James Thornton
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James Thornton |
| Internet Business Consultant |
| About James | Services | Writings | Documentation | Contact Me |
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Books
| Thinking for a Change by John C. Maxwell | |
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Basing his latest book on the theory that "successful people think differently than unsuccessful people," Maxwell (author of bestselling The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and Running with the Giants) guides readers on the journey of mastering "good thinking" to achieve their personal and professional potential. Maintaining an encouraging tone and a down-to-earth writing style honed from his more than 30 previous titles, Maxwell details the impact and practical value of 11 kinds of thinking, including reflective, shared, creative, unselfish and big-picture. Useful tips, like how to discover your gifts through focused thinking, ways to break down complex issues with strategic thinking, and how to understand the value of examining the worst-case scenario through realistic thinking, characterize the author's surprisingly concrete lessons. The step-by-step format is bolstered by inspirational quotes, personal insights and high-profile anecdotal evidence about the likes of Priscilla Presley, George Lucas and George Washington Carver. Ending each chapter, emphasizing the discipline needed to think your way to the top, are exercises designed to evaluate and increase your personal progress in each area. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Posted by James Thornton on April 23, 2006 - Permalink |
| Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, Seventh Edition by M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley | |
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This highly popular book helps readers bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis. It teaches them to respond to alternative points of view and develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject. KEY TOPICS Specific chapter topics include the benefit of asking the right questions, issues and conclusions, reasons, ambiguous words or phrases, value conflicts and assumptions, descriptive assumptions, fallacies in reasoning, measuring the validity the evidence, rival causes, deceptive statistics, omitted significant information, and possible reasonable conclusions. For individuals seeking to improve their critical thinking capabilities.
Posted by James Thornton on September 16, 2005 - Permalink |
| The Quantum World : Quantum Physics for Everyone by Kenneth W. Ford and Paul Hewitt | |
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Albert Einstein's objections to the theoretical underpinnings of quantum physics are usually summed up in his famous quote, "God doesn't play dice." Unfortunately for Einstein, experimental evidence over the past 75 years has consistently showed that the cosmos does indeed play dice. Whereas what we can see obeys laws of certainty (we know where Mars will be in five years or when the next lunar eclipse will occur), the subatomic world obeys laws of probability: you never know for sure where an electron will be at any given moment; worse, it may be in two places at once. In this approachable book for the armchair science buff or student struggling through a physics class, Ford (Quantum Foam), retired director of the American Institute of Physics, offers his services as cicerone through the subatomic world. He explains why quarks are said to have "flavors," and why scientists refer to "strange" and "charm" quarks and their being red, blue or green. Ford provides readers with a brief but adequate history of the early development of quantum theory and introduces the present-day scientists who use multimillion-dollar machines to detect particles that pop in and out of existence in less than the blink of an eye. If readers blink, they might miss the author's mention of string theory, which deserves more discussion than it receives here. Even scientists never really understand the quantum world, but this book will help readers wrap their minds around the paradoxical concepts of how the building blocks of existence lead a strange, if not charmed, life. 33 photos, 52 line illus., 6 tables. Copyright ﾩ Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Posted by James Thornton on September 16, 2005 - Permalink |
| The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene | |
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As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed. Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.
Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we seeﾅlike an ant walking along a lily padﾅwe could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space." For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird." In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley
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| Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner | |
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Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| Critical Thinking: An Introduction by Alec Fisher | |
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In this book, Alec Fisher aims to teach directly an important range of thinking skills. The skills are fundamental critical (and creative) thinking skills, and they are taught in a way which expressly aims to facilitate their transfer to other subjects and other contexts. The method is to use 'thinking maps' which help improve thinking by asking key questions of students when they are faced with different types of problems. Alec Fisher explains the language of reasoning, how to understand different kinds of arguments and how to ask the right question. Other topics include: different patterns of reasoning and standards which apply in different contexts, how to clarify and interpret ideas, how to judge the credibility of claims, and how to decide whether a person really justifies their conclusions, given their audience. Particular attention is given to understanding casual explanations and evaluating decisions. THe book includes many examples and exercises which give extensive practice in developing critico-creative thinking skills.
Posted by James Thornton on April 23, 2006 - Permalink |
| Executive Intelligence by Justin Menkes | |
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On the heels of bestsellers about emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences have come titles on moral, cultural, social and visual intelligence. Consultant Menkes introduces the concept of executive intelligence, which he characterizes as "a blend of critical aptitudes that guide an individual's decision-making process and behavioral path." Menkes collects terrific first-person anecdotes of corporate failure and success, but the stories don't necessarily prove what he wants them to. With 20/20 hindsight, he attributes every setbackﾗwhether caused by shortsightedness, venality, stubbornness or simple bad timingﾗto some CEOs "severe lack of Executive Intelligence." And of course, EI gets credit for every decision that happened to pan out. The book's second half convincingly debunks time-honored techniques for assessing executive acumen and abilities; researchers, Menkes argues, "have for too long been enamored with attributes, such as personality and style, that are only tangentially related to how well executives actually do their job." But the author's surprisingly skimpy research doesn't clinch his case for replacing traditional hiring practices with EI-focused interviews. And it doesn't help that Menkes is unclear whether EI is ingrained or learned. Are we stuck with the EI we were born with, or is it something we can work on? If the former, why should general readers worry about it? (Nov.) Copyright ﾩ Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Posted by James Thornton on April 23, 2006 - Permalink |
| On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt | |
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"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit," Harry G. Frankfurt writes, in what must surely be the most eyebrow-raising opener in modern philosophical prose. "Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted." This compact little book, as pungent as the phenomenon it explores, attempts to articulate a theory of this contemporary scourge--what it is, what it does, and why there's so much of it. The result is entertaining and enlightening in almost equal measure. It can't be denied; part of the book's charm is the puerile pleasure of reading classic academic discourse punctuated at regular intervals by the word "bullshit." More pertinent is Frankfurt's focus on intentions--the practice of bullshit, rather than its end result. Bullshitting, as he notes, is not exactly lying, and bullshit remains bullshit whether it's true or false. The difference lies in the bullshitter's complete disregard for whether what he's saying corresponds to facts in the physical world: he "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."
This may sound all too familiar to those of use who still live in the "reality-based community" and must deal with a world convulsed by those who do not. But Frankfurt leaves such political implications to his readers. Instead, he points to one source of bullshit's unprecedented expansion in recent years, the postmodern skepticism of objective truth in favor of sincerity, or as he defines it, staying true to subjective experience. But what makes us think that anything in our nature is more stable or inherent than what lies outside it? Thus, Frankfurt concludes, with an observation as tiny and perfect as the rest of this exquisite book, "sincerity itself is bullshit." --Mary Park
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| Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell | |
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Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.
Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
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| Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte | |
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A short, funny, and enlightening work on how to decipher and deal with the illogical mess served up by the media, office, and your peers.
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatston, M.D. | |
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Despite the glitzy title, this is one of the more appealing diet books among the new "anti-carb" programs. Agatston, a doctor based at Miami Beach's Mt. Sinai Medical Center, found that his patients not only were unable to stay on various popular diets but their cholesterol and blood sugar levels remained dangerously high after trying these plans. The doctor chose to alter his own diet-first avoiding all carbohydrates and fruit and then reintroducing these foods in moderation. Feeling better and losing weight, he then consulted a nutritionist to modify his strategy to devise a sound method for his patients. The South Beach diet begins with a somewhat restrictive two-week program, generally producing a weight loss of from eight to 13 pounds. The initial phase may be difficult for those who crave bread, pasta and fruit. But there are still choices, and snacks (cheese, hummus, vegetables) are a necessary part of the diet. People shouldn't feel hungry on this part of the diet, stresses the author. The second phase offers somewhat more choices, including whole wheat bread and other selected carbohydrates. Agatston advocates combining the "bad" with the "good." For example, take whole wheat bread and dip it into olive oil, rather than using butter. Eat a very small amount of pasta with lots of vegetables, meat and healthy oils. Complete meal plans along with simple recipes comprise roughly half the book. Of course, there's no perfect diet that works for everyone but the enthusiasm of the conversational tone and the inviting manner make the book more appealing than many other diet tomes. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Posted by James Thornton on April 23, 2006 - Permalink |
| Art of Seduction by Robert Greene | |
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Touted as a "handbook on the most subtle and effective form of power" and "an indispensable primer on how to take what you want from whomever you want," this book is more than a little creepy. Following on the heels of his 48 Laws of Power, this book continues Greene's gross exploration of social power, this time in the realm of sexual politics. In Part 1, Greene, again paired with "packager" Joost Elffers (Play with Your Food), offers a straight-faced description of the nine types of seductive character, from the "Ideal Lover" to the "Rake." Elffers's contribution comes in the form of numerous quotes by famous contemporary and historical figures tucked into the side margins. Part 2 examines the process of seduction, subdivided into four phases, with chapter headings such as "Master the Art of Insinuation" and "Isolate the Victim." This book will have real appeal for power mongers, gold diggers, and heartless manipulators everywhere. Books such as Beverley East's Finding Mr. Write (LJ 5/1/00) and Jama Clark's What the Hell Do Women Really Want? (Island Flower, 1997) offer advice on the same subject without the distasteful exploitative emphasis. David Valencia, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Posted by James Thornton on April 23, 2006 - Permalink |
| Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet by Sherry Turkle | |
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Sherry Turkle is rapidly becoming the sociologist of the Internet, and that's beginning to seem like a good thing. While her first outing, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, made groundless assertions and seemed to be carried along more by her affection for certain theories than by a careful look at our current situation, Life on the Screen is a balanced and nuanced look at some of the ways that cyberculture helps us comment upon real life (what the cybercrowd sometimes calls RL). Instead of giving in to any one theory on construction of identity, Turkle looks at the way various netizens have used the Internet, and especially MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), to learn more about the possibilities available in apprehending the world. One of the most interesting sections deals with gender, a topic prone to rash and partisan pronouncements. Taking as her motto William James's maxim "Philosophy is the art of imagining alternatives," Turkle shows how playing with gender in cyberspace can shape a person's real-life understanding of gender. Especially telling are the examples of the man who finds it easier to be assertive when playing a woman, because he believes male assertiveness is now frowned upon while female assertiveness is considered hip, and the woman who has the opposite response, believing that it is easier to be aggressive when she plays a male, because as a woman she would be considered "bitchy." Without taking sides, Turkle points out how both have expanded their emotional range. Other topics, such as artificial life, receive an equally calm and sage response, and the first-person accounts from many Internet users provide compelling reading and good source material for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger | |
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How would you classify a book that begins with the salutation, "People of Earth..."? While the captains of industry might dismiss it as mere science fiction, The Cluetrain Manifesto is definitely of this day and age. Aiming squarely at the solar plexus of corporate America, authors Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger show how the Internet is turning business upside down. They proclaim that, thanks to conversations taking place on Web sites and message boards, and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups. "Markets are conversations," the authors write, and those conversations are "getting smarter faster than most companies." In their view, the lowly customer service rep wields far more power and influence in today's marketplace than the well-oiled front office PR machine.
The Cluetrain Manifesto began as a Web site (www.cluetrain.com) in 1999 when the authors, who have worked variously at IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Linux Journal, and NPR, posted 95 theses that pronounced what they felt was the new reality of the networked marketplace. For example, thesis no. 2: "Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors"; thesis no. 20: "Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them"; thesis no. 62: "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall"; thesis no. 74: "We are immune to advertising. Just forget it." The book enlarges on these themes through seven essays filled with dozens of stories and observations about how business gets done in America and how the Internet will change it all. While Cluetrain will strike many as loud and over the top, the message itself remains quite relevant and unique. This book is for anyone interested in the Internet and e-commerce, and is especially important for those businesses struggling to navigate the topography of the wired marketplace. All aboard!
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| Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini | |
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Arguably the best book ever on what is increasingly becoming the science of persuasion. Whether you're a mere consumer or someone weaving the web of persuasion to urge others to buy or vote for your product, this is an essential book for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing. Recommended.
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene | |
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"Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective," writes Robert Greene. Mastery of one's emotions and the arts of deception and indirection are, he goes on to assert, essential. The 48 laws outlined in this book "have a simple premise: certain actions always increase one's power ... while others decrease it and even ruin us."
The laws cull their principles from many great schemers--and scheming instructors--throughout history, from Sun-Tzu to Talleyrand, from Casanova to con man Yellow Kid Weil. They are straightforward in their amoral simplicity: "Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit," or "Discover each man's thumbscrew." Each chapter provides examples of the consequences of observance or transgression of the law, along with "keys to power," potential "reversals" (where the converse of the law might also be useful), and a single paragraph cleverly laid out to suggest an image (such as the aforementioned thumbscrew); the margins are filled with illustrative quotations. Practitioners of one-upmanship have been given a new, comprehensive training manual, as up-to-date as it is timeless. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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| Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky | |
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An absolutely brilliant analysis of the ways in which individuals and organizations of the media are influenced to shape the social agendas of knowledge and, therefore, belief. Contrary to the popular conception of members of the press as hard-bitten realists doggedly pursuing unpopular truths, Herman and Chomsky prove conclusively that the free-market economics model of media leads inevitably to normative and narrow reporting. Whether or not you've seen the eye-opening movie, buy this book, and you will be a far more knowledgeable person and much less prone to having your beliefs manipulated as easily as the press.
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan | |
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This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.
There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.
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| Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine by Donald A. Norman | |
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By virtue of their design, machines shape the way we relate to the world. Moreover--as anyone who has been annoyed by voice message systems can testify--many technological "advances" that are efficient from the engineering point of view are of dubious value to those who must use them. In this highly readable book, Norman, author of Turn Signals Are the Facial Expres sions of Automobiles (Addison-Wesley, 1992), offers an intriguing look at the nature and characteristics of human intelligence. He argues that it is time for us to adopt a more human-centered perspective and to insist that informational technologies enhance and complement human cognitive capacities rather than undermine them. Entertaining anecdotes, puzzles, graphics, and speculations regarding future possibilities flesh out this wise and witty book. Recommended for academic and public libraries. --Elise Chase, Forbes Lib., Northampton, Mass. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky | |
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Understanding Power is a wide-ranging collection of transcribed and previously unpublished discussions and seminars (from 1989 to 1999) with sociopolitical analyst Noam Chomsky.
The chapters, each covering discrete sessions with Chomsky, arrive in a question-and-answer format that at times becomes delightfully contentious. Chomsky holds forth on such disparate topics as American third-party politics, the stifling of true dissent, the illusion of a muscular media, heavy-handed American imperialism (from Southeast Asia to Mexico), a dysfunctional and self-destructing United States political left, the gilding of the Kennedy and Carter administrations, and the impotent state of labor unions. The relatively accessibility of Understanding Power is a welcome balance to Chomsky's often formidable scholarly writings. This is a book best taken in doses: a sort of bedside reader. --H. O'Billovitch
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| The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell | |
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"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you. Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan
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| The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil | |
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How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power. Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, shows that technological evolution moves at an exponential pace. Further, he asserts, in a sort of swirling postulate, time speeds up as order increases, and vice versa. He calls this the "Law of Time and Chaos," and it means that although entropy is slowing the stream of time down for the universe overall, and thus vastly increasing the amount of time between major events, in the eddy of technological evolution the exact opposite is happening, and events will soon be coming faster and more furiously. This means that we'd better figure out how to deal with conscious machines as soon as possible--they'll soon not only be able to beat us at chess, but also likely demand civil rights, and might at last realize the very human dream of immortality.
The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese Littleton
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| Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate by Steven Johnson | |
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Steven Johnson turns the tables on the way we consider our computer interfaces. While many discussions focus on how interfaces help us work by adapting to our ways of thinking and our real-world metaphors, Johnson jumps from there to look at how our thinking and world view are altered by our computer interfaces.
He begins with the simple: The mouse improved the spatial nature of our computers by letting us move, by the proxy of our pointers, within the screen. The windows metaphor made cyberspace a 3-D space. And while we tend to think about the graphical nature of interfaces, Johnson also explores the textual side and how it has changed the way we work with the written word. Interface Culture then goes on to show how, with each advance in technology, the interface shapes our perceptions in new ways. Where mice and windows turned the computing world into cyberspace, agents have created a perception of software as personality. On the larger scale, Johnson sees these tools, originally built on noncyber metaphors, as creating, in their turn, a new set of metaphors for looking at the rest of the world. And while he finds it exciting, he spends considerable time on such shortcomings in our approach to interfacing: what he considers the excessive emphasis on graphics elements at the cost of anything textual. Johnson, who is the editor of the cerebral Feed Web site and whom Newsweek called one of the most influential people in cyberspace, has written an intelligent book about interface design, its relationship to the real world, and how it affects our perception of worlds both cyber and physical.
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| Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky | |
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Noam Chomsky is considered the father of modern linguistics. In this richly detailed criticism of American foreign policy, he seeks to redefine many of the terms commonly used in the ongoing American war on terrorism. Surveying U.S. actions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Turkey, the Far East and elsewhere over the past half a century along with the modern American war in Iraq, Chomsky indicates that America is just as much a terrorist state as any other government or rogue organization. George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq drew worldwide criticism, in part because it seemed to present a new philosophy of pre-emptive war and an appearance of global empire building. But according to Chomsky, such has been the operating philosophy of American foreign policy for decades. Opponents of the Bush administration's tactics consistently point out how the American government supported Saddam Hussein for many years prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait (pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand are easy to come by) as a means of pointing out how the United States is happy to fund despots when it's in American interests. But Chomsky, armed with extensive historical notation, takes this notion further, arguing how the repression of other nations' citizenry is, in fact, the very reason Americans support certain foreign leaders. The charges made throughout the book are severe, as are the dire consequences he posits if current trends are not reversed, and Chomsky is no more likely to make friends or gain supporters from the mainstream now than he's ever been. But Hegemony or Survival is relatively dispassionate. Instead of relying on camp or shock value or personal attacks as some of his contemporaries have done, Chomsky drives his well-supported points steadily forward in an earnest and highly readable style. --John Moe
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
| Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky | |
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"Propaganda," says Noam Chomsky, "is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state"--in other words, the means by which leaders keep the masses in line. In this slim pamphlet, he looks at American propaganda efforts, from the warmongering of Woodrow Wilson to the creation of popular support for the 1991 military intervention in Kuwait, and reveals how falsification of history, suppression of information, and the promotion of vapid, empty concepts have become standard operating procedure for the leaders of the United States--both Democrats and Republicans--in their efforts to prevent citizens from raising awkward questions about U.S. policy.
Posted by James Thornton on September 15, 2005 - Permalink |
James Thornton, jamesthornton.com>Services: Internet Business Consultant |
Electric Speed Internet Consulting |