Innovation Watch» books-future

Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World. By Graeme Taylor. New Society Publishers.

iw — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:33:31 +0000

Evolution’s Edge explains not only why the collapse of our violent and destructive global system is inevitable, but also why a new type of sustainable civilization has begun to emerge. Because the obstacles to human progress are cultural, not technical, we can accelerate this evolutionary process through uniting around ethical, constructive views and values. Full of transformative ideas and tools, this book is a practical guide to a better future. … Read more

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Yes We Did! An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand. By Rahaf Harfoush. New Riders.

iw — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:19:18 +0000

The Obama campaign’s mastery of social media for everything from fundraising to volunteer coordination has been widely reported. Until now, there hasn’t been an in-depth analysis of how they did it. In Yes We Did, new media strategist and campaign headquarters volunteer Rahaf Harfoush gives us a behind the-scenes look at the campaign’s use of technology, from its earliest days through election night. She reveals strategic insights organizations can apply to their own brands. Discover how unwavering strategic vision and collaborative technologies–email, blogs, social networks, Twitter, and SMS messaging–empowered a formidable online community to help elect the world’s first “digital” President. … Read more

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The Value of Nothing: Why Everything Costs So Much More Than We Think. By Raj Patel. HarperCollins.

iw — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:54:13 +0000

As retirement funds shrink and savings disappear, now is a good time to ask a question for which every human civilization has had an answer: why do things cost what they do? Examining everything from free lunches to military spending, from love to television. The Value of Nothing reveals the hidden social consequences our global culture of “freedom” and explains why prices are always at odds with the true value of what matters to us. Opening with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. … Read more

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Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People. By Michael Strangelove. University of Toronto Press.

iw — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:32:15 +0000

In Watching YouTube, Dr. Strangelove, the Governor General Literary Award-nominated author that Wired Magazine called a ‘guru of Internet advertsing,’ describes how online digital video is both similar to and different from traditional home-movie-making and argues that we are moving into a post-television era characterized by mass participation. Drawing from television, film, cultural, and media studies to help define an entirely new field of research, Michael Strangelove provides a broad overview of the world of amateur online videos and the people who make them. … Read more

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China’s Megatrends: The 8 Pillars of a New Society. By John and Doris Naisbitt. HarperCollins Publishers.

iw — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:35:39 +0000

With extraordinary access, and using the same techniques behind John Naisbitt’s international bestseller Megatrends, the Naisbitts have traveled the country, interviewing journalists, entrepreneurs, academics, politicians, artists, dissidents, and expatriates. With the help of twenty-eight staff members of the Naisbitt China Institute in Tianjin, they have monitored local newspapers in all of China’s provinces to identify the evolving perspectives and deep forces underlying China’s transformation. Their research reveals that China is not only undergoing fundamental changes but also creating an entirely new social and economic model — what the Naisbitt’s call a “vertical democracy” — that is changing the rules of global trade and challenging Western democracy as the only acceptable form of governing. … Read more

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You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. By Jaron Lanier. Alfred A. Knopf.

iw — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:48:34 +0000

Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse. Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals. … Read more

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The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism. By Howard Bloom. Prometheus Books.

iw — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:30:40 +0000

Is global capitalism on its last legs? Is the era of American leadership over? Has the West begun a decline into a new Dark Age? Does American civilization deserve to survive? These are the unnerving questions raised by the Great Crash of 2009. Visionary thinker Howard Bloom has a radically new answer. In The Genius of the Beast, the author of the acclaimed books The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, insists that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Bloom argues that there’s a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: It is struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings. Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race. … Read more

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Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods. By Shel Israel. Portfolio.

iw — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:55:04 +0000

Twitter is the most rapidly adopted communication tool in history, going from zero to ten million users in just over two years. On Twitter, word can spread faster than wildfire. Companies no longer have the option of ignoring the conversation. Unlike other hot social media spaces, Twitterville is dominated by professionals, not students. And despite its size, it still feels like a small town. Twitter allows people to interact much the way they do face-to-face, honestly and authentically. One minute, you’re complaining about the weather with local friends, the next, you’re talking shop with a colleague based halfway across the globe. No matter where you’re from or what you do for a living, you will find conversations on Twitter that are valuable. Despite the millions of people joining the site, you’ll quickly find the ones who can make a difference to you. … Read more

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Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. By Stewart Brand. Viking.

iw — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:37:19 +0000

According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong ecologist and futurist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization — half the world’s population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury — is altering humanity’s land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world’s dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth’s resources. … Read more

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The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World. By Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Jow Laur and Sara Schley. Doubleday.

iw — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:09:18 +0000

Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings –- ones that create more energy than they use -– are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more cost-effective than wasteful ones. A world in which corporations such as Costco, Nike, BP, and countless others are forming partnerships with environmental and social justice organizations to ensure better stewardship of the earth and better livelihoods in the developing world. Now, stop imagining –- that world is already emerging. … Read more

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