These works of fiction have inspired engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs to change the world.
Tag Archives: Book Reviews
Real Stories of Startup Failure: A Database of What Not to Do
There’s a school of thought that says entrepreneurs learn best from their own mistakes. That they must fail – and fail and fail – before they succeed. Noam Wasserman comes from a different school of thought (Harvard Business School), and he suggests that entrepreneurs instead learn from the mistakes of other entrepreneurs.
Ultralight Startups Think Big, Keep It Simple, Move Fast
What’s the secret to startup success? According to Jason Baptiste, CEO of Onswipe and author of the new book, “The Ultralight Startup: Launching a Startup Without Clout or Capital”, it’s all about thinking big, keeping it simple and shipping quickly.
A Field Guide on How to Create an Innovator
Are people born innovators, or can they learn to become that way? An interesting new book, “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,” by Tony Wagner, a member of Harvard’s Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, explores this question in detail. It is a must-read for anyone who is thinking of taking the lonely road…
Tales From the European Startup Scene
I am sure you have seen numerous books about how one Silicon Valley mogul or another has started his or her venture, but there are few books reporting from the scene across the pond. A new book, edited by Pedro Santos, attempts to remedy that situation with European Founders At Work. It has interviews with 20 different entrepreneurs, and as…
[Review] God’s Jury: The Inquisition, IT & Privacy
If you were hunting for a book most ReadWriteWeb readers would, based on the title, find irrelevant to their pursuits, you could do worse than “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World” by Cullen Murphy. But, as Murphy adeptly shows, both information technology and the institutional corruption of privacy would not have assumed…
What Technology Wants: Kevin Kelly’s Theory of Evolution for Technology
Over the past week I read Kevin Kelly’s latest book, What Technology Wants. It’s a highly ambitious and expansive book, which looks at technology from an evolutionary perspective. Over 350 pages, Kelly outlines and explores technology as a living system, akin to humanity’s biological evolution. The title alludes to this – ‘What Technology Wants…
Hedy Lamarr, The First Geek Movie Star
The story sounds almost like a Hollywood plot, except it is true: A young starlet doing nude scenes as a teenager who goes on to invent a critical wartime technology that is ignored by the US Navy but ultimately forms the basis of Wi-Fi and cell phones that we use today. Of course, I am talking about the life and times of Hedy Lamarr, the subject…
REAMDE: A Review
Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, “REAMDE,” brings black hat hackers, MMORPG gamers, virtual gold miners, Russian organized crime figures, dope smugglers and the flotsam of post-Cold War intelligence organizations into a super freaky all-night disco dance party, evocative, in terms of its well-orchestrated spectacle and cast-of-thousands, of…
Tribal Leadership: A Review
Organizational leadership theories too often manifest into tedious memoirs peppered with Sun Tzu and Machiavelli quotes. The frequent outcome is subjecting teams to rewriting job priorities as MBOs, IDEO founder David Kelley is featured, I was willing to give it a read. After all, these two leaders have clearly made strides in defining positive…
The Internet of Elsewhere: Reorienting the Map of the Web
The tendency to map our world with our own country or region front and center is well documented and reasonably well-understood, at least intellectually. When someone from America sees a map with, say, Peru in the middle, with south in the up position, it still creates some dissonance. But that dissonance can be useful, beyond simply disabusing…
You Are Not a Gadget: The Continuing Case Against Web 2.0
Jaron Lanier was a pioneer of “virtual reality” in the early 1980s and in his book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, he makes the case for a more humanistic approach to Internet technology. Lanier rails against web 2.0, which he calls at the start of the book “a torrent of petty designs” and “freedom […] more for…
David Siegel: From Killer Web Sites to Semantic Web
One of the first web design books I bought was Creating Killer Web Sites, a 90s classic by David Siegel. That book was known for pushing visual style over HTML standards. It also encouraged the use of HTML hacks, for example using tables to create layouts. Siegel’s techniques were basically workarounds, but they just worked in an era when…
The Obama Time Capsule and the Future of Publishing
Just when you thought the Obama lovefest was dwindling, Photographer Rick Smolan released his latest book, The Obama Time Capsule. The book includes photography, maps and election results from President Obama’s road to the White House. What makes this project unique is that Smolan offers readers a chance to upload their own photographs and…
5 Great Books to Build Your Character
Tough economic times and
startups have at least one
thing in common – you need character and determination to survive.
Character is what it takes to win,
to believe and to persuade others. It’s a mix of passion, determination,
sleepless hours,
hard work.
Character is about crossing the finish line, about achieving dreams and
goals.
While…
5 Great Science Books to Expand Your Mind
From the dynamics of social networks to market bubbles, science has a lot to say about
the world of technology.
One of the great discoveries of modern science was the realization of
how interconnected the world is. The deterministic, Newtonian view of
a clockwork Universe was replaced by the much more dynamic, uncertain and entangled
world of…
What Startups Can Learn From Haruki Murakami
I’m a big fan of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
The genius of Murakami is in his discipline,
focus and determination. I see him as a virtual Zen master – an embodiment of wisdom,
passion, skills and exceptional will. The elements of his work and life story are inspirational and (here’s where ReadWriteWeb comes in) particularly
applicable when…
Book Review: Inside Steve’s Brain
Inside Steve’s Brain, a book about Steve Jobs written by Leander Kahney, is a fascinating look at the thought processes and inspiration behind Apple’s products and branding. It has a particular and much welcome focus on the current era – iPod/iTunes, the latest iMacs, the Apple Store and more. The central theme of the book is that much of Apple’s…
Bob Dylan Chronicles and Blogging for the thing’s sake
It’s probably pushing
it to equate Bob Dylan’s career as an incredibly successful musician, with my nascent
career as a Blogger. But there were a couple of extracts in the first volume of
Bob Dylan’s autobiography that I, as a Blogger, identify strongly with.
The first quote comes from page 18, where Bob was outlining his early days as a…
Douglas Coupland – Hey Nostradamus!
Douglas Coupland returns to form big-time with
this sensitive and soulful book, Hey
Nostradamus!. Before I get to the review, I’ll go over my
background as a long-time Coupland fan – because it’s especially relevant to my
thoughts on Hey Nostradamus!. I discovered him during the 90’s and he was one of
the quintessential writers of that milieu…