Tag Archives: books

in english

Recommended book: The age of the unthinkable

You know that the times are a-changin’ when terrorists armed with paper cutters are a serious menace to the world’s largest superpower, unpaid networks of developers can build an operating system that is now used in enterprise-grade IT solutions and when strategies designed to erradicate a problem such as terrorism or poverty add more fuel to the fire.  While this book is geared towards an American audience and focuses on the ramifications  of this phenomenon in foreign policy, I have been thinking about what kind of lessons this can provide business.

The author introduces in this book the concept of resilience, where instead of trying to have grand monolithic strategies to anticipate every single scenario we should instead focus on having different approaches towards a problem, “gardening” our way to ride the ever-coming waves of change and take advantage of them.  This idea resonates on many levels with many concepts I use as part of my daily life, which I will make a list of (and no, I’m not Chinese =P):

  • One of the main lessons in aikido, which is using the forces of others to your own advantage.  You don’t oppose a force with another force, you channel it so that it goes where you want to.
  • Systems intelligence, where an individual accepts that life is a set of interdepentent relationships where there are feedback mechanisms that can be tweaked to one’s own advantage with huge effects due to the non-linear character of the system.
  • Social media,  technological convergence, creativity and other related professional interests of mine.

The interesting conclusion to which the author arrives, which I also find very appealing, is the need for empowering diverse change agents who can drive different approaches to solving a problem to work as a sort of “immunity system” for an organisation, be it a country, a company or the world.

It’s not a complicated book (in reality, I found it a little bit too light as I would have wanted a few more examples from other fields and more detail on the conceptual framework) but definitely a recommended read.

in english

Favourite sci-fi books

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On seeing my sci-fi book collection (of which you can see but a tiny part to the right) a friend asked me what were my favourite books.  While it’s a little like asking a parent who is his/her favourite son, I do have some sci-fi books I’ve reread more than others.

  • The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov: Parallell universes, love and the laws of physics, what’s not to like?
  • The Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: The 200-year history of the colonization of Mars from arrival of the first settlers to terraformation.  Heavy on ecological, economic and sociological themes.
  • Flashforward, Robert J. Sawyer: Instead of destroying life, the universe and everything, the LHC shows the whole population of earth their selves 20 years in the future.  Now becoming a TV series.
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a trilogy in five parts), Douglas Adams: Spaceships, aliens and Englishmen were never so funny.
  • Spares, Michael Marshall Smith: A bleak, totally dystopian future where clones are raised to replace the body parts of the rich.
  • The Postman, David Brin: One of the biggest cinematic flops by Kevin Costner is based on a very solid post-apocalyptic novel, with survivalism as a cancer of society and the difference of science and magic being the main themes of the novel.
  • The Forever War, Joe Haldeman: War against aliens on relativistic spaceships means in Earth a 1000 years pass, while our main character ages less than a year.  A stinging commentary on the Vietnam War.
  • Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke: An absolute classic. You might have probably seen the first movie, but that’s not the end of it.
  • Foundation Series, Isaac Asimov: Another classic.  The Galactic Empire is falling, and a man has foreseen it aided by the scientific approach he has created.  He cannot stop it, but he can try to alleviate it.  Eventually these books were merged with others written by Asimov, charting a fictitious human history spanning 25,000 years.
  • Dune Series, Frank Herbert: Last classic series I’ll write about here.  15,000 years of human history.  Rebellions against robot overlords, political intrigue and a big exploration of the nature of religion.
  • The Man in the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick:  The Nazis and the Japanese Empire won World War II.  The US doesn’t exist anymore, but the former axis plot against each other.
  • The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson: The black death exterminates the population of Europe, and we follow a jāti of several characters through several reincarnations until the year 1423 after Hegira (2002 A.D.).  Every chapter follows a different literary style based on literature of the culture in question.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn:  Did you think I wouldn’t mention any Star Wars books?  The series that reignited the Star Wars franchise in the 1990’s has it all, including a memorable villain.

Any other sci-fi fans amongst my readers?  Any books/universes you’d like to add or recommend?

in english

Recommended book: Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller

You might have heard of peak oil, the idea explaining the point in time when we have reached the maximum amount of oil produced, after which starts a decline that affects the world as we know it (and yes, I’m using this phrase on purpose).  Jeff Rubin, a Canadian economist, took the issue head-on in this book, explaining not only why in his view the current economic crisis is at its source one huge oil price shock, but also how will the world economy change once oil is not so plentiful, more expensive and there are more economies hungry for it.

Basically, what he predicts is an end to the current version of globalisation, where you have distributed value chains, cheap travel and products from all over the world at your doorstep.  I don’t know about you, but even if I live more or less ecologically, use renewable energy where possible and don’t have a car, such a future would wreak havoc with my lifestyle as it would be impossible for me to find the food I want and be able to visit my family over the holidays.  The subtitle of this blog is “musings from a child of globalisation” after all, isn’t it?

I think it is time to sweep this issue under the rug every time it is brought up and start thinking about what kind of innovations are needed.  Who’s with me?

in english

Shall I write a book?

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Some friends have mentioned in completely unrelated settings that I should probably consider writing a book.  I’ve been actually thinking about writing one either of my experiences as a foreigner/expat/immigrant/whatchamacallit on one hand or a sci-fi novella on the other.  Of course I’d have to find some time to do it as currently I don’t have much, butmight be something worth considering.

Dear readers, what would you think?  What would you like to read more about, in analog form?

in english

The Post-American World

A very good book by Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek fame, brought home the point that the US, as important as it is in the world, cannot go it alone anymore.

This is an extremely important point to explain to the American public given the nearing elections and the vastly diverging approaches to this matter of both candidates.  As reads in the article linked above, how can you take a unilateral course very major problem you face as a nation, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to gas prices, requires joint action with others?

en español, in english

“Truth is cool but unattainable”

What happens when you mix George Soros' "The Age of Fallibility", Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" and Mexican movie "Y tu mamá también"?  You end up realising that in the end they might not be so far away from each other.

Basically, their main tenet is that absolute truth is non-existent and we can only reach approximations.  Furthermore, we have to be aware of this fact whenever we are constructing our visions of reality, as assuming they are "true" will only cause us several problems: with the policies and attitudes followed by society, with our use of science and technology, and with our understanding of ourselves.

in english

Book-reading in the commute

As astonishing as it might be to my American readers (if any, heh), I don't own a car… even if I actually enjoy driving very much.  The reasons for this are many:

-I can, meaning there is quite decent public transportation where I live.
-It means I do a fair amount of walking; something very welcome given that I don't have that much time for exercise anymore
-Owning a car is a pain as you need to pay taxes, take it to servicing and of course the price of oil is not what it was (can you imagine having to pay almost 8 dollars a gallon or 25 Mexican pesos a litre?).
-I get to reduce my environmental footprint which is regardless quite high given my frequent traveling.
-Most importantly, I get to read on the commute.

If you know me (or read me), you have realised I absolutely love to read, and will go through pretty much anything that falls in my hands sooner or later.  Even if it ends up being about a heavier subject it will definitely help me relax, and give me a different perspective to what I probably had before, which is something I crave endlessly.

I've noticed that I'm reading something close to a book a week when not traveling, and half of that when on the move.  As is usual, some of the impressions gathered from those books are to be shared with you here.

in english

Time travelling

During the past few days I've seen quite a few stories that involve time travelling.  From an episode of Babylon 5 to the Spanish movie Open your Eyes to the novel The Forever War, I spent this weekend trying to analyse rather convoluted timelines, and finding myself enjoying them.

Interestingly enough, I know that some people close to me have certain difficulties following those plots whereas for me those kind of paradoxes are kind of normal.  That's what happens when you grow up with a steady diet of science fiction.

in english

Recommended Book: The Flight of the Creative Class

I've followed Richard Florida's theories for a few years.  Building upon The Rise of the Creative Class, where he introduced us to his model whereupon a certain group of people whose job relies not only on the consumption of knowledge, but also on the creation of it, and how the world economy is changing, he introduces this book where he expands on the concept and what does it mean for individuals and countries.

The edition I bought starts with his essay The World is Spiky where he critiques The World is Flat, saying that it only looks flat from one peak to the next, but there's plenty of places that haven't yet gotten connected.

Furthermore, the whole idea of the book is simply that the people constituting this creative class are highly mobile and will settle wherever they see fit, therefore having a huge influence in the prosperity of the places they choose.  According to his analysis, this choice is guided by 3 factors: Talent, Tolerance & Technology, and he goes on identifying places in the United States and abroad that are doing all they can to attract and retain their "brains".

Whereas his results for North America seem well founded, he tends to get in a flimsier position when identifying creative class hubs outside of that zone.  He, for example, lumps Helsinki-Tampere-Oulu as an area (which is rather like talking about Brussels, Barcelona and London being in the same neighbourhood). 

There are, however, certain things that leaders in Finland should take to heart, as he mentions explicitly in page 173: "Not all cities are able to compete effectively for global talent.  There are a signficant number… indicating that they are either attracting a very narrow band of immigrants or not attracting many immigrants period.  Cities in this group include… the Scandinavian centers of Helsinki and Oslo.  These places are challenged by their lack of appeal to global talent and will need to improve their diversity and tolerance if they wish to compete at the global cutting edge."

In other words: your educational system is excellent, your use of technology second to none, but the lack of diversity puts a hold on the ideas and points of view you can create here, which is a definite minus in these terms.  As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of foreigners here who work as hard as everybody else here, and not feeling welcome will make them leave, taking their skills with them.  Furthermore, as more and more Finns get to know and appreciate that kind of diversity somewhere else, they will also leave.

For Mexico there is also a lot of lessons to be learned from this book, but I have mostly covered them in another post.  Further moderation of Mexican racist attitudes would also be most welcome.