After reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything I have been following the Heath brothers and Don Tapscott’s work online and in the blogosphere. Both have followup books to their initial bestsellers. Its going to be great reading.
This is not a book about Dan Brown’s character, Robert Langdon and his fight against the Illuminati in Angels & Demons. This is The Numerati, a slight spin on very advanced mathematics and high performance computing, the future of shopping, medicine, safety, sex, voting and yes …. even work.
The Numerati is a great read regarding the impact of advanced analytics across the board. I was impressed with mathematicians Baker interviews and the surprising number who eventually work for IBM or the NSA. Baker has written a book about how the best mathematicians are changing the way we live by processing amazingly vast amounts of data and simply detecting patterns. The data comes via mouse-clicks, cell phone calls and credit card purchases just to name a few.
It sounds simple. On the surface with today’s high performance computing and powerful consumer technologies. But Baker shows how mathematicians are working to draw upon extremely high levels of computational power to deliver products and solutions that will dramatically impact our lives.
At the same time some of the projects mentioned seems more ‘wonderland’ in design. Yet consider the amount of data created by the Large Hadron Collider for example, the emerging world of Big Science is just starting to take off.
Chapters tackle different subjects (mentioned above) and as others. Many have indicated the shopping chapter is the best of the book. It was very enjoyable to read. Some of the ideas and inventions about health were interesting, some ideas a bit hard to wrap around your brain – like the ability of a floor tile to detect if your elderly father has a change in an existing medical condition. Another example, how a computer can analyze a sequence of video (over time) and determine in your are prone to suffering Parkinson’s disease.
Sometimes a 2.0 release is viewed as a fix for shortcomings in the initial release of just about any product….except this update from Tom Friedman: Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America.
I quickly read version 1.0 as soon as it hit bookshelves and was just amazed at Friedman’s writing about the state of research, business and culture surrounding our planet. Missed reading this when it was originally released?
Yet as of late I have been reading so much about Wall Street’s clusterf*ck that I missed his update Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America.
An overview to the version 2.0 release:Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession. The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy. And it could inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time—nation-building—by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources.
In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution the world needs is like no revolution before. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.
Or consider the following accolades for his writing:
Tonight Amazon introduced a new Kindle. Set to ship August 27th, the new revision is 21% smaller and 15% lighter than its predecessor. The new unit will ship with an display E Ink that has a 20% faster refresh rate.
The unit will also have two wireless options: a $139 WiFi only version and a $189 3G version. Storage has been increased to 4GB.
Let the eBook price wars continue!
Tags: Amazon, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends
Want to confuse customers? How about taking the “if ya can’t beat`em, join`em” approach….
I wonder what Bezos thinks about when you pull this type of capitulation. I cannot help but wonder about Amazon’s own statement: NO KINDLE REQUIRED. If anyone sees this add and is deciding which to choose, this move by Amazon cements the iPad as the choice.
BTW: Did you catch the color image in the book?
Tags: iPad, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends