Innovation Watch» books-future

Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters. By Scott Rosenberg. Crown Publishers.

iw — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:01:57 +0000

Blogs are everywhere. They have exposed truths and spread rumors. Made and lost fortunes. Brought couples together and torn them apart. Toppled cabinet members and sparked grassroots movements. Immediate, intimate, and influential, they have put the power of personal publishing into everyone’s hands. Regularly dismissed as trivial and ephemeral, they have proved that they are here to stay. In Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging’s unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our personal lives. He offers close-ups of innovators such as Blogger founder Evan Williams, investigative journalist Josh Marshall, exhibitionist diarist Justin Hall, software visionary Dave Winer, “mommyblogger” Heather Armstrong, and many others. … Read more

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Wired for Thought: How the Brain is Shaping the Future of the Internet. By Jeffrey M. Stibel. Harvard Business Press.

iw — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:57:51 +0000

If you want to succeed on the Internet, forget trying to understand how the latest Web phenomenon works. Instead, you need to understand how the mind works. According to Jeffrey Stibel, the Internet is evolving into a brain—and the Web sites, communities, networks, and companies that leverage this insight will own the future. A brain scientist and serial entrepreneur, Stibel has made an impressive career translating his knowledge of neuroscience into successful Internet ventures. In Wired for Thought, he takes readers on an exhilarating journey into the world of “neuron hunters” who are using their knowledge of the Internet’s brainlike powers to create online businesses. … Read more

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Chaos and Organization in Health Care. By Thomas H. Lee, M.D. and James J Morgan, M.D. MIT Press.

iw — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:56:18 +0000

One of the most daunting challenges facing the new U.S. administration is health care reform. The size of the system, the number of stakeholders, and ever-rising costs make the problem seem almost intractable. But in Chaos and Organization in Health Care, two leading physicians offer an optimistic prognosis. In their frontline work as providers, Thomas Lee and James Mongan see the inefficiency, the missed opportunities, and the occasional harm that can result from the current system. The root cause of these problems, they argue, is chaos in the delivery of care. If the problem is chaos, the solution is organization, and in this timely and outspoken book, they offer a plan. … Read more

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The End of Energy Obesity: Breaking Today’s Energy Addiction for a Prosperous and Secure Tomorrow. By Peter Tertzakian. John Wiley & Sons.

iw — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:30:18 +0000

Nearly everything that defines our way of life requires energy-consuming devices, from cars, planes, trains, and air conditioning to lights and computers. And our global appetite for energy keeps growing as population and wealth obliges consumption on an unfathomable scale. Over the years, we’ve made our devices more efficient, only to find, ironically, that it’s made us consume even more energy. We’ve periodically cut back our energy use only to revert back to bad habits. We’ve added more renewables only to find that fossil fuels still dominate. Now we are energy obese. How can the world reduce its energy appetite and change its diet of fuels for a prosperous and secure tomorrow? In The End of Energy Obesity, energy expert and bestselling author Peter Tertzakian explores solutions. … Read more

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Strategic Foresight: A New Look at Scenarios. By Alfred Marcus. Palgrave Macmillan.

iw — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:54:35 +0000

Though reflecting on how today’s conditions become tomorrow’s realities is vital, anticipating what is to come next is not easy. This book is about foresight — that is the principles, methods, and techniques businesses can use for looking into the future and trying to influence what is to come next. Given uncertain outcomes, what strategies should businesses adopt? The book provides guidance on how to think systematically about constructing scenarios in a number of important areas including demography, security, politics, macro-economics, energy, the environment, and technology.

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Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. By Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Little, Brown and Company.

iw — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:50:19 +0000

Happiness is contagious. Your future spouse is likely to be your friend’s friend. Your friends’ friends’ friends can make you fat — or thin. These are just a few of the startling findings of internationally renowned scientists Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. In Connected, they present intriguing new evidence that our real-life social networks shape virtually every aspect of our lives. How we feel, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote — everything hinges on what others around us are doing, thinking, and feeling. Connected shows that our world is governed by the Three Degrees Rule — we influence and are influenced by people up to three degrees removed from us, most of whom we do not even know.

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Offshoring of American Jobs: What Response from U.S. Economic Policy? By Jagdish Bhagwati and Alan S. Blinder. MIT Press.

iw — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:07:22 +0000

It is no surprise that many fearful American workers see the call center operator in Bangalore or the factory worker in Guangzhou as a threat to their jobs. The emergence of China and India (along with other, smaller developing countries) as economic powers has doubled the supply of labor to the integrated world economy. Economic theory suggests that such a dramatic increase in the supply of labor without an accompanying increase in the supply of capital is likely to exert downward pressure on wages for workers already in the integrated world economy, and wages for most workers in the United States have indeed stagnated or declined. In this book, leading economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Alan S. Blinder offer their perspectives on how the outsourcing of labor and the shifting of jobs to lower-wage countries affect the U.S. economy and what, if any, policy responses are required.

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Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them. By Brad Spellberg. Prometheus Books.

iw — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:27:03 +0000

Antibiotic-resistant microbes infect more than 2 million Americans and kill over 100,000 each year. They spread rapidly, even in such seemingly harmless places as high school locker rooms, where they infect young athletes. And throughout the world, many more people are dying from these infections. Astoundingly, at the same time that antibiotic resistant infections are skyrocketing in incidence creating a critical need for new antibiotics research and development of new antibiotics has ground to a screeching halt! In Rising Plague, Dr. Brad Spellberg an infectious diseases specialist and member of a national task force charged with attacking antibiotic resistant infections tells the story of this potentially grave public health crisis.

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The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity. By Nicholas Stern. Public Affairs.

iw — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:03:47 +0000

Focusing on the economic management of investment and growth from the perspective of both adaptation and migration, Lord Nicholas Stern confronts the most urgent questions facing us now: What is the problem? What are the dangers? What can be done to reduce emissions, and at what cost? How can the world adapt? And what does all this mean for corporations, governments, and individuals? The Global Deal provides authoritative, inspirational, and hopeful answers.

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Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto. By Mark Helprin. HarperCollins.

iw — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:21:54 +0000

World-renowned novelist Mark Helprin offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language, and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators. Mark Helprin anticipated that his 2007 New York Times op-ed piece about the extension of the term of copyright would be received quietly, if not altogether overlooked. Within a week, the article had accumulated 750,000 angry comments. He was shocked by the breathtaking sense of entitlement demonstrated by the commenters, and appalled by the breadth, speed, and illogic of their responses. Helprin realized how drastically different this generation is from those before it.

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