The book is effectively a series of essays, that together loosely tell the story of the Long Now Foundation’s motivations to encourage and inspire long-term thinking. The chapters touch on such subject as:

• Time
• The rush of technology
• Religion
• Monuments of human ingenuity & persistence.
• Preservation of knowledge.
• Understanding the scope of the future.

Their intent is to build The Clock of the Long Now:

• The clock will run for 10,000 years accurately, with only bronze-age technology for maintenance.
• The clock will tick once a day and dong once a year.
• The clock will be a large facility, grand in scale.
• Such scale and simplicity is meant to awe and give one pause, for the breadth of such a time-scale, past and future.

They also are designing The Library of the Long-Now:

• encourage long-term knowledge curation & scientific studies.
• preserve human knowledge to transcend the possible collapse of current civilization.

One notable chapter, called “Burning Libraries”, describes various movements to destroy artifacts of human knowledge / history.  They describe movements that try to wipe the slate clean.  Generally all of these movements fail within a generation, and society looks back with aghast shame at such events.

Another memorable chapter is on Religion and time, specifically how they interact with optimism / fatalism.  One poignant point was that most religions ( particularly the Abrahamic ones ) reinforce the idea that the world in time is close to its the end.  One quote:

Jews are waiting for the Messiah to come, to end history.
Christians are waiting for him to come again, to end history.
Muslims know that he already came; history's over.

In short, religious often deny the future as a time worth working towards.

On the whole, the essays cover allot of philosophical ground about human nature and potential.  The book definitely isn’t for everyone, but has many nuggets that I’ll come back to again for inspiration.  3.5 of 4 possible stars.

I don’t understand the weather; I think we don’t understand the weather enough:

• these tornadoes happened late in the day, with some unconfirmed reports around midnight in central Maine.  This is unexpected with our general understanding of how the weather conditions come together to create this.
• the sky was reported as green over Springfield in between the two big storms cells that passed there.
• in Waltham, there was lightning flashes happening every second, for over 40 minutes; ground strikes were as few as 3 seconds apart in the brunt of the storm.

Additionally, I think our understanding and tools are sub-par for detecting & predicting them:

• the weather service uses doppler-radar cell values to detect areas of high discontinuities and label them as likely tornado locations.  Note we have no way of directly, remotely detecting them reliably.
• animals in nature can tell when bad weather is approaching; reports of silent & birds and bugs are very common in the “calm before the storm”.  How can they tell what’s going to happen, without satellite imagery and a sophisticated physical model?
• I heard a weather-person say that the tornadoes were causing the frequent lightning strikes.  I think cause, effect and correlation got confused in that statement.

Anyway, it’s a rare experience for me, and has me thinking.

I upgraded recently, and all went smoothly.  The one difficulty was that my WebDAV shares through Apache were no longer able to write to the file-system.  Turns out I wasn’t the only one who experienced this and the fix was very simple.

After the initial file upgrading, I was greeted with a completely blank screen and the underlying HTML file was completely empty.

The two major nuisances causing this problem were:

• I put the WordPress site-files into its own directory.  Due to something in this major software update, this functionality was broken.  Thus, I had to explicitly access the “WordPress URL” directly.
• I was using the “default” theme from 2.x.  This theme is not present in 3.0. So, after a successful upgrade.php, I had to go under the Site-Admin “Appearance” tab.  Once there, it detected it was configured with a non-existent theme, and changed this setting to the new “Twenty Ten” theme.

Now it’s working.  Default theme probably needs to be personalized a bit.  Otherwise, it’s working fine…

Daniel Pink is a freelance author, columnist and speaker.  His works to date focus on the ever-changing nature of work and society.  His works have been featured in everything from Wired to Harvard Business Review to The New York Times.  He formerly was a speech-writer and aide within President Clinton’s Cabanet.

This book focuses on what Dan calls “Free Agents”, how this group is growing in America, what has allowed for this growth, and the challenges they face.  “Free Agents” refer to all independent workers, ranging from self-employed workers, micro-business owners, consultants, temp-workers, etc.  Pink conservatively estimates that in 2001 there were 33 million workers in the U.S.; that’s 23% of the U.S. workforce.  He sights four factors that are driving people to be independent workers:

• the old American work social contract of loyalty for security, has completely failed.
• the half-life of companies are shrinking, forcing individuals to work multiple jobs.
• prosperity has allowed individuals to work beyond the need for money to having satisfying careers.
• the means of production for some old and many new industries are cheap and easy to use.

Many other Free Agent issues are addressed such as:

• they achieve satisfaction through: freedom, authenticity, accountability, and self-defined success.
• security is achieved through diversity; loyalty is spread to colleagues, professions, customers, family&friends
• they can blend their work and their personal life, instead of partitioning it like most employees do.

Dan explores the issues further:

• investigating the small and dynamic social networks Free Agents form
• diffuse production tools such as Kinkos, Starbucks, Barnes& Noble, MailBoxes Etc., Staples, Fedex, and rental offices.

He also explores some of the issues independent workers face, including Health Insurance, Taxation, and Zoning Laws.

Overall, I found the book and ideas intreguing.  Perhaps it’s my independent spirit, or growing up with a self-employed father.  It’s a trend that I think all should keep they’re eyes on into the future.

I give this a 3 of 4 possible stars.  I liked the concept, ideas, facts, exposition, etc., but it wasn’t a compelling must-read.

Steven Reiss is a Ohio State University Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry.  He has studied, amongst other things, anxiety sensitivity, and mental retardation.  He has won several awards for his work, and has many published papers.

In this book, Dr Reiss describes his theory of 16 Basic Intrinsic Motivations.  This theory argues that, humans are motivated by intrinsic psychological drives, and that these drives are ends in themselves.  Each drive is measured as a continuum for an individual, from weak to strong; it is the particularly strong and weak drives that best explain an individual’s motivations.   The combinations of these 16 motivations describe the variability of human personality.  These 16 motivations are irreducible: any other described drive or motivation can be expressed by the fundamental 16.  These values are not short term “feel-good” happiness, but long term “value-based” happiness.

The 16 basic desires are:

• Acceptance, the need for approval
• Curiosity, the need to think
• Eating, the need for food
• Family, the need to raise children
• Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one’s clan/ethnic group
• Idealism, the need for social justice
• Independence, the need for individuality
• Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable environments
• Physical Activity, the need for exercise
• Power, the need for influence of will
• Romance, the need for sex
• Saving, the need to collect
• Social Contact, the need for friends (peer relationships)
• Status, the need for social standing/importance
• Tranquility, the need to be safe
• Vengeance, the need to strike back

These motivations were selected by a Factor Analysis of a set of 328 enumerated goals / motivations surveyed over 400 people.  Interestingly, this places things that to some seem independent, into the same category.  For example: “Romance” includes the desire for aesthetic beauty as well as sensual pleasure; “Power” includes a drive for competence as well as power over others.

The book describes each motivation in some detail, if not in predictable, monotonous fashion.  It’s interesting to mediate on and understand these “overloaded” meanings of the fundamental desires.

Later on, the book dives into four broad aspects of human society:

• couples
• work
• family
• sports
• religion

These aspects of human society can be built around many, if not all, of the 16 intrinsic desires.  Also, particular social institutions attract similarly profiled people.  For example, 65 ROTC Cadets scored very low for Tranquillity, and high for Power, Physical Activity and Vengeance.  45 Seminary Students tested high for Idealism, and low for Independence, Status, Family and Tranquillity.

Overall, I find the theory very intriguing.  The idea that there is a irreducible, intrinsic set of end motivations is appealing to me somehow; it seems elegant to me.  That said, I’m still wrestling with the overloaded-ness of motives like Power: I’m not motivated to have power over others, but I’m motivated to be competent in my skills/knowledge.  I’m sure it can be explained in terms of other factors, but I haven’t cracked that yet.

After reading and ingesting this book & other online information, I found myself locking onto these motivators in my daily experiences.  I suppose that’s a sign of it’s allure, at least for me.  However, I’m treating it as entertainment, when it comes to applying it to others, and taking it lightly for introspection.

The book itself was a fascinating, yet painful read.  The organization / presentation of the material was dry and repetitive: parts of the book felt like a template was created and populated, without much wordsmithing afterwards.  Many more case studies, or anecdotes could have made this a much more pleasurable read.

Overall, this is a 3 of 4 possible stars book.  It’s a 4 for the concept, but a 2 for presentation.

Steven Johnson is a popular-science author, who’s written for various scientific magazines.  He’s also been involved with several nascent website services like online magazines and geo-aware search & communities.  He writes on various loosely related subjects about modern scientific developments, both in subject and in community.

“Emergence” is about just that, emergent systems, or Complex Adaptive System( CAS ) that exhibit synergistic properties.  The author uses various examples in the book, including:

• self-organizing “slime mold“
• ant-colony behaviour
• emergent cities, and neighbourhoods within cities
• cognitive abilities from neurons
• artificial intelligence techniques

The author also covers the underlying processes of these emergent systems.  These include:

• complex systems – deterministic systems whose outcomes are sensitive to initial conditions
• feedback loops, both positive and negative.
• competition – something to drive system selection

There was allot of interesting details conveyed in the book, including work done by various people in the field of CAS, as well as implications for internet phenomena of the future.

Overall though, I wasn’t really impressed.  I wasn’t left with a strong message at the end of the book, and I had been exposed to most of this type of analysis / field of study before.  I was interrupted for a week in the middle of the book, so perhaps that plays part of my unimpressiveness about this book.  2 out of 4 possible stars.

The Long Tail is about how information technologies are transforming many markets, and about the true shape and character of market these technologies reveal.

Information technologies are transforming many markets, notably media and consumer goods.  The technologies are:

• efficient inventory storage and retrieval, providing vast, near infinite inventory
• search and filtering technologies to navigate these huge inventories
• increased availability of production tools for the population

Such markets include:

• books ( Amazon )
• music ( iTunes, Rhapsody )
• movies ( Netflix, YouTube )
• consumer goods ( Amazon, eBay )

For example, let’s take books and Amazon:

• Amazon has huge centralized warehouses where it stores all the goods it sells.  It must be able to receive and ship orders quickly.  Also, through it’s Marketplace program, resellers use their storefront, but have their own warehouses and shipment systems.  Thus, Amazon doesn’t even store these items.  Thus, Amazon can store millions of items.  The largest brick&mortar super-bookstore can only have about 175,000 books.  With 6.1 million books available in the world, and 100,000 being published per year in recent history, traditional stores cannot cater to everyone’s desires.  Amazon can offer nearly 350 times the variety.
• Amazon tracks user’s ratings, stores useful customer reviews, tracks what other customers have bought, based on usage history, and utilize this information to help you search and filter the vast catalogue to your current interest.  Traditional stores can only choose one presentation of their goods, and every person must search within that specific constraint.  You will find things through the Amazon website that you’d never know about in a normal store.
• While not specific to Amazon’s operations, book publications have sky-rocketed, as tools for production, such as desktop publishing software and reduced costs of printing, such as print-on-demand services, mean that more of the populous can produce books.  This increases the number of books to catalogue, search and recommend.

The shape of markets, when sorting items based on popularity, follow a “power-law” long-tail distribution.  In short, this means that, while the popularity of any one item out on the tail is small, there is just so-much in the tail that, if made available to customers, it would comprise a significant part of one’s business.  For example, 90% of the products on Rhapsody or Netflix is not available in any stores, but this 90% make up roughly 25% of their profits.

Another interesting feature of long-tailed markets is that, as one moves into the tail, one is more satisfied with the goods, compared to the the goods at the head of the tail.  A few factors here are:

• everything in the head has broad appear to the whole audience.  Therefore, it is a bit mediocre compared to each individual’s tastes.
• everything in the tail has very specific niche audiences.  A gem item for one individual will be utter rubbish to 10,000 others.

To capitalize on the tail, one must connect each user with the content they value.

There any many more points in the book than I can outline here.  Many transformative businesses and websites are discussed, such as Google, Wikipedia, etc.

For anyone who’s exerienced these technologies and recognizes something fundamentally different’s going on, this is a great read.  For anyone who’s heard about the buzz, but doesn’t feel they understand it, this should be a great exposee.  And for anyone who works in any IT industry, you should really read how our world is transforming many aspects of human business and activity.

4 of 4 possible stars, without hesitation.

Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor to both Rolling Stone and The New York Times.  He wrote the New York Times bestseller book “Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith“, which covered the Quecreek Mine accident of 2002.  From this writing experience, he became interested in the coal industry as a whole.  What he finds there is a grim reminder of America’s energy reality.

“Big Coal” refers to the coal-mining industry, the railroad-freight industry, and the electricity companies.  Together they have allot of interdependency and allot of clout.  The book’s order roughly covers the mining, transportation, and burning of coal, taking in-depth detours along the way to discuss miner’s safety, environmental safety, pollution ( both in heavy metals and noxious fumes, ) and global warming.

Unfortunately this book is not fresh on my mind, but there were several notable things:

• the interdependency of the coal-mining, railroad, and power companies.
• the ever increasing demands for energy consumption creating more coal-fired plants, despite their ugly environmental & health impacts.
• the undeniable evidence of the G. W. Bush’s administration giving Big Coal a free-pass.

There were other interesting bits, mostly political intrigue, along with some sorta notable technologies like CO₂ sequestration and coal liquidification processes / IGCC power plat design.

Overall, it was a good book.  I just read through it too fast, and didn’t have enough time to reflect upon it.  2.5 of 4 possible stars.