Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Communications & Computing

00 Remixed Review Lists, Communications, Worth A Look

Communications & Computing

Review: Computer-Related Risks

Review: Cuckoo’s Egg

Review: CYBERPUNK–Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised

Review: Cybershock–Surviving Hackers, Phreakers, Identity Thieves, Internet Terrorists and Weapons of Mass Disruption

Review: Database Nation –The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century (Paperback)

Review: Masters of Deception–The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace

Review: Networks and Netwars–The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy

Review: Pearl Harbor Dot Com

Review: Stealing the Network–How to Own a Continent

Review: Terminal Compromise

Review: The Best of 2600–A Hacker Odyssey

Review: The Hacker Crackdown–Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier

NOTE:  Hackers as pioneers pushing the edge of the envelope, are represented in Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Innovation.

Review: Sway–The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

5 Star, Communications, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy

SwaySuper Book, Fast Read, Relevant to Participatory Democracy, June 3, 2008

Ori Brafman

This is a very fine book, a fast read, and highly relevant to Web 2.0 and all the emergent opportunities to turn our world right side up, restoring power back to all the people. My reading has moved heavily toward cognitive science and “open everything,” and my avowed goal, apart from creating public intelligence in the public interest, is to make “true cost” visible to the public on every product and service, penetrating through the kinds of sway barriers this book describes.

Each chapter is excellent, with a nice teaser diagram. The book is double-spaced with adequate notes and index.

My flyleaf highlights:

+ Diagnosis bias is huge. [The book does not focus enough on how our “experts know more and more about less and less,” but the core point is valid: once their tiny little brain storage reaches a conclusion, they bend everything to fit it. this could also be called paradigm or disciplinary bias.]

+ Hidden currents in the individual and group decision support process include loss aversion, value attribution or negatiion, and a commitment to the wrong s trategy. Holy Cow. Talk about CIA, Microsoft, Google, CISCO, they are all there.

+ NBA draft is mostly guess and speculation [so is most intelligence “analysis” and both groups get away with it because they are not held accountable for getting it wrong.]

+ Labels *matter* and deeply influence outcomes.

+ Visualization *sells* just about anything.

+ Cues and subtle messages are nuanced and complex and omnipresent. I was really engaged by this section.

+ Need to be heard is vital and the more one does that, the more value is created (this is social networking 101, as Web 2.0 starts to go over the cliff so Web 3.0 can rise like a Pheonix.] The authors stress that those offering to listen must *hear* each individual voice.

+ Blockers matter, i.e. there have to be people in the loop who have the courage, the commitment, the *role* of saying no to abuses of authority including rankism. [I think of all our flag officers and Congress Members who refused to challenge the criminal lies of the White House and the abuses of power by the Vice President, all documented now in the open literature. Had Colin Powell resigned and called for a stop, he would be President in 2009, instead of those now running. all flawed in their own way [and each a testiment to how easily we are swayed by a lack of substance on the part of all three–visit Earth Intelligence Network to see the 52 questions none of the candidates can answer, and the 52 “starter” answers for a Citizens Summit to discuss (February 2009 in Chicago, over Lincoln's birthday).

Great little book. Here are some others I have found to be valuable:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

Below is the first in a series of non-profit books (also free online), relevant to creating public intelligence in the public interest).
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Review: Nudge–Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

5 Star, Communications, Decision-Making & Decision-Support

NudgeInnovative, Helpful, Relevant: Opening Shot in Science of Choice, March 26, 2008

Richard H. Thaler

This is one of several books on decision-making and choice I have ordered, the first to arrive. I had no idea when I ordered it, based on the title, that the first author was Distinguished Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics as well as the Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago, and the second author was Cass Sunstein, one of three lawyers I would not automatically sentence to exile.

I really liked this book. It can be read fast or slow. I went fast, if one accepts the authors' propositions at face value, the details are not as necessary. These guys are heavy hitters with a very serious case to present. Although I did not see references to predecessors in this area, such as Herb Simon's “satisficing,” the one word I remember from my MPA finished in 1987, the bibliography and notes are excellent and I have the feeling the authors and their research assistants have been thorough with the recent literature (last 15 years).

The book opens with a compelling example: a cafeteria manager discovers that she can seriously influence students by how the food is placed, arranged, and displayed, moving an entire student body toward healthier choices (or not).

The authors term such a person a “choice architect” and say that like physical architecture, there is no such thing as a “neutral” choice. They go on to discuss the emerging science of choice. I love this, in part because I just published a book, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (free online at Earth Intelligence Network) intended to force acceptance of Collective Intelligence as a sub-discipline within Cognitive Science. We succeeded.

The authors coined the term NUDGE from the ardiously broken down:
iNcentives
Understand mapping
Defaults matter
Give Feedback
Expect Error
Structure complex choices

Corney, but no worse than my own United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN). This is an important book, and the last one, “structure complex choices,” is in my view the critical one because we are in an era when our politically-elected leaders know nothing of the real world and are surrounded by advisors that are hacks who are terrified of anyone with a brain gaining access to “their” candidate. No one now running for President of the USA is qualified to date, for this very reason. Not one of them can appoint a transpartisan cabinet, produce a balanced budget, name the ten threats to humanity, list the twelve core policies from agriculture to water, or explain why we have less than six years to create a sustainable model that we can present to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo, which is as big as the USA.

Leadership must be redefined, and I believe that the authors have put together a capstone book that is richly qualified to join books such as The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century and Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World and the oldie but goodie by Harlan Cleveland, still a best in class offering, The Knowledge Executive.

The authors distinguish between Automatic Mind and Reflective Mind, and I cannot help but tie this to the truly elegant essay The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It in which the urgency of preserving generative freedom to innovate at the edge of the network is retained. I see such a convergence among all the books I am reading, and am reminded now of Kevin Kelly's unigue Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World. The problem we face is that government and all other organizations are pyramidal, secretive, selfish, and generally corrupt–and busy trying to “lock down” the appliances, one reason I will never buy an iPhone or an XBox.

The authors explore hor people are so unrealistically optemistic about their own capabilities (and I would add, unnecessarily suspect of the other, one reason I recommend to one and all Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World.

I agree with their discussion of the bias toward the status quo and truly appreciated their discussion of social influences (herd mentality). This is different from wisdom of the crowds, smart mobs, etc.

They have four chapters on money (savings, investing, credit, and social security), and the bottom line for all four is this: 1) it is possible to structure complex choices so people have freedom but err on the side of wisdom; and b) defaults matter.

In the section on health they discuss prescriptions, organ donation, and the environment. Here I would simply note that we know how to cut Medicare prescription costs to 1% of their existing and projected costs, but Congress is both gutless and totally lacking in ethics. I will also note that in another book I reviewed recently, the Chinese have discovered that they are losing TEN PERCENT of the Gross Domestic Product to envrionmentally-related loss of work productivity. This is serious!

In the section on Freedom their “libertarian paternalism” shows itself in full force as they discuss school choice, doctors, and marriage. I will not be critical here, other than to note that reforming education is NOT about school choice, it is about changing the entire model to throw out rote learning in neat little rows and testing of memorized regugitation. See Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series) and Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, among others.

They end with a dozen “example” nudges that I will not list here, in part because I do like this book, it is an easy read, and it is worthy of your time and money. Do not expect a scholarly tome with lots of pretentious mathematics. This is a good book for real people, and all the more valuable because the science of choice, like services sciences and collective intelligence as a cognitive-socio-economic ideo-cultural techno-demographic force, is going to make a very positive contribution to how we self-organize and how we respond to those who would be Epoch B leaders rather than dictators that take We the People for granted.

Buy this book–it might not improve your own decisions, but it will assuredly help you think about what to look for in a leader.

See also:
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter

Review: Humanizing the Digital Age

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Communications, Information Society, Information Technology, United Nations & NGOs
Humanizing
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars First Rate Executive Level Overview

September 18, 2007

United Nations

First off, this book is available for under $20 in hard-cover at the UN Bookstore and other selected online outlets. For some reason the UN does not offer it directly, so a third party makes it possible to order with one click at an added cost that was acceptable to me.

This is a really important and helpful book for those of us that have been thinking about “Information Peacekeeping” (using information to deter and reduce conflict) and “Information Arbitrage” (converting information into intelligence and intelligence into wealth). Nine authors and the editor each contribute extremely well-written, well-structured chapters.

Highlights that I noted for inclusion in my new book, WAR AND PEACE in the Digital Era: Multinational Information Sharing & Decision Support:

ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) has created a new era. Jeff Bezos told the TED conference that we are at the very beginning of innovation in ICT, and I agree. In the Overview of this book we learn:

1) Transnational movements of information and financial capital are a dominant force in the global economy;
2) Worldwide financial exchanges outweigh trade in goods by 60 to 1;
3) ICT services are estimated to be 65% of the total gross national product of the world;
4) Informatics capacity doubles every 18 to 24 while communications capacity doubles every six months (this is one reason the Earth Intelligence Network emphasizes the need for 100 million volunteers to teach the five billion poor “one cell call at a time”);
5) Information that could have been transferred through fiber optics in one month in 1997 can now be transferred in just one second in 2007.

I would add to point five above that I am starting to see massive leaps in processing and machine-speed analysis, to the point that even ugly x-rays can be processed to a point ten times better than previously available to the human eye. This is going to change everything, including security, as a “smart network” helps isolate the anomalous for closer scrutiny.

The chapter on entrepreneurial perspective tells us that education is vital to spawning innovation and entrepreneurial activity, and cited Robert Sternberg (1998) in identifying Analytical Intelligence, Creative Intelligence, and Practical Intelligence as the “three abilities.”

To this I would add the observation that the five billion poor have neither the time nor the luxury of spending 18 years in an archaic educational system that is part child-care and part-prison. See must move quickly to make free education in 183 languages available to anyone with access to a cell phone, and we must redirect ALL of our discarded cell phones and computers, as the book suggests, to the less fortunate.

The sooner we connect the poor, the sooner they can create infinite wealth, and this has the salutary benefit of assuring the rich that their existing wealth is safe from confiscation.

Although I was aware of the World Information Summits, this book provides something I did not have before, a very convenient overview of the efforts by various parties to address the “Governance Deficit” through collaboration. I read the Brahimi Report; I admire what MajGen Patrick Cammaert did with the Joint Military Analysis Centers (JMAC), and believe that the UN System–as well as all Member Nations, are now ready for the next big leap forward, what I call the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).

For those that may not be aware, the UN has asked the Nordic countries to expand on the very successful Peacekeeping Intelligence course developed by Sweden in the aftermath of our peacekeeping intelligence conference there in 2004. At the same time, non-profit organizations are developing inexpensive reference materials to help anyone make the most of open sources of information and open software tools, including TOOZL, which fits on a flash drive.

The book concludes with case studies, among which I found the India case study most compelling. India now provides the bulk of the better call centers, and India-based “Homework Help” costs just $18 an hour. Imagine if we had 100 million volunteers, each fluent in one of 183 languages, and able to take calls from anywhere in the world, and use their Internet access to answer a question or teach “one call at a time.” C.K. Prahalad's book persuaded me that there is no higher calling in life than to help connect the poor to knowledge. This book is a superb beginning for anyone wishing to join this mission.

Other books I recommend:
Edutopia: Success Stories for Learning in the Digital Age
Promoting Peace with Information: Transparency as a Tool of Security Regimes
Peacekeeping and Public Information: Caught in the Crossfire (Cass Series on Peacekeeping, 5)
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

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Review: Momentum–Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age

6 Star Top 10%, Civil Society, Communications, Democracy, Education (General)

MomentumOne of Two MUST READS For Any Social Activist,

April 27, 2007

Allison Fine

Edit of 30 Mar 08 to add more links.

This book, and the much more detailed book by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, “Made to Stick” are perfect partners in putting really actiionble public intelligence in the hands of social activitists and transpartisan political reformers. I have added both books to my list of transpartisan books.

This book focuses on digital tools for social change, on creating connected activism, on addressing the listening and communicating deficits.

The author provides a checklist of 12 points for evaluating how connected your activist organization is, another checklist of 8 points on powering the edges, and a final 95-point summary of the “Cluetrain Manifesto,” another book I have reviewed. All of these are useful.

The author points out that hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, and I could not agree more. Epoch B leadership is a form of swarm leadership, and the connected collective can easily bring the hierarchical authority down.

I especially liked the author's focus on all of us being content managers. Sharing information, as Vint Cerf has said recently, is how we get a Return on Information.

The book ends with some hard-earned “Do's and Don't's” and a chapter on the future of funding for social activism.

Over-all a quick read with plenty of substance, and an excellent complement to “Made to Stick.”

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

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Review: Made to Stick–Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

5 Star, Communications, Education (General)

Made to StickExcellent Presentation of Core Ideas with Lots of Examples,

April 27, 2007

Chip Heath

This book is getting a great deal more attention than Allison Fine's “MOMENTUM: igniting social change in the connected age,” so up front I want to say I consider them BOTH to be extremely complementary to one another, and MUST READS for any social activist or political reformer, as well as for those crafting educational or corporate messages.

I cannot improve on Brian Bex Huf's review, which I voted for, but for the sake of coherence for those who are alerted when I do a review, here is the meat from Brian's review:

* Simplicity: the idea must be stripped to its core, and the most important concepts should jump out.
* Unexpectedness: the idea must destroy preconceived notions about something. This forces people to stop, think, and remember.
* Concreteness: avoid statistics, use real-world analogies to help people understand complex ideas.
* Credibility: if people don't trust you, they'll ignore you. In some cases, they will be openly hostile, which means they'll actively try to dispute your message!
* Emotional: information makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Appeal to emotional needs, sometimes even way up on Maslow's hierarchy.
* Stores: telling a story [gets] people into paying closer attention, and feeling more connected. Remember the Jared Subway commercials?

The book ends with a five page reference guide that persuaded me of the author's value as consultants. They have given us a low-cost book we can use our5selves, but I am also persuaded they are valuable as brain-stormers for those trying to craft transpartisan and electoral reform messages, so I am recommending them both to the leadership of Reuniting America.

LOTS of details and examples. Easily a five-star book with great social and political value.

Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

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Review: The Seventeen Traditions

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Civil Society, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Diplomacy, Education (General), Leadership, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

17 TraditionsA Gift to Newlyweds of Decency and Traditional Values,

February 17, 2007

Ralph Nader

This is an absolute gem of a book, and the PERFECT GIFT for newlyweds.

I read it in an afternoon, and I confess to it's being a long afternoon of nagging dismay, as I reflected on how many of these lessons we have not taught our three cyber-era teenagers.

The seventeen lessons cover listening, family table, health, history, scarcity, equality, education, discipline, simple enjoyments, reciprocity, independent thinking, charity, work, business, patriotism, solitude, and civics.

While very heavily leavened with autobiographical reflections, this absolutely beautiful, moral, intelligent, well-written book is a gift to us all. For many of us it is too late–if I were starting over my kids would be banned from computers much of the time, and I would have refused the grandparents gifts of a personal TV to each child.

Bottom line: this is a keep-sake book with an enormous amount of common sense and tranditional values with none of the pontifical sanctimony usually found in such books. This is a first rate piece of work and reflection, ably presented in elegant language, and the absolutely perfect gift for all newlyweds you know. Buy ten copies. This kind of decency does not come available very often.

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