Book Description
A new and empowering way of looking at and organizing social change! How can we move from serving soup until our elbows ache to solving chronic social ills like hunger or homelessness? How can we break the disastrous cycle of low expectations that leads to chronic social failures?
The answers to these questions lie within Momentum, a fresh, zestful way of thinking about and organizing social change work. Today's digital tools—including but not limited to e-mail, the Web, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), even iPods—promote interactivity and connectedness. But as Momentum shows, these new social media tools are important not for their wizardry but because they connect us to one another in inexpensive, accessible, and massively scalable ways.
Customer Reviews:
Poorly edited.......2007-09-21
This book is OK, but doesn't have a sound outline and is disjointed. A good editor could have turned this into a much better book.
One of Two MUST READS For Any Social Activist.......2007-04-28
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
Inspiring and Insightful....A Must Read!.......2006-10-23
Momentum is inspirational and the passion that is evoked is contagious! Reading this compelling book made me excited to understand the truth about opportunities for positive social change. Fine does an excellent job of describing the value of self-determination and how social media can help make it happen. I especially like that she goes beyond simply suggesting that people use social media, and impresses upon the reader the value of altering how we think about social change. Fine reveals the value of reducing the significance of institutional barriers and developing interpersonal relationships and networks. She encourages us to stretch how we think about participation and decision-making and to "push power to the edges". This is a must read for anyone interested in a more innovative activist community!
A Must-Read--This Book Will Start Your Wheels Turning.......2006-10-23
Wow! This book is relevant, not only for existing activist organizations (all of which should run out and buy a copy immediately), but also for any "Joe Citizen" like me who has pet issues on various local levels and who wants to effect change expeditiously.
Sprinkled with wry humor, this informative and well-written book was a pleasure to read. It is even more than a problem-solving roadmap embracing a new paradigm for the way activists can organize, communicate and define and reach goals; it is also an actual toolkit chock full of ideas on how to use what Ms. Fine terms "social media" (email, the web, wireless handhelds, etc.) to effect change. Even more concrete, Momentum includes websites that even a non-techie and would-be activist like me can use to start anything from an email petition campaign to a website where my kids' teachers can solicit funds for special projects.
While reading this book I had no less than 5 "aha" moments where I thought: "I could use that" in order to bring about change in various areas of my civic life. In fact, in a couple of cases, the information in the book spurred me to think about change in areas I had not thought of before.
I give Momentum my highest recommendation and kudos to Allison H. Fine for writing this timely book...
The "ah ha" moments.......2006-10-11
The social justice community is consumed with daily battles. Momentum allowed me to step back and fully absorb how technology is changing the way we wage them, with Allison Fine showing not only how we can do better, but revealing some victories that I've missed along the way. I welcomed the story telling, the "ah ha" moments, and the self-effacing humor.
Average customer rating:
- An intriguing read on iPod and its impact
- Insightful and Absorbing Read on iPods, Apple, Innovation and Marketing
- Cool Device: search wheel, no on switch, the LCD, video, iPhones, fireware, g4, and iTune
- Levy Nails It!
- Far From Perfect (But Still Pretty Good)
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The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness
Steven Levy
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ASIN: 0743285220 |
Book Description
On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology -- if not necessarily for its dominant market share -- launched a product with an enticing promise: You can carry an entire music collection in your pocket. It was called the iPod. What happened next exceeded the company's wildest dreams. Over 50 million people have inserted the device's distinctive white buds into their ears, and the iPod has become a global obsession. The Perfect Thing is the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple's iPod, the signature device of our young century.
Besides being one of the most successful consumer products in decades, the iPod has changed our behavior and even our society. It has transformed Apple from a computer company into a consumer electronics giant. It has remolded the music business, altering not only the means of distribution but even the ways in which people enjoy and think about music. Its ubiquity and its universally acknowledged coolness have made it a symbol for the digital age itself, with commentators remarking on "the iPod generation." Now the iPod is beginning to transform the broadcast industry, too, as podcasting becomes a way to access radio and television programming. Meanwhile millions of Podheads obsess about their gizmo, reveling in the personal soundtrack it offers them, basking in the social cachet it lends them, even wondering whether the device itself has its own musical preferences.
Steven Levy, the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and a longtime Apple watcher, is the ideal writer to tell the iPod's tale. He has had access to all the key players in the iPod story, including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom Levy has known for over twenty years. Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn't get it right, and how Jobs was able to convince the bosses at the big record labels to license their music for Apple's groundbreaking iTunes Store. (We even learn why the iPod is white.) Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod's click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues -- technical, legal, social, and musical -- that the iPod raises.
Borrowing one of the definitive qualities of the iPod itself, The Perfect Thing shuffles the book format. Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod. The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. "Shuffle" is a hallmark of the digital age -- and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era.
Customer Reviews:
An intriguing read on iPod and its impact .......2007-06-27
Why do people ask for an iPod when they want an MP3 player? Other players hold as many or more songs, and play them just as well. Owning an iPod is more about music than about keeping up with the latest trends. That is why the iPod still holds the top spot in MP3 player sales. Author Steven Levy explores how the iPod came to be and how it earned its status as a cultural icon. Even the book's iPod-looking cover could evoke emotion from an iPod fan. We recommend this book to iPod lovers who will relish its story. Businesspeople, trend spotters and marketers also will gain insight into the way Apple made millions from selling music, machines and coolness.
Insightful and Absorbing Read on iPods, Apple, Innovation and Marketing.......2007-05-31
The iPod has that certain something that leads its users to adore it like nothing before. People want nothing but an iPod. No substitutes even when the non-iPod has more memory, comes in your favorite color and costs over $100 less than an iPod. So how did the iPod earn this special treatment and the ability to compel people to say, "Cool" when they hold one?
A book cover in the disguise of an iPod, albeit on paper, still manages to ooze coolness though it isn't the real thing. Scroll your finger over the cover's button and scroll wheel and you can feel the smooth button extend slightly above the scroll wheel. Apple has established itself as a company that goes all out when creating a product, but there's much more to the iPod story than people realize. The Perfect Thing explores many aspects of the story.
While reading The Perfect Thing, I couldn't help but order an iPod Nano straight from Apple's Web site complete with my name engraved on its beautiful red skin -- as a replacement for my stolen iPod video. I also bought a cover to protect the iPod as I don't like it when my gadgets get marks on them. But then I reached the part where Steve Jobs took offense to seeing Levy's iPod covered up. Because of that, the beautiful red color and the way the aluminum felt -- I took off the cover for good.
The chapters, like iPod's shuffle feature, are independent and don't go in a specific order except the first chapter. I don't know if that's true, as I haven't seen another hard copy of the book.
"Perfect," goes behind the scenes of iPod's launch in October 2001, not the greatest timing after 9/11. "Download" covers the revolution of downloading and digitizing music including codec, MP3s, WinAmp, Napster and the record companies suing. "What makes an item cool?" sets the tone for the chapter titled, "Cool." Can there be a formula for coolness? This chapter teaches great marketing lessons from Apple's design, packaging and advertising of the iPod.
"Origin" returns to the iPod's roots on its development and the things that came before iPod that affected the iPod's creation. There's a reason we use the word podcast instead of audiocasts when referring to audio feeds. "Podcast" visits the formation of citizen broadcasting from CB radio to podcasting.
People judge each other by the clothing they wear, they do the same by the playlists they carry in their iPods as "Identity" delves into the fashion statement of playlists. No one expected Apple to make a comeback, not even when Steve Jobs returned in 2000, and "Apple" touches upon the comeback and how Apple surpassed the market's expectations. The iPod attracts thieves and the earbuds send a message to the public "to leave me alone" as the "Personal" chapter looks back at the Sony Walkman, the white earbuds, hearing loss and how users personalize their iPods.
The shuffle feature scrambles music hence the name for the cheapest and smallest iPod Shuffle. The feature is simple, yet the chapter on "Shuffle" offers fascinating insight into the possibility of a conspiracy behind the shuffle formula. Some people swear that some songs, artists and whatnot get more attention than others do. But everyone at Apple, including the engineers, says shuffle works randomly. Intriguing stuff anyway.
Marketers, iPod lovers, Apple lovers, Mac lovers, business people, technology people, gadget people. The book will appeal to all of them. After all, Levy writes, "The iPod is a pebble with tsunami-sized cultural ripples."
Cool Device: search wheel, no on switch, the LCD, video, iPhones, fireware, g4, and iTune.......2007-03-08
1. iPod will encourage the creation of virtual bookselves: music, movies, and books.
2. When Apple leaders began working on the iPod they saw the project as an enhancement of the Macintosh computer. Apples G4 cube significant reduced the bulky space requirements for desktop computers.
3. iPod changed Apple from a computer company to a consumer electronics company in four years and represented 60 percent of the income from the music related business.
4. Type "iPod" in google and you'll get a half a billion hits
5. By the end of 2005, Apple had sold 42 million iPods from $99 to $599 and had capture 75% market share; iTunes sold more than a billion songs at 99 cents, representing 85 percent of all legal downloads. Apple's stock had increased 700 percent.
6. When people encounter a machine that is easy and fun to use, they like it. The cool factor. IPod is cool.
7. iPod's success is the result of an uncanny alignment of technology, design, culture, and media thrust in the center of the digital age. Ipod makes a dull day come alive.
8. iPod initial capacity astounded consumer providing a 1,000 songs in the pocket.
9. Steve Jobs initial reaction to iPod was, "I haven't picked up any MP3 player that has made me go, `Wow, okay, I want to carry this everywhere I go. OK'. Everyone is going to want to have one of these."
10. Apple dispatched a pair of couier too hand delivered the iPod to a few select technical writers. On launch day the Apple couriers reached Newsweek.
11. Jobs relied on Firewire transfer speeds to make iPod feasible. There were seven and half million Mac users with firewire. Jobs said, "iPod will be a landmark product." Five to six minutes to rip a CD into iTunes and a few seconds to load to load an albums worth of songs into the iPod.
12. Playlist represent the character of the listener. We seem to be immersed in an age of musical voyeurism and musical exhibitionism.
13. Status comes from cool music libraries. "Such libraries distinguish one as a thinking person, a discerning individualist, a lover of fun, a blender of high and low culture, and a bird dog in unearthing undiscovered gems."
14. Learning through accumulation: "The ability to easily compile one's favorite songs in one place may make it easier to accumulate a collection of dazzling obscurities but also increase the capability of those libraries that are less than stellar."
15. At iPod's download headquarters, you can find more than a hundred celebrity playlists.
16. Reformulation: iPod circular scroll wheel search interface allowed searching of large lists, fast. It made the complicated digital music collection, easy.
17. iTunes software from Macintosh was built into iPod. IPod would sync effortlessly with a music library. "It was a recipe for something, well, perfect."
18. Cool is a term that is strong linked to iPod. Levy tells Bill Gates Tablet PC, Microsoft pen-based laptop, in spite of the technical virtuosity of many brilliant people was not cool. Gates replied, "It sounds to me like you're saying volume equals cool." Levy replied, "Profits are not necessarily tied to coolness". Gates challenged Levy to come up with an example of something cool that didn't sell well. Gates said, "In a sense, to be cool, you've got to have high market share. High market share is something that comes after hard work and making the hard decisions." Levy previously had showed Gates the iPod and Gates at the time thought the iPod would sale, but Gates tells Levy, "I knew the music player devices would sell well. And I knew as soon as they got this high volume, you would declare it cool. As night follows day."
19. iPod gives you a feeling your in the tribe.
Levy Nails It!.......2007-01-25
I didn't hold out much hope for Levy's latest effort, "The Perfect Thing". I had found his last Apple-based effort, "Insanely Great", to be decidedly less than, and strongly suspected this would be nothing more than a shallow Apple PR effort. How very wrong I was - forgive me Steven.
In what I think is his most effective, tightly written book to date, Levy combines a strongly personal narrative with great bits about the history of music media. Along the way he offers up a pretty darned comprehensive view of the various facets of the wide and complex subject of digital music - while at the same time painting a vivid, yet objective portrait of the iPod. I actually had to restrain myself from popping over to the nearest Best Buy and shelling out money I don't have to spend on one.
His gimmicky-sounding "shuffle" of the chapters (there are several editions of the book with the chapters in differing order, in a nod to the iPod's shuffle feature) did not become a distraction or a turn-off like I'd feared - although, I can't say it added much. I was struck, however, by how smoothly the book flowed despite the shuffle - which simply emphasized to me how well written the various essay-style chapters were.
I'll freely admit that I'm a big (BIG) Levy fan - but please don't let that fact turn you off. I simply can't find a weak spot in the whole package - and I'm typically pretty hard to please. This is really a remarkable book, that I strongly recommend.
Far From Perfect (But Still Pretty Good).......2007-01-17
People looked at me in a strange way when I told them I was reading a 300-page book about the iPod. "No, seriously. It's a whole book about the iPod!" Steven Levy, author of The Perfect Thing is senior editor and chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and the author of five previous books. Levy is a technophile and over the course of his career has seen many products, many technologies, come and go. But I doubt any new product has aroused his interest like the iPod. Levy is absolutely in love with the iPod and with Steve Jobs, the man responsible for overseeing its creation. This book often reads like a hagiography of the man and his little technological marvel.
Interestingly, the book is "shuffled" so that different copies of the book will have the chapters in different order. While this is a neat idea, and a unique one that fits well with one of the iPod's most popular features, it means that there is no flow from chapter-to-chapter and also that there is some repetition. I can only imagine the logistical nightmare this represented for those who had to edit and proof the book!
In some ways it seems silly to write a biography of the iPod since it is, after all, only five years old (having released on October 23, 2001). It seems akin to writing a biography of an actress like Dakota Fanning. Sure she's a fantastic little actress, is highly sought after in Hollywood, and has already made her mark in Tinseltown (and we loved her in Charlotte's Web), but the fact remains that she is only twelve and her career is only beginning. Surely it would be too easy to write her biography. And surely it is too early to write seriously about the iPod. Then again, the iPod is not going anywhere soon and seems to be gaining both acceptance and prominence so perhaps a book is in order.
Despite displaying more than a little bias (how is this for hyperbole?: "The iPod nano was so beautiful that it seemed to have dropped down from some vastly advanced alien civilization. It had the breathtaking compactness of a lustrous Oriental artifact. It wasn't really much bigger than a large mint left on your pillow at a fine hotel.") this is an interesting and even an important book. The iPod is a significant device that has been accepted and embraced by countless millions of people. It may well come to define a whole generation. And if not that, it will surely speak volumes about a generation. It also represents a technology that Christians would do well to consider. After all, when we listen to our iPods we tend to tune out the world around us. In some ways I think the iPod is representative of the self-centered, individualistic culture we live in. By parking the little white buds in our ears, we can enter a little world all our own. We can turn off and tune in. We can listen to what we want to hear while ignoring everything around us. We can easily allow this good invention to become destructive to our relationships and even to our faith.
I was disappointed that the author spent the vast majority of the book looking at the past and the present with very little time dedicated to looking to the future and attempting to understand what the iPod's long term effects will be. Maybe a philosopher or historian or sociologist would be more qualified to attempt to predict how the iPod will be remembered ten or a hundred years from now. Is it a piece of technology that will be lost to history or will it be remembered as groundbreaking and as a product that changed the world? In the absence of such analysis, the most interesting chapters are those dealing with the history and development of the iPod. Ones dealing with identity, coolness and the personal nature of the iPod are also well worth reading.
One awfully tedious chapter deals with the "shuffle" feature and whether or not it is truly random (the answer being yes and no - no because computers cannot be truly random because they need to have some kind of a starting point, but yes because the songs are chosen as randomly as is possible). Levy decides, and this is true, I'm sure, that the human mind just doesn't cope well with randomness. Thus when our iPods seem to favor a particular song or artist, it is really just our minds playing tricks on us (which, of course, rings hollow when we hear a song for the third or fourth time in a day!).
Despite a few less-than-stellar chapters which seemed to be little more than filler, this was a valuable read as I sought to understand the iPod generation. The Perfect Thing is far from a perfect book (you probably saw that line coming!). Still, it is interesting enough for the most part and raises some interesting questions and concerns. At the very least it helped me understand the incredible, growing phenomenon that is the iPod.
Average customer rating:
- Future Schlock
- N-Geners are Heroes
- A slanted perspective on it...
- Best of the best.
- Nothing New
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Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation
Don Tapscott
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Being Digital
ASIN: 0070633614 |
Amazon.com
Don Tapscott, author of The Digital Economy, turns his attention to the way young people--surrounded by high-tech toys and tools from birth--will likely affect the future. In Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, Tapscott parlays some 300 interviews into predictions on how today's 2- to 22-year-olds might reshape society. His observations about this enormously influential population, which will total 88 million in North America alone by the year 2000, range from the kind of employees they may eventually be to how they could be reached by marketers.
Book Description
The first generation to grow up digital has arrived, and they are transforming the way we work, play, and communicate. In Growing Up Digital, bestselling author Don Tapscott profiles this net generation and how its use of digital technology reshaping the way society and individuals interact. Unlike the Baby Boomers who grew up with the passive medium of television, children today, in ever-growing numbers, are embracing interactive media such as the Internet, CD-ROM, and video games. Growing Up Digital highlights how young people-empowered by digital media-learn, work, play, communicate, and shop differently than their boomer parents. It examines what this means for the whole spectrum of society, including our education system, the government, and economy. Taken together, Growing Up Digital offers an overview of the Net Generation's fearless overhaul of our culture; and it gives the members of this generation-and everyone affected by their use of new media-a chance to anticipate and act on what lies ahead.
Download Description
Tapscott, who coined the term "Net Generation," profiles this new group and tells how its use of digital technology is reshaping the way society and individuals interact. 15 illustrations. 256 pp. $75,000 marketing. 100,000 print. (Business)
Customer Reviews:
Future Schlock.......2006-12-04
As a long-time net user AND baby boomer, I found much of what Tapscott says completely wrong, be it his unscientific conclusions regarding the so-called "N-Gen" (his own invention, which I find so distasteful and misleading that I'll not use it from now on), his predictions for the future, or his dim view of the technological abilities and intelligence of the boomers.
For example:
1. He assumes that boomers will always remain behind the young when it comes to using the net. There is endless talk of the growing percentage of youthful net users, while ignoring (and thereby discounting) any corresponding growth in boomers using it. He mentions more than once that because youth "assimilated" the net whereas boomers had to learn to use it, youth has an advantage in that respect. (I suppose that some kid raised in a car and thereby "assimilating" how to drive would have a great advantage over all of us dummies who had to learn by taking driver's ed, too.) Now, I don't know how technologically adept or otherwise he might be, and some allowance must be made for the time the book was written (1998), but nowadays I've got news for him: It ain't that hard!!!
2. He stereotypes boomers as being one-dimensional and ignorant; only youth is imaginative, unselfish, open-minded and resourceful. He predicts either a terrible clash between the generations or (in the unlikely event that the boomers wake up in time to cede control to youth) something of a utopia run by the young. It's funny, but a lot of people from that generation that I've encountered hardly fit that profile (and yes, I'm talking about people online)...and I never thought I was all that closed-minded (though I'm sure his advocates would disagree after reading this). Besides, isn't youth traditionally more imaginative, etc., etc.? What proof does he have that this generation won't turn out as all the others have? It's called "growing up." (And I don't mean that it's a 100% good thing!) And he contends that in that generational clash the young will have the advantage, having mastered the greatest tool for mass communication ever: the internet. Evidently the boomers will still be sending telegrams and will thereby be left behind.
3. He mentions that the young have some nebulous advantage in that they espouse so many different points of view, while boomers (there's that stereotyping again) see everything in black and white (I'm not kidding, that's exactly what he says at one point). Not surprisingly, he offers absolutely no proof for either of those assertions. As someone who's spent most of his life finding shades of gray in everything, I think he's confusing the word "different" with "differing," blissfully ignorant of the possibility that all of those contending viewpoints might result in nothing but cacophony.
4. His insights on the young seem to mostly stem from those kids he's spoken with on less than a handful of websites. Evidently he thinks that these websites provide a completely scientific sampling of that generation. Believe me, there ain't no such animal! I'm happy for those sites in that they were frequented by a very nice segment of the younger generation (though even here, some things--like the continuous protestations of teenage males that they would never, ever even think about visiting a porn site--seem somewhat disingenuous, to say the least), but I've been to many sites and participated with many from that generation who, I assure you, were hardly the little angels he's making everyone out to be (and I'm certainly not saying they're all bad, either...but these are rather sweeping generalizations, proof that HE thinks in black and white, anyway).
5. His usual, completely unscientific, means of arriving at a proof of one of his theories is to first introduce it, then to provide some truly scientific though barely related evidence (a chart that shows internet growth or something), and finally to submit a few quotes from his kids to bolster his standpoint. None of this, of course, proves anything, and I'm quite certain that anyone with a professional background in statistical analysis could easily rip his logic to shreds.
6. He sees the net as the road to the truth, and the new generation as particularly discerning of it. Yet everyday I find another hoax in my email, many of them passed on to me by gullible youngsters.
All of which amounts to his own utopian view of youth, a somewhat curmudgeonly distaste for the opinions and abilities of the boomers, and a blatant force-fitting of his transparent opinions (and, in the end, that's all they are) upon the actual, both slimly provided and barely relevant, facts.
It doesn't surprise me at all that younger people have given the book so many positive opinions on here; they're being told what they want to hear. What does surprise me is how few people have seen how poorly constructed his arguments are (regardless of how true or false his conclusions may be). What does that say about the ability of this new generation to discern the truth with a critical eye?
If the proof is in the pudding, keep in mind the year this was published: 1998. That was almost a decade ago (as I write this), long enough for a good part of that generation to come of age, long enough to begin to see some of his sweeping changes, long enough for many of his predictions to have come true. Where are they? People are talking about the book on here as if it were just published and he's showing us the world as it will be 10 years from now. He IS!...only that "10 years from now" is NOW!
N-Geners are Heroes.......2004-02-17
This book will definitely appeal to young people. The author creates the term 'N-Generation' obstensibly because Generation-Y was owned by another author. The book creates a super youth culture that is underappreciated and misunderstood. If you want to write a book that will appeal to young people and get a good rating on the college campus ... just trash the previous generation and the youth will scramble on board the turnip cart. This book does a disservice to youth and to the previous generation by promoting stereotypes, underscoring obscure opinions, and understating the contributions made by the Boomers.
The author should keep in mind that the N-geners didn't create computers and for the most part, they are clueless when it comes to coding. They do not qualify as experts ... not by a long shot. To encourage youth today to believe that they are experts in computers ... and the people who designed them are not ... is setting them up for real disappointment.
The author's opinions on TV and media are also absurd. He creates a model in which the state of everything that is not N-Gen is fixed and unchanging ... while the opposite is true for his heroes. Perhaps the most convincing argument that can be made against this author's opinions is that a good deal of his computer-based examples are already 'off-the-air'. Moreover, his characterization of the pre-web media era as being fearful of the new technology is way off base ... and today's integration of technologies is proof of this.
The book was written to promote sales rather than good, usable, and thoughtful ideas. Young people will adore this author ... not because he makes a good case ... but because he writes what they want to hear ... and makes them feel the way they want to feel ... like heroes.
A slanted perspective on it..........2003-09-03
When I first read it years ago, and rereading it today, I find a lot in this book that is insightful and, moreso, true. The author gives a look into the trends, ways, and lives of the N-Gen that is intriguing. Being one of this generation, it is like looking into my past and recalling my childhood.
Best of the best........2003-01-02
This is absolutely one of the best researched, most interesting, well written, and easy to read books on this topic. A must read for educators of Info-Age youngsters. It will enlighten the pre- Info-Age generations to a whole new world and way of thinking!
Nothing New.......2002-03-10
Maybe my expectations were too high based on the reviews. I found most of the information in this book to be news items. Also, anyone that follows technology in the news will not find much insight into this book. The book is an overview of how the younger generation uses technology in their social lives, play and work. If you are not very familiar with the internet and don't watch the news this book would be worthwhile. However, anyone who uses the internet and keeps up on the news won't get much out of it.
Book Description
Marketing in the early 21st century is dominated by two approaches, neither of which is visible to the naked eye: the use of data to define and shape human affairs into machine-readable form and the effort to create and sustain ongoing two-way relationships with customers. The former is one way human life is being subjugated to the regime of the machine; the latter is one way the individual may one day emerge from within the datascape. A post-modern perspective is used to reveal both the "kaleidoroscope" of data and the "raw immaterials" of relationships in two companion essays.
Customer Reviews:
Rebecca Nailed It.......2007-03-18
Rebecca's review is spot-on. I could read this book several times and get something new out of it each time. Ellis succinctly captures the changes in consumer-marketer interaction and the new 21st century value exchange and does a great job of putting it in historical and philosophical context.
Big Thoughts on Marketing .......2007-03-09
Most books on business (particularly those by self-proclaimed "gurus") seize on a single idea. With terrier-like tenacity they explain it, illustrate it, present case studies of it, then explain it yet again, until a readers feels she's entered some sort of textual version of "Groundhog's Day."
"Marketing in the In-Between," takes the opposite approach. It packs so many clusters of thought, ideas, revelations and connections on every page, the reader will need to repeatedly dip in to glean all the thoughts. It challenges readers to truly ponder and to question the basic precepts and practices upon which marketing is based.
Book Description
This eye-opening, fact-filled book profiles the rise of the Net Generation, which is using digital technology to change the way individuals and society interact. Essential reading for parents, teachers, policy makers, marketers, business leaders, social activists, and others, Growing Up Digital makes a compelling distinction between the baby boomersÕ passive medium of television and the explosion of interactive digital media, sparked by the computer and the Internet. Tapscott shows how children, empowered by new technology, are taking the reigns from their boomer parents and making inroads into all areas of society, including our education system, the government, and economy. The result is a timely, revealing look at our digital future that kids and their parents will find both fascinating and instructive.
Download Description
Cyberguru and bestselling author Don Tapscott is a pioneer on the frontlines of the information superhighway.
Customer Reviews:
Almost unreadable...a quaint artifact from an earlier time.......2003-09-16
There were many annoying things about this book. Perhaps most annoying is that he never really talks about economies, and just blathers about gee-whiz technology in a rapid fire manner. He doesn't really penetrate much into the technology, nor bothers to say how it is really going to affect economies. The book is full of pre-9/11, pre-internet bubble euphoria, and never spends any time fully exploring its interesting premise.
Certain the internet and communication technologies will effect the economy, and anyone trying to get any real insight here, beyond that it will make the world a better place and lots of people are going to make more money (stated over and over again), will be greatly let down.
The effects of technology on economies is better described elsewhere, such as "The Innovator's Dilemma" and other books that understand both economics and the relevant technology, something a "visionary" such as Tapscott has no time for.
Beyond providing insight into internet/technology mania of the mid to late 90's, I see no reason to invest time to read this book.
New Economy Genre.......2002-12-30
Tapscott helped create the genre of new economy books with this effort. If he did not coin the term new economy he certainly helped to popularize it. Tapscott is an internationally sought after consultant, writer, and speaker on the subject of information technology. Technology related issues of the new economy are prominently featured in this book. Tapscott's clarity and broad domain expertise make The Digital Economy an extremely informative read.
He was one of the first authors to introduce the idea that communications, computing, and content were all converging into new media. His business transformation through new media model wherein the effective individual leads to, the high performance team which leads to, the integrated enterprise which leads to, the extended enterprise which leads to, the inter-networked business which leads to ..., clearly anticipated the current eBusiness model rage, where the integration/collapsing of the supply chain is the road to competitive advantage.
Even though (at the moment) New Economy thinking has fallen out of favor, Don will be proven correct on many fronts and this book will stand out as one of the most relevant portraits of this (still) emerging landscape.
To understand how Digital Economy is transforming businesses.......2002-07-05
Even if the book was written in the mid 90 it still gives the bases to understand how Digital Economy is transforming our businesses and lives. Don Tapscott is clearly explaining that after Total Quality Management TQM, Business Processes Reengineering BPR we enter a new era where we will be asked to literally transform our businesses and lives.
The convergence of computing, telecommunications and content is a real revolution, giving access to a networked economy working in real time and without knowing distances. This means that boundaries are exploding. Learning is becoming a continuous process and part of our day to day work it is why Digital Economy is often called Knowledge Economy. Customer is integrated in the production process and organizations are moving from a vertical integration to extended networks including customers, suppliers and more and more often competitors. We are far from the industrial hierarchical organizations where we are working now.
Don Tapscott is helping us to understand the New Economy 12 themes supported by the 10 technological shifts and the move from individual effectiveness to the internetworked businesses through high performance teams, integrated organizations and extended enterprises. But finally he is convincing us that as part of an internetworked leadership, we are collectively responsible to achieve the transformation of our businesses for a better life promised by the New interactive Economy.
Don Tapscott is also helping us to evaluate impact of the Digital Economy on our business work, on our education systems, and on our governments. The interactivity is transforming the media industry and asking a new leadership for our businesses.
Don Tapscott doesn't forget to discuss the peril of the Digital Economy from privacy protection to electronic democracy.
Digital Economy is a real knowledge spring where you come back regularly to improve your understanding of the surrounding growing New Economy.
Fundamental reading.......2001-11-06
Fundamental book that reveals everyday changes in our life. Must reading for everyone who wants not to be left out.
A Good Read!.......2001-05-30
Don Tapscott provides an overview of the way the digitalization of information is transforming the economy and projects the likely changes ahead from his perspective in 1996. The book suggests ways to exercise leadership effectively in this transformed, networked world. However, since this thoughtful, well-organized book was written several years ago, it is mainly of historical interest now, because of the rapid changes in the digital world. Still, it is useful to apply some of the themes Tapscott developed when you consider how the digital economy is continuing to evolve. ...recommend this well-written book for a general audience as well as executives and managers who are interested in the unfolding of the new economy.
Book Description
We have all been to Web sites that welcome us by name, offering us discounts, deals, or special access to content. For the most part, it feels good to be wanted--to be valued as a customer. But if we thought about it, we might realize that we've paid for this special status by turning over personal information to a company's database. And we might wonder whether other customers get the same deals we get, or something even better. We might even feel stirrings of resentment toward customers more valued than we are. In Niche Envy, Joseph Turow examines the emergence of databases as marketing tools and the implications this may have for media, advertising, and society. If the new goal of marketing is to customize commercial announcements according to a buyer's preferences and spending history--or even by race, gender, and political opinions--what does this mean for the twentieth-century tradition of equal access to product information, and how does it affect civic life?
Turow shows that these marketing techniques are not wholly new; they have roots in direct marketing and product placement, widely used decades ago and recently revived and reimagined by advertisers as part of "customer relationship management" (known popularly as CRM). He traces the transformation of marketing techniques online, on television, and in retail stores. And he describes public reaction against database marketing--pop-up blockers, spam filters, commercial-skipping video recorders, and other ad-evasion methods. Polls show that the public is nervous about giving up personal data. Meanwhile, companies try to persuade the most desirable customers to trust them with their information in return for benefits. Niche Envy tracks the marketing logic that got us to this uneasy impasse.
Customer Reviews:
Insights Into The Privacy-Marketing Axis.......2006-09-20
A provocative look at how the technologies of the Internet are being used as a testbed for the next generation of marketing messages, migrating away from the mass market model toward a model of market segmentation and discrimination. Building upon research that he and others have been conducting at UPenn's Annenberg Center, Turow describes how advertising has turned from mass promotion toward the strategies of direct marketing, product placement and public relations, enabled by new media and information technologies and justified by the industry's sense that these technologies have overly empowered the consumer to avoid their conventional messages. In the face of DVRs, remote controls, etc., marketers have decided that the tying of direct marketing messages to increasingly intrusive data collecting and mining methods is the wave of the future. Moreover, this is not an Internet-only problem. Turow points out that these technique are only being tested on the Internet; they are migrating to (digital) television and conventional retail outlets.
Turow suggests that all this really will lead to is a kind of deception death spiral --- consumers will lie about their personal information to gain access to marketing offers that they would otherwise not get (frequent flier programs, for example) while marketers will become increasingly intrusive as they seek the "truth" about their customers.
The book's weaknesses emerge in the closing chapter, where Turow tries to outline a set of policy objectives to remedy this problem. Unfortunately, his primary instruments are those of consumer education and media labeling; good ideas, but probably unworkable in this environment. The resolution of this problem lies deeper than just refining the mechanisms and instruments of marketing. We have to confront some of the fundamental inconsistencies in our notions of the role of media and information, and in our economic models for sustaining them.
Despite the weaknesses of his remedies, overall this is a vitally important look at what's going on "behind the curtain" of our evolving retail and media environments, and I highly recommend it.
Book Description
Government information systems are big business (costing over 1 per cent of GDP a year). They are critical to all aspects of public policy and governmental operations. Governments spend billions on them - for instance, the UK alone commits L14 billion a year to public sector IT operations. Yet governments do not generally develop or run their own systems, instead relying on private sector computer services providers to run large, long-run contracts to provide IT. Some of the biggest companies in the world (IBM, EDS, Lockheed Martin, etc) have made this a core market. The book shows how governments in some countries (the USA, Canada and Netherlands) have maintained much more effective policies than others (in the UK, Japan and Australia). It shows how public managers need to retain and develop their own IT expertise and to carefully maintain well-contested markets if they are to deliver value for money in their dealings with the very powerful global IT industry. This book describes how a critical aspect of the modern state is managed, or in some cases mismanaged. It will be vital reading for public managers, IT professionals, and business executives alike, as well as for students of modern government, business, and information studies.
Book Description
Everybody knows that digital technology has revolutionized our economy and our lifestyles. But how many of us really understand the drivers behind the technology - the significance of going digital; the miniaturization of circuit boards; the role of venture capital in financing the revolution; the importance of research and development? How many of us understand what it takes to make money from innovative technologies? Should we worry about manufacturing going offshore? What is the role of India and China in the digital economy? Drawing on a lifetime's experience in the industry, as an engineer, a senior manager and as a partner in a venture capital firm, Henry Kressel offers an expert personalized answer to all these questions. He explains how the technology works, why it matters, how it is financed and what the key lessons are for public policy.
Customer Reviews:
ROADMAP TO INNOVATION.......2007-06-27
Dr. Henry Kressel's "Competing for the Future" is a must-read for anyone responsible on any level for technological innovation. Here, captured in one book, is the innovation roadmap as only Dr. Kressel with his wealth of experience and obvious keen intellect could construct. The book transcends industries as it exposes the illusive innovative process critical to creating not only the next generation, but new generations, of products based on technology leaps.
The innovation process is complex, and in a technology driven organiztion, it must be endemic, shared across all functions. "Competing for the Future" helps us understand that dynamic through powerful examples over the years. As such, it's an inspiring and exhilerating read for cross funtional teams and technology leaders across the entire spectrum of industry. Dr. Kressel started out in electronics and my backround has been in pharmaceutical research, but the principles are the same and that's what makes Dr. Kressel's book such a valuable read.
A fascinating journey through the digital world.......2007-06-24
In Competing for the Future, Dr. Henry Kressel takes us through a fascinating journey, from the invention of a few basic digital technologies to the birth and growth of the digital age.
As a starting point, Dr. kressel introduces us to semiconductor technologies and devices. It takes an exceptional mastery of the field to summarize the physical basis of digital electronics in a few key concepts, and Dr. Kressel, a physicist by training, manages that feat. He goes beyond the technologies themselves and expands on the history of their development; how and why they came about. With this foundation in place, Dr. Kressel takes us to the next leg of the journey, namely how these new electronics enabled the development of new computing, networking and communications systems.
How did these revolutionary technologies turn into new industries? This is the subject of the second half of the book, in which the author discusses the industrialization and globalization of R&D, the development of new manufacturing processes and finally, venture capital financing of product launches and company build-ups.
Competing for the Future exposes the complexity of the overall innovation process. Dr. Kressel writes with the wisdom, insight and experience of someone who not only took part in, but was very successful at, all the steps of that process. His experiences as a physicist, manufacturing manager, leader of an R&D organization and venture capitalist, give him a very clear overall picture and a unique ability to show how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
Competing for the Future provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the innovation process, and of the various forces shaping the digital age.
Innovation: The Way it Really Works.......2007-06-14
"Competing for the Future" is a thought provoking journey through digital electronics starting with the transistor and laser, proceeding through computers, fiber optics and the internet, and ending with a prescription for the future prosperity of the United States that includes technology innovation, risk capital and advanced manufacturing. It is fascinating as Dr. Kressel examines the interactions between the technological innovations themselves, the source of the R&D as it moved from US industrial labs to world-wide start-ups, the funding of the R&D as it evolved in parallel, the tight coupling between R&D and advanced manufacturing, and the role of governments.
Dr. Kressel provides a unique perspective because he is walking this road. He helped create the digital electronics age while he was at RCA Labs with his pioneering work in lasers. After a successful career there, he moved to Warburg Pincus where he funded many of today's successful digital electronics startups. His hands-on experience and lively anecdotes bring the book to life.
This book is "required reading" for anyone who wants to understand the future of hi-tech innovation and what that future might hold for the United States and for the world.
Data Driven Analysis of Disruptive Technologies and Financial Innovation.......2007-05-05
In the interest of full disclosure, I have had the opportunity to work with Dr Henry Kressel on a variety of Warburg Pincus engagements since 1990. I attended MIT from 1964-1972, and learned first hand how many companies were started by MIT alums, such as Bose (by Amar Bose), Analog Devices (by Ray Stata), and DEC (by Ken Olsen), as well as seeing my classmate Bob Metcalfe create the most widely used network technology today, Ethernet (akin to the electrical power outlet), and then 3Com. While at Bell Laboratories, I saw the advent of UNIX, the rise of DARPANet leading to the network of networks or Internet, the advent of local area networks (I represented ATT on Project 802 Local Area Network Standards) which permitted networks of computers to share printers, storage, and network access as if they were a single computer. I was involved with the original funding of Ciena, the first commercially successful optical transmission equipment vendor, with moving Uniphase into telecomms to create JDSUniphase as a vendor of optical components and modules, and Covad, one of the first data only Competitive Local Exchange Carriers. With that as backdrop, I found the book to be full of insights, driven by excellent data analysis: good analysis leads to surprising insights, and I found many of them throughout.
The discussion of financial innovation and the mechanisms to commercialize the technical innovations is in my view without equal and is worth the entire book (and the other sections are outstanding!): the issues are precisely delimited, the creation of lega structures to facilitate commercialization, to align the interests of customers, investors, and companies, indeed the term venture capital was created because no bank would lend money to a business with no customers or revenues yet there was a clear need for such funding and the financial payoffs could be huge. This chapter merits particularly detailed rereading to understand the terse lessons dispensed here.
The sections on manufacturing restructuring, globalization, governmental oversight, and industry structure take us back to one fundamental truth: there are two major businesses, transportation and communication, and the communication business is still undergoing an incredible revolution today and for the next twenty odd years (at which point biotech and materials science advances will be in full flower).
The Digital Revolution.......2007-04-25
Dr Kressel has captured the disruptions in society caused by fundamental shifts in the technology base dating from 1948 with the invention of the transistor and culminating in the recent emergence of IP networks as the dominant technological force behind our data and communications network. The early chapters deal with the history and impact of these important technologies and for those readers with a need to understand these technologies in greater detail, appendices are provided that take those interested into a journey of discovery into the important fundamental technology discontinuities such as Integrated Circuits, their scalability and limits, logic gates, semiconductor memories, semiconductor lasers and LEDs, photodetectors, fiber optics, and LCD displays which are used throughout the networks of today. These early parts of the book also point out the importance of the protocols that are used to transport data as well as the underpinning software methods that are used to build the networks without which engineers would not have been able to build today's Internet. Again, appendices are provided on these topics for the enquiring reader.
The book takes the reader through the early technology shifts that have enabled the knowledge economy and the author has mapped these changes to very basic but nonetheless revolutionary shifts in software, semiconductors, wireless and fiber optics. These dislocations taken together with the emergence of the venture capital industry and the entrepreneurial spirit fostered in the technology centers in Silicon valley and elsewhere, provided the mix for the revolutionary data networks to emerge which would have far reaching societal changes in later years. The book describes this journey and along the way the author draws our attention to the demise of the industrial central laboratories that nurtured the early inventions that gave birth to these technology dislocations and whose gradual disappearance in the 1960s and 1970s released large numbers of very bright scientists and engineers into both government laboratories and most importantly, small business start-ups. These in turn provided the incubators that gave birth to such technology behemoths as DEC, Intel and others.
Dr Kressel then shows us that the improvements in the secondary education system in the United States fuelled these new companies and together with significant venture capital, nurtured a large number of new companies. These companies had the heft to eventually produce the high performance optical systems, computers and servers necessary to populate early distributed data networks. These were born out of US government-sponsored activities to devise resilient data networks that could survive potential threats emerging from the Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s. These networks eventually were to become the Internet, a pervasive network that now has affected us all and which provides us with the infrastructure today to instantly communicate on a global scale and to provide an easily searchable database that enriches both our work and home lives. The author shows how the technology has disrupted many industries and has resulted in the loss of many companies who have not been able to respond to change in a timely fashion. He demonstrates that the Internet has given birth to countless companies that capitalize on the network to provide new services and industries but also points out that it also threatens today's telecommunication companies since the high available bandwidth agnostic to the flow of voice, data and video provides new opportunities for a new breed of service providers to bypass the legacy voice networks.
These technology shifts also bring about the emergence of knowledge and capability in other parts of the world and provide the infrastructure to transfer the manufacture of these key products and in some cases, their design. This in turn could threaten the developed economies by hollowing-out the industrial sector of these developed nations and stimulating the economies of the developing nations, which now can service their own needs. Dr Kressel concludes by pointing out that developed economies must develop internal policies that protect their important leading products and their manufacture while still providing a competitive framework that fosters new products to renew the cycle.
Book Description
The digital era promises, as did many other technological developments before it, the transformation of society: with the computer, we can transcend time, space, and politics-as-usual. In The Digital Sublime, Vincent Mosco goes beyond the usual stories of technological breakthrough and economic meltdown to explore the myths constructed around the new digital technology and why we feel compelled to believe in them. He tells us that what kept enthusiastic investors in the dotcom era bidding up stocks even after the crash had begun was not willful ignorance of the laws of economics but belief in the myth that cyberspace was opening up a new world.
Myths are not just falsehoods that can be disproved, Mosco points out, but stories that lift us out of the banality of everyday life into the possibility of the sublime. He argues that if we take what we know about cyberspace and situate it within what we know about culture -- specifically the central post-Cold War myths of the end of history, geography, and politics -- we will add to our knowledge about the digital world; we need to see it "with both eyes" -- that is, to understand it both culturally and materially.
After examining the myths of cyberspace and going back in history to look at the similar mythic pronouncements prompted by past technological advances -- the telephone, the radio, and television, among others -- Mosco takes us to Ground Zero. In the final chapter he considers the twin towers of the World Trade Center -- our icons of communication, information, and trade -- and their part in the politics, economics, and myths of cyberspace.
Customer Reviews:
[A] Muddle.......2006-02-15
[A] review is in essence factually devoid of temporal limits. Like eXistenZ, a review is a continuing line extending ad infinitum into eternity.
i) This book does not possess much philosophy; thus not suited
for philosophy.
ii) This book does not possess much ontology; thus not suited
for ontology.
iii) Ergo, this book is philosophically and ontologically a
muddle of asymmetries and nomologics.
iv) Moreover, as a result of this, this asymmetrical,
nomological muddle is as well mirrored in prior reviews.
Mythic/Power.......2004-07-12
The poignancy of Vincent Mosco's Digital Sublime is its in-depth knowledge of the power of myth in investing our everyday lives & technologies with certain cultural meanings and aura. According to Mosco, it is myth, i.e. the aura of myths, which both enthralls and beckons enthusiasts and consumers alike towards new technologies and economies with utopian dreams; that in the end, time and time again, eternally return back to the mundane and the banality of everyday life. For Mosco, it is when these mythic cycles manifest and dissipate, both literally and figuratively, that we as humans begin to realize and understand the power of myth in enshrining our everyday lives and technologies with sacredness. This sacredness is distinctively the product of our human desire to transcend and is an intimate feature of human existence. Enjoy.
WORST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ.......2004-05-16
WORST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ
Prometheus Fired.......2004-04-16
In 'The Digital Sublime', Vincent Mosco presents a delightfully written and wide-ranging look at the rise of cyberspace and the Internet. As a native New Yorker, he brings a unique and informed perspective to the task.
Drawing on the power of 'myth' to both explain the world as it is and create a vision for the future, Mosco provides an engaging historical look at the mythical language of technological progress.
Whether the telegraph, electricity, radio, t.v., cable, or of course the Internet; all were said usher in the 'end' of history, politics, or geography. The rhetoric of promise for each of these developments was heralded in terms that today we find quaint, even amusing. But Mosco shows how all of these echo in the modern myths of cyberspace.
Mosco points out how quickly promises like these collapse into banality; into the routine of everyday "so what?" Only in doing so however, is their social impact the greatest. Electricity may have been hailed with rapturous and magical wonder at first; but it literally had to disappear into the woodwork before it mattered at all.
I won't ruin the last chapter, except to say it makes the previous five indispensable, and vice versa.
Thought-provoking, and laugh out loud funny at times ["you call that jumpy little picture on my desktop a video?"], readers will find it hard to put down.
A treat for those at all familiar with Mosco's academic work, and a wonderful point of entry for those who aren't.
Book Description
There is widespread concern that the explosive growth of the Internet is exacerbating existing inequalities between the information rich and poor. Digital Divide sets out to examine the evidence for access and use of the Internet in 179 nations across the world. A global divide is evident between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent between rich and poor within each nation. And within the online community, evidence for a democratic divide is emerging between those who do and do not use Internet resources to engage, mobilize and participate in public life.
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Books Index
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