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.
As a matter of fact it is a bad book in the most general meaning of the word. First of all, it does not deliver what it promises to deliver and thus misleads the buyer. It claims that it is going to provide a `framework' for an innovative organization, but instead turns out to be a most general blah blah on every subject in the area of `management'. Apart from an abundant use of the word `innovation', there is hardly anything related to the core of innovation process in this book.
If you like, let me summarise what they say:
1. The book starts with an expose of the CHANGES in the world economy, globalization etc. The usual stuff you would expect to find in any `wake-up call' book these days. But is there anyone left who is not aware of the big changes going on around us? Do we need another book warning us that business is no longer usual?
2. The book then goes on outlining their `framework' for innovation. This is called the `five disciplines'. Disciplines indeed! And such `novel' ones. Let's look at them, if you like.
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.
From Booklist: Verbalizing visceral feelings about technology, whether attraction or repulsion, Kelly explores the “technium,” his term for the globalized, interconnected stage of technological development. Arguing that the processes creating the technium are akin to those of biological evolution, Kelly devotes the opening sections of his exposition to that analogy, maintaining that the technium exhibits a similar tendency toward self-organizing complexity. Having defined the technium, Kelly addresses its discontents, as expressed by the Unabomber (although Kelly admits to trepidation in taking seriously the antitechnology screeds of a murderer) and then as lived by the allegedly technophobic Amish. From his observations and discussions with some Amish people, Kelly extracts some precepts of their attitudes toward gadgets, suggesting folk in the secular world can benefit from the Amish approach of treating tools as servants of self and society rather than as out-of-control masters. Exploring ramifications of technology on human welfare and achievement, Kelly arrives at an optimistic outlook that will interest many, coming, as it does, from the former editor of Wired magazine. –Gilbert Taylor
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at how technology evolves, October 14, 2010
WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS offers a highly readable investigation into the mechanisms by which technology advances over time. The central thesis of the book is that technology grows and evolves in much the same way as an autonomous, living organism.
The book draws many parallels between technical progress and biology, labeling technology as “evolution accelerated.” Kelly goes further and argues that neither evolution nor technological advance result from a random drift but instead have an inherent direction that makes some outcomes virtually inevitable. Examples of this inevitability include the eye, which evolved independently at least six times in different branches of the animal kingdom, and numerous instances of technical innovations or scientific discoveries being made almost simultaneously.
From the Library Journal: He identifies and explains seven distinct stages of the creative process: discovery and encounter, passion and commitment, crisis and creative frustration, retreat and withdrawal, epiphany and insight, discipline and completion, and responsibility and release. He also develops his view of the three principles of the creative impulse, which include creative courage, being in the right place at the right time, and deepening connections with others.
5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and potentially life-transforming book!, September 10, 2004
Review by Joe Tye
Steven Pressfield
Know the enemy, know yourself, wrote Sun Tzu in his classic The Art of War, and your victory will be certain. For anyone who is stuck at a level below their God-given potential, who can't seem to get on track to do the things they need to do in order to achieve their most authentic goals, knowing the enemy and knowing yourself are one and the same.
Steve Pressfield's magnificent little book The War of Art is about being more creative – but more important, it's also about fulfilling your potential as a human being. To do this, he says, you must overcome Resistance (the “R” is capitalized be Pressfield to represent the fact that it is a very real entity – as real to your authentic Self as Charles Manson or Genghis Khan were to their victims). Continue reading “Review (Guest): The War of Art–Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”
When confronted with a persistent foreign policy problem that threatens U.S. interests, and that cannot be adequately addressed through economic or political pressure, American policymakers and opinion formers have increasingly resorted to recommending the use of limited military force: that is, enough force to attempt to resolve the problem while minimizing U.S. military deaths, local civilian casualties, and collateral damage.
These recommendations have ranged from the bizarre—such as a Predator missile strike to kill Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, or the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez—to the unwise—the preemptive bombing of North Korean ballistic missile sites—to the demonstrably practical—air raids into Bosnia and Somalia, and drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
Amazon Page
However, even though they have been a regular feature of America's uses of military force through four successive administrations, the efficacy of these “Discrete Military Operations” (DMOs) remains largely unanalyzed, leaving unanswered the important question of whether or not they have succeeded in achieving their intended military and political objectives.
In response, Micah Zenko examines the thirty-six DMOs undertaken by the US over the past 20 years, in order to discern why they were used, if they achieved their objectives, and what determined their success or failure. In the process, he both evaluates U.S. policy choices and recommends ways in which limited military force can be better used in the future. The insights and recommendations made by Zenko will be increasingly relevant to making decisions and predictions about the development of American grand strategy and future military policy.
Phi Beta Iota: An extraordinary flaw in the discussion around this book is the assumption that the US resorts to such actions because diplomatic and economic means will not suffice. The reality is that the US “way of war” has nothing to do with strategic analytics, whole of government competency (non-existent), moral contexts, or public interest objectives. We do these things for the same reason Bill Clinton let an intern cost the US taxpayer $50 million–“because we can.” We can also put a bullet in our head, that does not mean we should–but it is the virtual outcome of what Washington is doing now.
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.”
Down to Earth, Absorbing, Perfectly Presented, “Must Read”