Latest TED Book Club Selections - January 2012

The latest TED Book Club selections are out.  As always, it's an interesting bunch.

Steven Pinker has given several talks at TED, including his 2007 talk which made a deep impression on me.  He argued that, despite today's news overload focused on bad news, the level of violence and wars has actually been declining in the world.  You can find that talk here.  Apparently the talk sparked further research and analysis and culminated in the publication of a book. 

The Better Angels of our Nature elaborates on that theme, arguing that violence between humans is in long term decline. I remember Pinker showed a graph showing the incidence of wars and numbers of deaths in those wars. I imagine I'll find that one in the book when I get around to it.

A friend recently pointed me to a counterargument presented in a TEDx talk by Jonas Gahr Store, the Norwegian foreign minister, which you can view here.  (Thanks Scott).  Store focuses on a shorter time frame - just since 1946 - and he s argues that violence hasn't really declined overall: the increase in intrastate violence has grown faster than the decline in interstate violence.

I'm really looking forward to reading Pinker's book, to understand more clearly his proposition and the his evidence to support it, and to compare it with Store's point of view.

Also in this batch was Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain.  Shermer is another TED speaker that I enjoyed.  He characterizes himself as a professional skeptic and is the founder of Skeptic Magazine.  His 2006 TED talk was hilarious as he mocked various outrageous beliefs held my many people.  He did a reprise in 2010, unveiling more hoaxes and gimmicks, but also argued that we have a belief engine in our brains which makes us want to believe. The Believing Brain explores further why we believe the weird things we do.  On his web site, Shermer describes the books as "a comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished."  Again, I'm looking forward to reading this book.  Maybe it will explain to this puzzled Canadian why so many Americans believe in creationism over evolution!

The last book in the mailing was The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.  This illustrated collection of fairy tales was printed in time for the 200th anniversary of the Brothers Grimm's tales.  A quick glance through the book revealed some tales that I was not familiar with. This should be an eminently skimmable book!




For those interested, there are several other posts about TED Book Club Selections:

• November 2011 list
• September 2011 list
• June 2011 list
• February 2011 list
• August 2010 list
• May 2010 
• January 2009
• October 2008

Also there are a few reviews of books from the book club:

• Radioactive
• Spark
• TED Books: Media Makeover
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

TED Book Club Selection - November 2011

 Today, the lastest TED Book Club Selection arrived, Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs.  What an appropriate choice!  Both TED and Jobs stand for Technology, Entertainment and Design. I've received many comments on my posts about TED book selections, showing that many people enjoy hearing what the folks at TED have chosen.  So I decided to post this, even though I've barely begun the book.
 

Jobs life is linked to three inspirations in my own life: Clayton Christensen, TED and Ian Sharp. 

 

It's said that Jobs was inspired by Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma, and that it was pivotal in molding his views about innovation.  I've talked about Christensen's ideas in previous posts (such as this one).  I celebrated the fact that The Innovator's Dilemma was chosen as one of the six best business books of all time(click here), and that Christensen was named the top Business Thinker (click here).  These posts explain why I think Christensen's ideas are so important, and if you examine the trajectory of Jobs' career, you can see his products as an illustration of Christensen's theories.  Consultants from Innosight (the firm founded by Clayton Christensen) had a great article about the innovation lessons learned from Steve Jobs.  I've seen lots written about Jobs recently, but that assessment is my favourite.

Jobs' life is an illustration of the very essence of the TED conference.  So many conferences bring together people with shared interests in a particular field.  They are very focused, and can often provide deep information, but seldom any true inspiration because they simply reinforce an industry's entrenched way of thinking.  TED is different - it brings together people from a wide variety of disciplines and the sparks of creative and innovative thinking fly.  Jobs similarly capitalized on the breadth and depth of his interest in technology, entertainment and design in the breathtaking innovation in his products.  In just the first few chapters, there have been appearances by people I've met at TED like Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand, and the index reveals more to come.

The description of those early days in Silicon Valley brings back memories of my early days in  timesharing (now called cloud computing) in the early 70s in Canada.  I worked for I.P. Sharp Associates, a pioneering software and network communications company, led by the brilliant and unassuming Ian Sharp (shown at left).  Ian's penchant for hiring bright people resulted in a company full of them.    Like Jobs, many 'Sharpees' had dropped out of university  (often leaving the US motivated by the Vietnam draft).  Like Jobs, some of them had nevertheless earned a BA (brilliant & abrasive) or a BE (brilliant & eccentric).  Ian exhibited huge tolerance of eccentric behaviour as long as people were contributing and were respectful of their colleagues and focussed on solving customer problems.   Jobs' success arose, at least in part, from the diversity of his interests and his appetite for ingesting ideas from many fields. Ian's disregard for people's area of specialization meant that I.P. Sharp was seething with people from diverse backgrounds - computer science as well  as education, mathematics, biology, music and many fields.  (It was also full of 'minorities', because Ian seemed blind to nationality, religion, skin colour, or sexual orientation).

Authorized biographies often present a somewhat varnished version of events.  What has surprised me so far about this book is that it shines a glaring light on both Jobs' brilliance and his less desirable traits.  Jobs and Wozniak have just founded Apple, and Jobs' trademark chutzpah, passion and single-minded drive are already evident.  The reality distortion field has made its appearance.  So has Jobs' arrogance, although that aspect of his personality remains to be polished and honed.  His penchant for abuse and his 'anti-loyalty' is disturbing to read about.   Perhaps it's a final comment on Jobs' unfailingly high  self-esteem that he was willing to support a book that could present him in such an unforgiving light.

 

TED Book Club Selection - Spark

Spark: How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein consists of a collection of anecdotes about creative people.  Despite the subtitle claiming it will explain how creativity works, I'm afraid I didn't find any great insights over the handful of stories I read.  It's true I haven't read the whole book, but I don't think I will.

Spark is the first book I've received through the TED Book Club that I've put down after starting the book.  I guess it proves that even the most wonderful selector, who has consistently selected books that I've loved, doesn't resonate with choices 100% of the time.  Heck, some people have even told me they can contain their enthusiasm about Makioka Sisters, which I talked up in a previous blog!

No stars for this one.

TED Book Club Selections - September 2011

It's Christmas in September again.  The latest books from the TED Book Club have just arrived - bringing tips about philanthropy, the evolution of presentations and how to resonate with your audience, and the importance of explanation in human progress .  Since I haven't read them yet, I can't provide a review, but let me quote from the announcement letter.
 

In Give $mart, authors Thomas Tierney and Joel Fleishman peer into the decision-making process of major philanthropists.  Case studies highlight the many ways it's done right - and the ways it isn't.  This book is a short, fascinating read, filled with best-practice advice and guiding principles used by many philanthropists.

Nancy Duarte is no stranger to TED when it comes to creating great presentations - she has worked with some of the most effective speakers you've ever seen.  In her latest book, resonate, she talks about how to take your presentation to the next level, and how to establish and keep an emotional connection with the audience.

In his latest book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, David Deutsch argues that all progress is limitless and that it is fueled by our unique ability to form new explanations and drop bad ones in the the pursuit of knowledge.  It's a mind-bending book (in the best sense).

Latest TED Book Club Selections

Today, I received the latest TED Book Club selections.  People have told me they find these recommendations valuable, so I'll give the description of these books as provided in the TED accompanying letter.  

It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace

This book, written by a TED Fellow Rye Barcott, is a moving memoir that chronicles the period of his life as a Marine deployed in Africa and the Middle East while establishing a youth-focused peacekeeping NGO, Carolina for Kibera in Kenya.

Spark: How Creativity Works, Inside the Minds of America's Greatest Writers, Filmmakers, Musicians & Artists

In this book, Julie Burstein selects a handful of creative geniuses who have graced the Studio 360 stage - a talk radio show - and takes you on an intimate voyage into their minds.  No topic is left unearthed as you'll discover what inspires them - their struggles and triumphs, the wonders of childhood, and the ups and downs of relationships, all while helping you spark the creative genius that lives in you.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives

WIRED journalist, TEDster, and best-selling author Stephen Levy gives us the most penetrating behind-the-scenes portrait yet of the force of nature that is Google.  Levy chronicles the growth of the company from inception to present day.  This book will not only help you understand the ideology that makes Google such a force in today's world but also gives an intimate look into the personalities of its founders.

The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World

Laura Snyder transports the reader to the 1800s, into the lives of William Whewell, Charles Babbage, John Herschel and Richard Jones - four friends who left their mark on the way science is conducted and whose legacy persists to this day.  This fascinating period gave birth to scientific method, among other things.  Outside of this past half century, no other period in history witnessed such great scientific breakthroughs.

TED Book Club

Another TED book club mailing has arrived.  It's exciting to get the new books, but a bit frustrating since I haven't finished the previous batch.  I've been dipping into several of the books and loving them all but not quite finished any of them.  This batch includes:

• Karen Armstrong's Twleve Steps to a Compassionate Life.  Armstrong won the TED prize a few years ago and completed her with to launch a Charter for Compassion, which would encompass the precepts shared by world religions, emphasizing their similarities rather than their differences.  This book apparently states what has always seemed to me ot be rather obvious, namely that 'compassion is a human quality that lives outside religious beliefs'.  This should be an interesting read.
• John Brockman's Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?  This book brings together thoughts from a variety of contributors writing on the role the Internet plays in shaping the way humans think and behave.  Clearly the Internet has changed us; I look forward to reading what these people have to say about it.
• Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion.  This book apparently challenges us to more past 'cyberutopianism' to a more realistic view of the Net.  As much as we may celebrate Twitter revolutions, the Net can be used just as effectively by ruthless leaders to quell such uprisings.

I hope to have time to read these books after TED!

The Book Bill Gates Sent Me

"Climate change is real. The largest challenge and opportunity of our lifetime is inventing the future of energy - the technologies we will need to push CO2 emissions near zero by 2050. Those who contribute to these discoveries, and there will be many, will have helped lift the poor out of poverty while simultaneously ensuring the long-term health and prosperity of our planet. It's an incredible opportunity to work toward something of this magnitude and importance." ... Bill Gates

Readers of this blog will know that I raved about Bill Gates' talk at TED this year about how the planet might tackle the problem of climate change. Cogent, rational, and well articulated, its message was thought-provoking, and its delivery was a model of how a great talk should unfold. Gates is bringing his analytical mind to bear on the problem of climate change, in the same way he thought out how his Foundation could have maximum impact in improving the world.

During his talk, Gates said he would send TEDsters some relevant reading material. The quote above is from the note that accompanied Sustainble Energy - Without the Hot Air by David MacKay. MacKay takes a hard-headed approach to energy questions. He doesn't comment on the political appropriateness of different kinds of renewable energy - he simply works out the physical coefficients to determine if the projections for renewable energy are physically possible, or simply wishful thinking.

This book got a rave review in The Economist, and I've been intending to read it for months. Now I have the pleasure of having it delivered to my doorstep! With these endorsements, I can't wait. I would love to hear comments from others who've read this book.

TED Book Club

TED has just sent out the latest books for the Book Club.
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home is Dan Ariely's latest book. I loved his first book Predictably Irrational. It was full of great anecdotes and research about how irrationally people act in practice, although they are convinced they are behaving totally rationally. So I fully expect to like this book too. By the way, when I went to Dan's site to get the book cover image for this post, I discovered his blog, which I really love.




The other book is by Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. This book argues that things are getting better, and we have good reason to be optimistic about the future. Again, this book looks pretty interesting. TED makes a practice of trying to bring forward optimistic themes - this year's TED Global theme was And Now the Good News.

Ridley also has a blog at his site, although it didn't seem as breezy and inviting as Ariely's.

The Council of Dads

All parents worry about their children. Will they behappy, healthy, secure, well-loved? And sometimes we worry about whether they'll miss us when we're gone.

For the author Bruce Feiler, this becomes a burning question when he is diagnosed with a very rare, very aggressive cancer. He decides that the best way to provide some emotional support for his 3-year-old daughters if he should die is to create a Council of Dads. These are six men that he feels will represent different facets of his personality, each of whom will teach his daughters something that he would have liked them to know.

Feiler gives us an intimate view of his treatment and feelings, and introduces us to the men he asks to service on the Council. This recent TED Book Club selection is a quick read, soft and gentle and not too depressing. I`d recommend this book.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This book recently grabbed me, so be prepared for a longer-than-usual post!

In 1951 in Baltimore, a young black woman named Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital (one of the few who treated blacks), was diagnosed with cervical cancer and started to receive radiation treatment. In those days the radiation wasn't aimed from the outside; rather, the radium was inserted and sewn into the affected area. (This was the treatment my mother received about that same time).

Before inserting the radium, the surgeon cut two dime-sized samples from the cervix, one of cancerous tissue and one of non-affected tissue. These samples were sent to the lab where Dr. George Gey had been trying, unsuccessfully, to to grow human tissues in a culture medium. Although Henrietta died from her cancer, Henrietta's cells thrived and grew. These were the first human cells to grow in the lab and the strain was named HeLa.

HeLa cells grew so aggressively that Gey was soon shipping the cells out to other labs around the world for free. Soon demand was outpacing his ability to supply. A company was set up which started to provide the cells commercially. Eventually, experimenters were able to grow cells from other donors too, but HeLa was the most prolific strain by far.

As the business of providing cells for experimentation grew, the American Type Culture Collection was established as a central storage place for pure original cell from all different strains. However, despite ATCC, cell purity was not maintained. A shocking analysis showed that the HeLa strain was so aggressive that if a different culture was contaminated by any HeLa cells, the other cells would die out and HeLa would take over. Thus the vast majority of research around the world had been carried out on HeLa cells, even when the researchers thought they were working with another strain. This showed just how incredibly unusual and prolific HeLa cells were and put into jeopardy many research results.

Meanwhile, the Lacks family knew nothing about their mother's cells being used - revolutionizing research and generating considerable profits - and had given no permission for such use. The Lacks were poor, uneducated people who had escaped from the poverty of rural Virgina to the booming factories of Baltimore during World War II, only to be thrown back into poverty when those factories closed after the war. When they learned of HeLa, they did not understand anything about cells, and were prone to thinking their mother might still be suffering through experimentation on her cells. There is a remarkable story of her daughter Deborah striving to read scientific literature and gain a sufficient understanding of biology to appreciate what had been going on. A visit to a lab where she saw her mother's cells under a microscope was a truly amazing epiphany for her.

The book traces the history of the concept of informed consent and points out that tissue removed from people to this day is available for hospitals to use for research (based on the consent form for the operation). There are many current examples of tissues being used for purposes for which informed consent was not acquired. The Havasupai tribe in Arizona reached a settlement with University of Arizona. They had donated DNA on the understanding it would be used to study diabetes, motivated by the fact that the tribe's incidence rate of diabetes was very high. However, the DNA was used to study schizophrenia and inbreeding.

The history of medical research and the black community is particularly ugly. When this story begins in the 50's, blacks were simply treated differently by the medical system. Johns Hopkins was notable in that it even admitted blacks, but they were relegated to a special 'coloured section'. The infamous Tuskegee study had recruited African American men with syphilis for a study of the disease - and denied them treatment even after it was known that penicillin would cure the disease. Even in the 60's, black women were sterilized in Mississippi through involuntary hysterectomies, sarcastically named 'Mississippi Appendectomies'.

Rebecca Skloot, the author, spent years tracking down the family (early reports had said HeLa cells came from Helen Lane), and gaining their trust enough to get detailed information and actual records to present the story.

I highly recommend this book. It's a remarkable story and provides food for thought on so many levels.

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

At the request of several readers of my TED posts, I committed to posting about the books that come in the TED Book Club. Having got some momentum back after the Hot Docs postings, I'm going to get back to the Book Club.

In the latest mailing, we received a gorgeous book called The Elements. This combines the stunning visual impact of a coffee table book with a huge amount of scientific information.

There's one double page for each element, showing atomic weight, density, melting and boiling point, valence, electronegativity, and the year and location in which it was discovered. It also describes its typical uses. The page on the left shows the page for Hydrogen.

There are exotic new elements at the end of the periodic table that I'd never heard of. Element 97, Berkelium, is named after University of California at Berkeley where it was discovered in 1949. A second element discovered there is named Californium.

What a gorgeous book to amble through from time to time, and a great reference book for any home.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The latest TED Book Club selections included The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live. This wonderful big book distorts world map so that the size of different countries is proportional to some particular factor. For instance, the map to the left shows the distribution of passenger cars, dominated by the US, Europe and Japan.


On the other hand, a map measuring number of people living in poverty has India, China, Africa and SouthEast Asia ballooning in size.

You can read columns and columns of numbers, but a map such as this really brings home the message.

This book shows 366 such maps in glossy colour, with explanations. What a great coffee table book to browse when you have a few moments - with each fascinating page being thought provoking. You can also browse through almost 600 maps on the Worldmapper site. On most maps, Canada is almost invisible. However, we do gain some prominence on the map showing water resources. You can see us up there in dark blue at the top of the map!


Many diverse topics can be illuminated by this type of sophisticated software map. For instance, at a past TED, Alisa Smith, President and CEO of Public Radio International, used these maps to dramatically depict the state of US new coverage. Based on the news in all US media in February 2007 a worldmapper map makes it look as if the US and Iraq were the only two countries on the planet. She couldn't have made her point about the parochialism of US media more powerfully.

Today, I attended the Rotman Business School's annual Lifelong Learning Conference, which focused on Wicked Problems - those problems in social planning that are difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements. Anita McGahan has been studying and teaching about wicked problems at Rotman, with a considerable focus on global health care issues. McGahan made good use of worldmapper charts to show how different the health care issues are in the rich countries versus the poor. In rich countries, the major disease burden is from noncommunicable diseases, whereas the disease burden in poor countries is from communicable, maternal, prenatal, and nutritional diseases.

And of course, by 2050, we'll see the tremendous divide between the elderly in the rich countries and the young in the poor countries. The elderly rich will be dependent on youth in the poor countries as the productive, working people of the world. Again, dramatic charts showed this divide very clearly. McGahan hopes such impactful presentation will help the rich world to care more about the health care problems of the poor, even if only out of self-interest.

It's hard to make appropriate policy decisions without comprehensive and accurate data. Modern technology is delivering that data. But the sheer quantity of data can be bewildering. Our challenge now is to make sense of the data. Software tools such as worldmapper can unveil insights we might otherwise miss. And certainly the approach can help raise awareness about issues in a dramatic and understandable way.

Have fun browsing the book or the web site - or both!

TED Book Club Selections

It's that time of year when I start getting excited about heading to TED - and when friends and relatives start dreading the bombardment of new ideas I'll spout after being there. As a warm-up for this year's blogging, here's a list of the latest books from the TED book club. I'd be delighted to start seeing some comments on this blog - perhaps people have read these books and would add their comments on the books?

Tribes, by Seth Godin
Godin is best known for his marketing book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. This proposes that to get your message across in today's world of message saturation, you have to make your products and services as remarkable as a purple cow in a field of Guernseys.
In Tribes, he proposes that anyone can be a leader, by leveraging the Internet to connect a passionate group of people to your idea and to you as a leader.
I've been fascinated by the story of how new media was used in the Obama campaign, in a presentation by Rahaf Harfoush, a young Canadian woman who worked there. The founder of Facebook led the development of tools that enabled any iPhone user to function as a field office, and any PC user to turn her house into a full campaign office. Rahaf said the campaign was successful in using these tools because Obama 'got it', because they were open and supportive in promoting good work by people outside the campaign (typified by the 27M views of Will.i.am's video published on YouTube), and the clarity and consistency of the campaign message which meant these outside collaborators' efforts were 'on' message. Too bad Godin's book was published too early to document this most spectacular of tribes.
Tribes is a very light book - small pages and not many of them. It's also a bit repetitive. But it does read like a breeze and it's a great way to spend a couple of hours.
Godin is speaking at TED this year, so I hope to add more on these ideas from TED.

The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone: Reflections on Idea, the Emerging 21st Century Power, by Shashi Tharoor
I'm anxious to read this book, both because I love TED's suggestions in general and because of my fascination with India. The book blurb says the book described the 'vast changes that have recently transformed this once sleeping giant into a world leader in the realms of science and technology, a nation once poverty stricken that now boasts a middle class of over 300 million people.' A review characterizes the many pieces in the book as 'quick, sketchy takes on Indian cultural touchstones, from political corruption to Bollywood to cricket.' They comment on his 'ready wit' - an Indian without a horoscope is like an American without a credit card!

McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal World, by Misha Glenny
Now here's a book I wouldn't have picked up if it weren't sent by TED. A review on Amazon, where it was picked as a Significant Seven for April last year writes that Glenny 'draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman's bright, flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it's also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth's economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and uthe usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material'.
Sounds as if this will be a real eye-opener - and not in a good way.