4 Star – Page 8 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/02/162014/02/17

Review: Absolute Value – What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Information Society

Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen

Formula book, somewhat shallow, misses major opportunity, February 16, 2014

This book was a gift. The subtitle (What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information) overcame my reluctance and I gave it it a quick read, which is all it deserves. This is a formula book, and as one reviewer notes, would have been just fine as an article. The “innovation” in the book is the discovery that brand and prior experience are less relevant today to purchasing decisions that are now heavily influenced by up to date social commentary and readily available peer reviews.

At one level I find the book interesting as a quick once over of the obvious. At another level I am quite disappointed. There is nothing in this book about true cost economics or open source. If you want to be pretentious and talk about Absolute Value, it would help if you actually had a clue that Absolute Value includes virtual water, virtual fuel, virtual child labor, and virtual tax avoidance, among other things.

I appreciate the discussion of how false reviews and paid reviewers are losing ground to better systems for policing such abuses, and I am interested when they discuss the failure of most market research, which focuses on past experience and conventional concepts.

The importance of corporate monitoring of social media for all mentions of all of their products is presented in a useful manner. I particularly like the examples in relation to rapid recognition of flaws from specific production lines — this is about feedback loops.

The book ends weakly with a few examples of sites such as Goodguide, Decide.com, and BrightScope.

Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

2014/02/162014/02/17

Review: Economics of the 1%

4 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

John Weeks

4.0 out of 5 stars While Relevant and Pointed, Suffers from Hyperbole and Lack of Clarity, February 16, 2014

On balance, Lionel Tiger's book The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System is the better book, along with those by William Greider, John Bogle, and Matt Taibbi:

The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History

I found this book unclear and guilty of at least as much hyperbole as those the author seeks to criticize. I would have been much more impressed has the author taken the top ten canards (unfounded rumor or story) of fake economics as he calls it (in virtually every paragraph, an annoying pretense) and very simply made the case pro and con. Instead — I am not a rocket scientist — I found 70% of his words, graphics, and claims to be on a par with those he seeks to ciritize….unclear and unsatisfying.

Continue reading “Review: Economics of the 1%”

2014/02/082014/02/16

Review: Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality

4 Star, Philosophy

Huw Price (Editor), Richard Corry (Editor)

4.0 out of 5 stars My head hurts — connects science to philosophy as math, February 8, 2014

I was not expecting the math formulas and the dense language. It never occurred to me that philosphy would get so convuluted that it now has its own language and arcane formulas that require a lifetime of study to be conversant. Not fun at all.

Among the high points as I struggled with the various authors, most of them much too far from my own interest in humanities and the logic of human affairs:

01 Bottom line is about AGENCY — who gets to drive and in what direction. Science is the car and its elements and their capabilities. Causality is everything else.

02 There are two major camps: causal fundamentalists and causal republicanists. The first is adamant that causality is scientific and can be factored, the second that both science and philospphy have a convergent role in understanding causality.

Continue reading “Review: Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality”

2014/01/252014/01/25

Review: Reforming Intelligence – Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Thomas Bruneau and Steven Boraz

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful on the 30% That is Old Think — Oblivious to Evolution & Nuance, January 25, 2014

Although this book is seven years old, as the world confronts the twin debacles of CIA rendition & torture combined with drone assassinations of thousands (only 2% of whom could be construed somewhat legitimate targets) and NSA's mass surveillance combined with its financial and cyber subversion of most other foreign intelligence services, I thought it important to buy and review this book.

It emerged from the Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in the USA.

It losed one star on page one, the opening chapter by Bruneau & Boraz:

Continue reading “Review: Reforming Intelligence – Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness”

2014/01/232014/01/23

Review: 24 Carat BOLD – Claim Your Position as the Top Expert in Your Field

4 Star, Best Practices in Management

Mindy Gibbins-Klein

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise, Clear, Logical, Missing the Magic Sauce, January 23, 2014

I read this book and have ordered a book recommended by this author, Ron Brown's How to Build Your Reputation.

Having published nine books myself, I am a little jaded when someone says “write a book and be recognized.” However, I do like this book. It has a clear message, it is concise, it is very well written, and on balance I think it provides anyone interested in becoming “known” with a very fine starting point.

Continue reading “Review: 24 Carat BOLD – Claim Your Position as the Top Expert in Your Field”

2013/12/262013/12/26

Review: Dawn of the Akshic Age – New Consciousness, Quantum Resonance, and the Future of the World

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Information Society, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Ervin Laszlo and Kingsley L. Dennis et al.

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb Appetizer Book — a Potpourri of Genius — Not the Main Plate, December 26, 2013

Buy and read this book for a marvelous panoramic view of the latest thinking circling around the end of the top-down scarcity model that concentrates wealth, and the emergence — sooner than most might expect — of the distributed bottom-up local to global harmonization.

This is a hybrid book — the first two thirds are written by the co-authors (Laszlo and Dennis), while the last third is a collection of eleven very short essays, each generally provocative and each providing me with at least one insight, web site, or book that I was not aware of. The book ends with recommended readings in the following categories that are a also a summary of what the book strives to cover at a very high level:

Continue reading “Review: Dawn of the Akshic Age – New Consciousness, Quantum Resonance, and the Future of the World”

2013/12/232013/12/23

Review: Intelligence Elsewhere – Spies and Espionage Outside the Anglosphere

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Philip H. J. Davies and Kristian C. Gustafson (eds.)

4.0 out of 5 stars Long Overdue, A Very Fine Start, More Can Be Done, December 23, 2013

I am noticing this book primarily to recommend it at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. I strongly recommend the overview chapter that is provided free within Amazon's Look Inside the Book feature.

The focus of the book, on intelligence services outside Five Eyes (AU, CA, UK, US, NZ) and the major powers, is long overdue. This book is a very fine start, but it falls short on three fronts:

Continue reading “Review: Intelligence Elsewhere – Spies and Espionage Outside the Anglosphere”