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Latest Read: The Four

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway. Scott is a Professor of Marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business. He led startups at Prophet, Red Envelope and L2, which was acquired by Gartner.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway

Scott has also served on the boards of media companies including The New York Times, Dex Media, Advanstar, Gateway, Urban Outfitters and Eddie Bauer. He joined the faculty of NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2014.

So Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are deemed by Scott as the Four Horsemen. The data Scott provides is rich at the time of publication. It would be well worth hit time to release a second edition: The Four Horsemen of the Pandemic, as their metrics will be even more amazing to understand how they have grown from 2017. This is amazingly, just four years from the release as well.

Throughout the book Scott addresses his move from private business to teaching at NYU, where the cost of education is $500 per minute.
While reading Scott’s book at the close of 2021, the omicron variant is surging and according to Scott in 2017 their reach (and profits) should be soaring to new gigantic heights.

Surprisingly, Scott not only portions each company in the marketplace they dominate, but also how they are now digging in to complete with one another.

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Latest Read: Coders

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson. Clive writes for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Smithsonian. This book is in fact, a very comprehensive review of computer programming.

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

In addition to tracing historical developments, Clive is addressing the origins of computer programming, artificial intelligence, and college computer science programs, and concludes with new coding companies that have entered the market including the Flatiron School.

However, Clive provides an honest and deep analysis about how programmers live, including the evolving demands required to succeed long term. Coding is not an easy career choice.

For this reason, it is challenging for women and minorities to land full time coder jobs. At the same time, everyone not attending a handful of elite universities to study computer engineering (Stanford, MIT, or Harvard) career opportunities at top flight companies remain challenging.

Yet for today’s gig economy worker, this book is an especially worthy read. Parents working will gain a better understanding of potential career paths for their children. Above all, if you have a daughter, Coders is mandatory reading. While his opening chapters reinforced the key role woman held in the launch of computing machines, it is now an uphill battle.

The Software Update That Changed Reality

Clive begins Chapter 1 The Software Update That Changed Reality with Facebook’s Ruchi Sanghvi authoring their initial newsfeed feature. There is a good view of how Ruchi faced challenges as a woman at Facebook. She then left to start Cove, later acquired by Dropbox.

Many will also appreciate the origin of ‘Hello World’ and to learn exactly what is a “bug” in software and the precision required that makes software execute flawlessly. This is a good chapter for any non-programmer parent.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Google Innovation Internet2 Network Reading Technology WiscNet

Latest Read: Scorecasting

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim may be the closest thing to a sports version of Freakonomics.

Moskowitz was a Booth Professor of Finance at time of publication. Today he teaches at the Yale School of Management. Jon Wertheim holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is Executive Editor at Sports Illustrated

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz

As we headed into the Easter weekend, the NFL virtual draft was the only sports headline. Coronavirus shut down all sports recently.

Scorecasting it’s worth noting, reveals the recent NFL draft number one picks, turn out equal to a number ten pick regarding rookie performance.

Yet the money NFL teams waste on top picks should change. Scorecasting reviewed the signing bonuses of Ryan Leaf and Sam Bradford, top busts from the NFL draft. Actually the Leaf vs. Payton Manning draft reversal remains popular with sports fans even today.

For all the cable sports hype regarding player performance leading up to the draft, Moskowitz and Wertheim separate the signal to noise ratio very efficiently.

The hours (upon hours) of endless player and coaching interviews, season hi-lights showcasing how each team should draft the data reveals is only good for … selling commercials. Actually fans should wise up and gain some hours back in their lives.

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Latest Read: When Gadgets Betray Us

Robert Vamosi wrote When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies in 2013. Today in the age of COVID-19 this book remains very relevant. Upon his book release, Robert spoke at Microsoft Research.

When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies
When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation With New Technologies

When Gadgets Betray Us is really about the internet of things (IoT) and the explosion of cheap gadgets.

This is a two fold problem: the impulse of human behavior to jump right into a new, innovative, ‘shiny’ devices. We more often skip reading the manual. Who reads manuals anyway these days?

However the ability for a nation state to remotely hack building controls and manipulate industrial machines seemed like stuff from a Hollywood movie, even back in 2013.

Clearly Vamosi could not have considered the impact of Stuxnet, the attack by Israel and the US NSA to destroy centrifuges in an underground facility in Iran. My review Countdown to Zero Day will surprise many readers.

This is a good starting point for many readers. Generally When Gadgets Betray Us reveals how our devices (phones, cars, smart watches, home thermostats and even baby monitors leaked location data. Worse, baby monitors permitted hackers to hijack the video feeds meant for remote grandparents, family and friends.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Google Innovation Internet2 Network Reading Technology WiscNet

Latest Read: The Shallows

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr remains a powerful book (published 2011) regarding how our brains have re-wired in the age of the internet. I began reading just as COVID-19 began taking hold. How will our brains react to this pandemic?

the shallows by by Nicholas Carr

Over the course of Carr’s chapters the world instantly became remote workers.

According to Carr’s conclusions, our brains will re-wire again adjusting to our new global working environments. Actually this will occur within a very short period of time.

The source for his book originated from an article Carr actually wrote for The New Yorker called “is google making us stupid” back in 2008. There is a chapter dedicated to Google Search.

Does The Shallows reveal new internet changes to human behavior? No, Carr shows that history’s ‘drastic changes’ regarding access to new technology dates even beyond Nietzsche and Freud. Their technology change? The typewriter was a very dynamic change from Gutenberg’s printing press. Approaches to cognitive thought was drastically changed by the technology available to Freud’s era: powerful microscopes.