1,600 or so non-fiction books, organized in 98 categories, which provide the backdrop from my praise of this book by this author. Righteous!
Low-Cost Priceless Guide Worth Hundreds of Thousands
