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

Defining Innovation

I've just finished teaching a course called Managing Innovation at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto.  It's a second year MBA course and I always start the course with a discussion of the real meaning of Innovation.  Most students arrive at the class with a pretty narrow definition of innovation - and for most it centres on technological invention.

My definition is much broader than that and we had an extended discussion about our different views of innovation.  Perhaps it has something to do with me being the professor, but we ended converging on my favourite definition, namely.

I like this definition for several reasons.  I like the use of the word value.  Value doesn't just relate to profit.  The value can arise from cost reduction, or social value, or even a new way of thinking about the world.  So the definition holds for corporations, governments, or non-profits.  If we're going to solve the world's social problems, we're going to need a lot of innovation, so it's important that our thinking about innovation extends to social situations, not just profit-seeking enterprises.

The definition requires you to have more than just a great idea; you have to implement something to create value.  I like that concept of creating value.  An invention alone might not create value, and that's why I would argue an invention is not by itself enough to qualify as an innovation.

I like the use of the word fresh instead of new.  Taking an idea that's been used in one area and applying it to another fits in my definition of innovation.  Fresh captures that idea of taking an idea from one arena to another; I would classify that as innovation too.

This year, we had a particularly spirited discussion about value, and whether something had to have significant and immediate impact to qualify as an innovation.  We concluded that something had to have a measurable impact in order to be considered to deliver value.  It was an thought-provoking discussion.  You always learn from students!

The Nuclear Conundrum

Some time ago, I wrote a post  about Bill Gates' talk at TED 2010 -  probably the very best organized talk I've ever heard.   Gates blew me away with his clarity and coherence as he took us through his analysis of the climate change problem.  Basically, he said, 'If climate change is the question, then nuclear is the answer'.

Gates outlined the argument that to attack global poverty, you had to attack climate change, because it was the poor who would suffer the most from climate change.  And if you eliminate all the ways that cannot solve climate change, you're left with nuclear power as the only option.   Of course, this option is anathema to environmentalists, but as Sherlock Holmes put it,“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”   One could rephrase that as "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the answer."

In that talk, Gates introduced a new type of nuclear reactor which uses spent uranium (helping clean up the existing nuclear waste mess) and runs buried underground for 20 years at a time without the need to refuel or remove waste (the activities that introduce immense risk in current nuclear plants).  The technology was developed at TerraPower, a company led by Nathan Myrvold, former chief scientist at Microsoft.

Well, I recently read an article on cbc.ca telling of Gates' visit to China, where he had discussions about introducing this technology there.  Pretty interesting, I thought.  If there's a place that is likely to tip the planet over the climate change abyss, it's developing China.  Wouldn't it be nice if this technology delivers on its promise and China doesn't fuel its growth by building more dirty coal plants?

There's another interesting perspective on this visit in the Washington Post, lamenting that Gates had to go abroad to try to sell this revolutionary idea because the US has become a hostile environment to introducing such revolutionary technology.   As a person who follows innovation, and writings about innovation, pretty closely, that article is part of a chorus of voices disturbed over the US' loss of innovative leadership in the world.

Nixon's visit to China is considered to be pivotal in global affairs; Gates' visit could be even more significant for the planet.

Kobo Vox - worse than the Kobo

A previous blog post contrasted the Kindle and the Kobo.  Since then I have unfortunately discovered that a Kobo cannot survive getting crunched by an airline seat coming to upright position with a Kobo caught in the mechanism.  Sigh.

Still driven by the desire to access e-books from Toronto's wonderful public library, my husband and I decided to replace the Kobo.  When he was out shopping, the Kobo Vox caught his eye and he brought one home.

To make a long story short, we returned the Kobo Vox after a few days of playing with it.  I have already complained about the Kobo being slow in a previous post.  The Vox is even slower!  

I could not figure out how to download books from the library to Kobo Vox (despite previously having done this with the Kobo).  I went to Kobo.com to try to get some guidance on how to do that, to be told that Kobo Vox isn't supported on Kobo.com.  As I was searching around the web for info on downloading from a library to the Vox, I read extremely negative reviews on the web features, so I didn't even bother to try that.  Besides, I have an iPad which I love (see my post on that).


My advice: don't buy the Kobo Vox.