Books

Computer Confluence Complete (7th Edition)

Average customer rating:

very informative
very good, i received my book on time

Computer Confluence Complete (7th Edition)
George Beekman , and Michael J. Quinn
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 013152531X

Customer Reviews:

very informative.......2006-05-16

This book has a massive amount of information. It covers a lot of different areas of Information Technology.
The content is mostly up to date, though has some obsolete info. A few times it gets too technical for an average user and even an IT professional; also the book has some minor inaccuracies. Besides technical data, the book also provides interesting quotes from some very smart individuals.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the basics or broaden his knowledge in the area of computers.

very good, i received my book on time.......2006-03-09

good. i got my book on time.

The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security

Average customer rating:

Hits the nail on the head, but management won't be able to comprehend the implications!
Good book to share with staff
Fun read
Hard to defeat a determined intruder
Interesting cons, but repetitive and ego-trippy

The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
Kevin D. Mitnick , and William L. Simon
Manufacturer: Wiley
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Binding: Paperback

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The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
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ASIN: 076454280X

Amazon.co.uk

The Art of Deception is about gaining someone's trust by lying to them and then abusing that trust for fun and profit. Hackers use the euphemism "social engineering" and hacker-guru Kevin Mitnick examines many example scenarios.

After Mitnick's first dozen examples anyone responsible for organizational security is going to lose the will to live. It's been said before, but people and security are antithetical. Organizations exist to provide a good or service and want helpful, friendly employees to promote the good or service. People are social animals who want to be liked. Controlling the human aspects of security means denying someone something. This circle can't be squared.

Considering Mitnick's reputation as a hacker guru, it's ironic that the last point of attack for hackers using social engineering are computers. Most of the scenarios in The Art of Deception work just as well against computer-free organizations and were probably known to the Phoenicians; technology simply makes it all easier. Phones are faster than letters, after all, and having large organizations means dealing with lots of strangers.

Much of Mitnick's security advice sounds practical until you think about implementation, when you realize that more effective security means reducing organizational efficiency--an impossible trade in competitive business. And anyway, who wants to work in an organization where the rule is "Trust no one"? Mitnick shows how easily security is breached by trust, but without trust people can't live and work together. In the real world, effective organizations have to acknowledge that total security is a chimera--and carry more insurance. --Steve Patient, amazon.co.uk

Book Description

The world's most infamous hacker offers an insider's view of the low-tech threats to high-tech security
Kevin Mitnick's exploits as a cyber-desperado and fugitive form one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history and have spawned dozens of articles, books, films, and documentaries. Since his release from federal prison, in 1998, Mitnick has turned his life around and established himself as one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide. Now, in The Art of Deception, the world's most notorious hacker gives new meaning to the old adage, "It takes a thief to catch a thief."
Focusing on the human factors involved with information security, Mitnick explains why all the firewalls and encryption protocols in the world will never be enough to stop a savvy grifter intent on rifling a corporate database or an irate employee determined to crash a system. With the help of many fascinating true stories of successful attacks on business and government, he illustrates just how susceptible even the most locked-down information systems are to a slick con artist impersonating an IRS agent. Narrating from the points of view of both the attacker and the victims, he explains why each attack was so successful and how it could have been prevented in an engaging and highly readable style reminiscent of a true-crime novel. And, perhaps most importantly, Mitnick offers advice for preventing these types of social engineering hacks through security protocols, training programs, and manuals that address the human element of security.

Customer Reviews:

Hits the nail on the head, but management won't be able to comprehend the implications!.......2007-06-28

Although many of the examples detailed in this book are dated , the concepts are still as easy to leverage as ever.

Mr. Mitnick offers some possible solutions in this book, however he wasted his effort. As any security expert knows, getting upper management buy in to security is difficult at best. Management pays lip service to security, but they are typically more concerned about privacy issues than taking meaningful steps to address known security risks.

When my organization tasked my team to perform a social engineering assessment of their network, that's what they meant. Over and over, we tried to suggest processes that would be easy to manipulate for even the most amateur attacker, only to be immediately cut off and told no. If there is no technical attack to guard against, management can't begin to process the implications.

Good book to share with staff.......2007-01-31

This book served as a great reminder of why we need to be thoughtful about sharing information. I am buying extra copies to share with our staff. The offered advice was especially useful for large organizations with distributed sensitive information.

Fun read.......2007-01-28

If you are intreased in this, good book. Not a lot of detail, but good read.

Hard to defeat a determined intruder.......2006-10-24

I found this book an unpleasant but valuable read. Unpleasant because who wants to read lots of stories about how innocent people were cheated, lied to, stolen from? Valuable because it makes clear in great detail how computer security is only as strong as its weakest link -- people. Both their good qualities, like the desire to help others, and bad ones, like laziness or inattention, allow the determined thief to bypass computer security and steal information or money. Yes, the book finishes with guidelines on how to better secure your business, and whom to train (everyone). But you may find it hard to imagine how people, naturally open and helpful, could do what it takes to avoid deception.

Interesting cons, but repetitive and ego-trippy.......2006-03-25

Mitnick has his own reputation to live up to with this book, which sets a pretty high bar for the audience who knows him as the "World's Most Notorious Hacker." Unfortunately, while he knows the material cold, his skills as an author are less stellar.

The vignettes describing various cons are, in the large, very entertaining. They're fictionalized, and sometimes the dialogue feels artificial. This book is supposed to convince us how easily people are victimized by social engineers. When the victim's dialogue plays too obviously into the con man's hands (for the purpose of illustrating the point relevant to the enclosing chapter/section), this goal is to some extent defeated. It's too easy to read unnatural dialogue and use that as an excuse to tell oneself, "I don't have to worry about that sort of attack -- I'm not that dumb!" More effort could have been expended in fictionalizing these scenarios without making them so difficult to relate to. Seeing how a con is performed is kind of like learning how a magic trick works -- it holds a similar fascination. Imagine seeing an amazing magic trick performed on television, wondering how it was possibly accomplished, and then learning that the trick was all in the video editing. That really sucks the fun out of the magic -- analogously, when the "trick" in one of these cons is just that the victim does something obviously stupid at just the right moment, the believability and enjoyment are damaged.

Despite what I've said, the cons are definitely enjoyable to read and do offer some genuine insights. Not all suffer from believability problems. However, the supporting material discussing these scenarios is pretty weak. There's a rigid format ("Analyzing the con," "Preventing the con," etc.) which leads the author to repeat the same points over and over again with very little variation, at times seemingly just to fit the format. The purpose of all this material is to give useful security recommendations and proper motivation for following them. The recommendations are on-target, but repeated ad nauseum.

The descriptions of social engineers also suffer from a tendency to stroke the author's own ego -- the bigger the con, the thicker the language about how smart, handsome, and clever the con man is. I'd like to be convinced by facts, not hyperbole.

I think this would really have worked better as two books, for two different audiences. One for entertainment, to read about all the cons and how they work, to get a little history of social engineering. And one for serious security discussion. The blend of the two leads to a schizoid work that's simply mediocre.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Average customer rating:

Phenomenal Book on Information Science and Peer Production
Good argumentation
Connectivization
Excellent and Insightful Articulation
Deep content, but terrible style

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Yochai Benkler
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300110561

Book Description

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained—or lost—by the decisions we make today.

Customer Reviews:

Phenomenal Book on Information Science and Peer Production.......2007-05-12

I first became familiar with Benkler after reading his paper, "Coase's Penguin" in undergraduate study. I was delighted to hear of the publication of this book. Benkler continues beautifully where he left off in his previous papers and synthesizes an excellent theory of social production in his book.

Benkler begins by describing the economic shape of information - it's non-rival and builds upon itself. He explains the challenges that face information, particularly the Babel Objection. Benkler also covers some legal background on aspects of a "liberal society", such as the role of commons versus private property.

From there, he makes his way into peer production. He touches different aspects of this type of production, from open source to distributed content production & filtering (click workers) to the results of the FCC's shift towards commons-based wireless policy. I found chapter 4, where he connects social production to the economic concepts discussed earlier, to be the most interesting chapter of the book.

He moves on to a lengthy discussion of the political effects of network distribution and social production, including a summary of the history of mass media and predictions about the future. From there, he lays down his argument that we ought to continue to encourage open networks and information sharing. He presents a discussion on current legislation and legal challenges to information and provides some examples of solutions.

I read this book coming out of an undergraduate program in Information Science and wished I had read this book perhaps my sophomore or junior year. Benkler essentially lays out, in linear form, the precise message that my professors were teaching. Because of networks, information science in the 21st century will not follow the traditional industrial-style of distribution but rather a distributed and non-proprietary model. Its impact is phenomenal, not only in the realm of economics and science but politics, culture, and interpersonal communication.

This book ought to be required reading for every undergraduate student studying Telecommunications, Media, or Information Science.

Good argumentation.......2007-04-28

I agree when some people say the book is not well edited (even not being english my first language I found some errors within it) but I think the greatest think about it is the attempt to explain something that it is easy to see that is happening today but nobody know why is happening. You know people write in Wikipedia and that most of them do that at their free time, you know that some people participate in great collaborative efforts to develop free software in the Internet, you know people keep blogs to express their point of view. But can you explain why that happens, why do they do that expecting no financial return or acknowledgment? What do they want? Perhaps you may know what you want when you do or don't some of that things but what about the rest of the world, if you care about it? What has changed or is changing or still must be changed in the societies so that happens?
The author doesn't explain it too but he tries to do it, it is an initial attempt to get some answers. His argumentation through the book covers many aspects of our lives, economic, political, social, antropological, legal and I think that at least at the end you will have some new insights on what is all that about.

Connectivization.......2007-04-20

Be forewarned that this brilliantly conceived book is not so brilliantly written, and the reading can be a real slog at times. Yochai Benkler is a perceptive social theorist but his thoughts are bogged down in academic writing that could really use some editing. Expect excessive introducing, foreshadowing, recapping, and summarizing, giving you the often tiresome impression that you will read Benkler's prose again or have read it before. This book also suffers from what business strategists and military tacticians would call "scope creep," as Benkler's broad theories on society and knowledge become so all-inclusive as to border on diffuseness and ineffectiveness - a problem that really slows down the middle section of the book. This is a common difficulty for vast unified theories about information and humanity, so prepare for some difficulty in following the main points that Benkler is trying to make.

But now that those warnings are out of the way, beneath Benkler's ponderous prose are insightful theories about the rise of networked culture, inspired by the digital revolution, in the face of lockdowns from entrenched power players. The initial uses of open networks inspired a megalomaniacal reaction from the industrial and political sectors, which have partially succeeded in forcing technological design changes, and persecution of new cultural behaviors, that threatened their economic and political dominance. For instance, intellectual property laws (patents, trademarks, and copyrights), which were originally meant to encourage cultural production, have been transformed by power players into tools to enforce corporate profitability. And if you think concerns over those trends are merely alarmism, Benkler provides profound evidence that damage really is being done to culture, freedom, and democracy - in ways that are far deeper and more troubling than the (corporate-inspired) popular rhetoric around piracy, rolyalties, and hackers.

Benkler informatively differentiates the types of freedom that are at stake - personal, cultural, social, and political - and ably demonstrates how each are affected by trends in infrastructure development, media behavior, corporate profiteering, and political gamesmanship. One especially winning chapter deals with how the rising network society can promote justice and development in third world areas that are not currently connected and may never be. The corporate and political insistence on regulating the information infrastructure and criminalizing user behaviors may represent a losing battle against the basic human drive to network and create, as can be seen in trends like open source software and community wi-fi. Benkler's main point here (when you're finally able to uncover it) is that humanity may be on the brink of a major change in the way we process culture and information, thanks to the growth in open worldwide networks. The old school power players won't go without a fight, adding unnecessary strife to the process, but Benkler has faith in humanity's ability to transform and rise above [~doomsdayer520~]

Excellent and Insightful Articulation.......2007-01-11

I highly recommend reading Yochai Benkler's book.

It is a balanced articulation of what the Internet and Web 2.0 are enabling in the development of new forms of social collaboration that are not adequately recognized as such by both private/regulated market advocates and welfare advocates. One of the things that struck me most is Benkler's capacity to create a perspective in which he can show that these new forms of collectives are rooted in old practices that have existed forever.

He also shows that these practices can gain major significance if:

1. The neutrality of the web, access to the web, Open Source initiatives, and the General Public Licensing type of legislation are improved,
2. The aggressive move toward Intellectual Property laws and regulations, and control by corporations, is counter-balanced.

Excellent read!

Deep content, but terrible style.......2006-10-07

First, I should note that The Wealth Of Networks is terribly edited. Given that Benkler thanked his editor for his Herculean work at the beginning of the book, I can only imagine the state it started in; as it is, it ended with glaring grammatical errors, including using "effect" when he meant "affect" and "wave" when he meant "waive". (I'll provide specific examples sometime tomorrow.) Editing, apparently, is a craft that is only noticed in its absence. I didn't realize this until I read The Wealth of Networks. By the time I was done with the book, I was copyediting every page.

None of this mentions the stylistic errors, which are rife. Benkler uses the first-person singular pronoun once, or possibly twice, in the whole book; its use is jarring. The rest is passively voiced and all the words are sesquipedalian. Nothing's wrong with inconsistency in style, when deployed artfully, but it feels more like an oversight here than a deliberate plan.

Those of you who've read the book will perhaps object to all this cavilling over style. Again, it's only noticeable because it's so bad; normally I would almost ignore the style and get to the meat of the argument. It was hard to do so here.

Benkler's argument is quite systematic and nearly has the force of pure logic. His claim -- propounded over a decade's worth of papers and synthesized in this book -- is that the new economics of the Internet fundamentally change deep parts of our culture. Cheap communication allows projects like Linux and the Wikipedia to emerge and more to the point work very well. Each of us can invest trivial amounts of our time and money, yet the end result is something much greater than any of us could have expected. Person A links to person B on his website, and lots of person A's follow along with their own person B's. Pretty soon there's enough information -- from our trivial little links alone -- that Google can come through and aggregate that information into a profoundly useful information-retrieval tool. Millions of people click on star ratings on Amazon, and pretty soon we can all get highly accurate suggestions about books we might like. I copyedit the Wikipedia, and so do hundreds of thousands of others; before long, the Wikipedia competes with Britannica.

Benkler's task is to take his understanding of what makes all this stuff tick, and think through the consequences. What does it mean for democracy when people can communicate cheaply? We're starting to get a taste of the answer with blogs. The media available for political discourse before the Net came around -- like television -- were passive. Someone else produced a lot of content at great cost, and pushed it out to a lot of stupid devices that couldn't really do anything interesting; televisions are "dumb terminals" for video. Now we can all be publishers for no cost, and the devices are smart enough that we can talk back and start conversations. Yes, we're still getting much of our news from old-media stalwarts like the New York Times, but the medium allows us to blog about it, post comments to others' blogs, and search around and see what others have said about it. All of this is possible because the publishing tools are getting easier, because communication is cheap, and because computers are increasingly available to everyone. We now have media that permit and encourage conversation; the old broadcast media never did.

In a world where communication is no longer passive, and where you don't need a multimillion-dollar television studio to get your ideas out to the world, democracy changes radically. For one thing, the fringes suddenly have a voice that they didn't have before. It's obvious, just from thinking for a moment about how mass media work, that they serve inoffensive pabulum to the least common denominator. If you can choose to broadcast a show that might offend people or upset them (say, displaying images from Abu Ghraib), or else broadcast the latest news about Brad and Jen, you will choose the latter in a heartbeat. The point in mass media is not to publish the widest array of views, but to maximize revenue. Maximizing revenue means appealing to the broadest mass of people, which in turn means being as inoffensive as possible.

It's not difficult to see that mass-market media incentives are quite different than the incentives that a democracy should strive for. Commercial interests are not our interests, orthodox capitalist training to the contrary. So what happens when media become non-commercial, like blogs? Suddenly you have millions of people who can get their ideas out to the world, and lots of things happen. For instance, it becomes clear to people that there's more than just the Republican Party and the Democratic Party -- or even Republicans, Democrats, Greens and Libertarians. The whole tone of the culture changes. Biting commentary gets airtime. We become active. We argue, like people in a democracy are supposed to.

All of this is not pie-in-the-sky idealism. As Benkler makes very clear, it's kind of inevitable. The axiom is basically this: people will do more of what's easy for them, and less of what's difficult. With the cost of communications technology now negligible, lots of things become easy.

The objection that not everyone is a blogger is irrelevant. It may in fact be true that the majority of Americans are passive dullards. Even if it is, the fact remains that there is a new set of technologies that let many of us do things that we couldn't have done before, and it would take willful blindness to believe that this leaves democracy unchanged.

Benkler builds out the argument in considerably more detail and considerably more verbosity. He wants you to understand what is likely to come out of all of this, what the challenges are, and where the promise may lead us. It's a tremendous synthesis.

Alas, it will take people like Larry Lessig to make Americans understand this promise; Benkler has confined himself to academia. As I may have mentioned, I've heard a lot of trashing on Lessig recently -- that he's a shallow thinker who wasn't even a good enough lawyer to win Eldred. I've heard Benkler's book described as a landmark that people will be discussing in 20 years. Allow me to disagree. I think Code is a much more important work, both for the ground it cleared and for its rhetorical power. I think Lessig's later book Free Culture could actually get people storming the gates of Disney, whereas Benkler will never.

More to the point, Benkler's work seems like much more of a look back than a plan for forward motion. If you already use Linux and have internalized its lessons, you hardly need the theory that Benkler gives you. If you have really thought about the Wikipedia, then you can skip over that chunk of his book. A copy of Code and a thorough understanding of the GPL will probably give you 90% of what The Wealth of Networks does.

In twenty years, The Wealth of Networks will stand as a very nice description of the world as it stood in 2006. Code will mark the beginning of a movement. As someone who is ensconced in that movement, I believe that everyone should have a copy of The Wealth of Networks on his shelf and a copy of Code in his pocket.

History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Average customer rating:

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
Very Interesting
History as Science Fiction
Provocative, appealing and controversial
pharaohs lived in the 3rd century AD

History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
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ASIN: 2913621058

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Provocative, appealing and controversial.......2006-08-02

Fomenko has succeeded to convincingly demonstrate the misconception about what "history" factually is... It is fiction and -like we can read and judge for ourselves- no science. It indeed is "make belief" only. I "discovered" Fomenko while studying the "old" history of Al Andaluz, Spain. Having found too many contradictions in available data, having seen too many forgeries as to pretend the importance of christianity for its decline, I ventured out to find Fomenko, who convinced me that we know little if anything for sure of the epoch before the XI-century. However, the integration of the Arabic-Islamic cultural history into the heavily distorted Western fails... There are some attempts to fit "the budding new religion" (Islam) into Fomenko's scheme, but they are too weak to be taken seriously and too often focussing on Turkey as the region where things started to influence the West, which is untrue at all.
Islam certainly was no "new religion" in the X-century. That the highly cultivated Al Andaluz ruler Mohammed-I could have been "mirrored" down in time into some myth about the "illiterate" founder of Islam itself is highly speculative. Nevertheless, Fomenko convinces me about the processes that were involved in forging a christian history. Intriguing and controversial as his books are, I recommend them as to rethink our current position in time and space and simply verify what was claimed. It is a "good" book, but not for bedtime reading... Mundus vult decipi, the world wants to be cheated. Fomenko's readers will understand why.

pharaohs lived in the 3rd century AD.......2006-02-16

Traces of white wine were found in Tutankhamen's tomb however there were no record of white wine in Egypt until the 3rd century AD, 1600 years after the young pharaoh died according to the traditional chronology. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18925395.400
It can be interpreted as a contribution towards New Chronology theory that pharaohs lived in the 3rd century AD.

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Average customer rating:

A must
An Corporate Information Seller's Handbook
Very Practical
Cheap Text Book
A Must Read for Internet Entrepreneurs

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
Carl Shapiro , and Hal R. Varian
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 087584863X

Amazon.com

Chapter 1 of Information Rules begins with a description of the change brought on by technology at the close of the century--but the century described is not this one, it's the late 1800s. One hundred years ago, it was an emerging telephone and electrical network that was transforming business. Today it's the Internet. The point? While the circumstances of a particular era may be unique, the underlying principles that describe the exchange of goods in a free-market economy are the same. And the authors, Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, should know. Shapiro is Professor of Business Strategy at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and has also served as chief economist at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Varian is the Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley. Together they offer a deep knowledge of how economic systems work coupled with first-hand experience of today's network economy. They write:

Sure, today's business world is different in a myriad of ways from that of a century ago. But many of today's managers are so focused on the trees of technological change that they fail to see the forest: the underlying economic forces that determine success and failure.

Shapiro and Varian go to great lengths to purge this book of the technobabble and forecasting of an electronic woo-woo land that's typical in books of this genre. Instead, with their feet on the ground, they consider how to market and distribute goods in the network economy, citing examples from industries as diverse as airlines, software, entertainment, and communications. The authors cover issues such as pricing, intellectual property, versioning, lock-in, compatibility, and standards. Clearly written and presented, Information Rules belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who has an interest in today's network economy--entrepreneurs, managers, investors, students. If there was ever a textbook written on how to do business in the information age, this book is it. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

Book Description

In a marketplace that depends so thoroughly on cutting-edge information technology, can classic economic principles still offer any real strategic value? Yes! say Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian. In Information Rules, they reveal that many long-standing economic concepts can provide the insight and understanding necessary to succeed in the information age. Shapiro and Varian argue that if managers seriously want to develop effective strategies for competing in the new economy, they must understand the fundamental economics of information technology. Whether information takes the form of software code or recorded music, is published in a book or magazine, or even posted on a web site, managers must know how to evaluate the consequences of pricing, protecting, and planning new versions of their information products, services, and systems. The first book to distill the economics of information and networks into practical business strategies, Information Rules is a guide to the winning moves that can help business leaders-from writers, lawyers, and finance professionals to executives in the entertainment, publishing, and hardware and software industries--navigate successfully through the information economy.

Download Description

In Information Rules, authors Shapiro and Varian reveal that many classic economic concepts can provide the insight and understanding necessary to succeed in the information age. They argue that if managers seriously want to develop effective strategies for competing in the new economy, they must understand the fundamental economics of information technology. Whether information takes the form of software code or recorded music, is published in a book or magazine, or even posted on a website, managers must know how to evaluate the consequences of pricing, protecting, and planning new versions of information products, services, and systems. The first book to distill the economics of information and networks into practical business strategies, Information Rules is a guide to the winning moves that can help business leaders navigate successfully through the tough decisions of the information economy.

Customer Reviews:

A must.......2006-08-25

If you're in the software business and you haven't read this book, chances are you don't know what's going on. This may sound a bit abrupt, but that is the way it is. Bsaic concepts like lock-in and the need to differentiate are discussed in a clear and useful way. If more people would read this, a lot fewer mistakes would be made.

An Corporate Information Seller's Handbook.......2006-03-11

Both authors are professors at the University of California at Berkeley. This book deals with how unchanging principles are being applied to the changing conditions and technologies of information marketing (software).

A unique condition to today's information economy is that it's products are costly to produce, cheap to reproduce and without fixed supply. Value must be created by 'versioning' and personalizing a product in a number of different ways. The other alternative is to become a cost-leader commodity seller.

How to lock-in your customers for the long-term is discussed, as well as how not to be locked-in by your suppliers.

The pros and cons of evolution strategies are explained. Should your product be backward compatible or cleanly break with old technology?

Best in this book is how different positive feedback approaches can put your company in the super-accelerated growth mode.

Five Bright Stars !

Very Practical .......2006-01-24

The arrival of the Internet and the information explosion it created has made it possible for inventors and entrepreneurs to build a business from scratch to worldwide marketing capability in a very few years. The authors of this book take the position that all too often we are deluded into thinking certain and tried and true economic principles have been abolished by this new Internet economy. They argue their position without jargon and with examples taken from the real world.

While old pricing ratios and old pricing strategies may not apply in the information age, new pricing ratios and new strategies have taken their place. Information goods can be costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. For example, a copy of a 100 million dollar movie on videotape costs a few cents to make. So pricing cannot follow, say, a 20% markup rule when the unit cost is essentially zero; "you must price your information goods according to customer value, not according to your production cost."

Several chapters cover pricing strategies and how to maintain control when some "view the Internet as one giant out-of-control copying machine." These strategies involve methods for differing your product from your competitors, avoiding sky-high initial pricing that encourages competition, and customizing. Interestingly, they note the "one-to-one marketing" strategy was "first described by economist A.C. Pigou in 1920."

Sometimes literally giving a product away works. The book describes how the former school teacher (Sheryl Leach) that created Barney gave free videos to day care centers and others located near the stores selling the Barney tapes. A note inside told parents where the stores were. It worked magnificently and Barney is now one of today¹s icons.

The development of digital watermarks has provided one tool for controlling piracy of your web presented material.

An important information age problem is recognizing and dealing with "lock-in." The writers compare cars with computers. You can switch from a Ford to a Chevy with no trouble, but changing computers may obsolete your present software. How do you convince customers to switch to your product or service when a switching cost is involved? The authors discuss several strategies.

Problems with "lock-in" and "switching costs" also often occur when you purchase durable equipment and service contracts. The authors advise you to carefully consider the costs of being locked-in to you supplier¹s parts and services. They especially caution regarding "evergreen contracts" which automatically renew.

Many interesting historical examples are used to drive home points. Edison, for example, with regard to establishing standards, invented the word "Hello" for answering the phone. He was hard of hearing and the English "Hallow" didn¹t grab attention as well. Incidentally, Alexander Graham Bell pushed for "Ahoy." The battles for standardizing railroad gauges and the classic standards battle that established AC power over DC power are detailed. (No mention of Tesla, a shame.)

The enormous role "blocking patents" can play when a formal standard-setting process is taking place within an industry is discussed. Most people think of industry standards as being dictated by the mighty corporations, but if the small guy is not invited to the table his firm "is not required to license its patents on fair and reasonable terms." The government may also monitor a standard-setting procedure with regard to monopoly considerations. When the steel electrical tubing people attempted to stack the deck, the plastic electrical tubing people cried foul and won.

Yet another interesting historical example is given in the discussion regarding how the concept of reasonable royalties and "just price" arose. It goes back to medieval times: "the just price of a horse was the price that would prevail at the open market at the annual fair, not the price that happens to emerge from a traveler in desperate need of a horse."

Like most growing fields the Internet has generated many unique and delightful terms. Vaporware is one such term. That is the promising of a new product and not delivering or delivering very late. This business tactic has been used by even the biggest (IBM, Microsoft), but as the authors note, it has often boomeranged.

While promising too much too soon is dangerous, the book makes the point that in this age of rapid technology progress "rigidity is death." the French became world leaders in the 1980s with their Minitel system, but today only 3 percent can access the Internet. A case where success also resulted in a high switching cost.

Each chapter of the book concludes with "Lessons" which are capsule summaries of the chapter¹s main points. Like the rest of the book, legalese and the jargon of academic economic courses are completely avoided.

This book is so readable and practical one can only hope other professors will use it as an example of how to write without arcane technobabble.

Cheap Text Book.......2005-09-20

I saved a lot of money buying this textbook on-line. It was in good quality.

A Must Read for Internet Entrepreneurs.......2005-06-16

Although this book was written in 1998, it is just as relevant if not more so today. The book discusses how Internet entrepreneurs should price their goods/services; how they can create lock-in effects to instill customer loyalty; and perhaps most importantly, how they can create network effects so as to exponentially increase their client base and barriers to entry. A brilliant book written by two leading authorities on economics.

Average customer rating:

Very good book. Almost prophetic.
My view of the world ...
Where are the Audio and Video Versions?
Wisdom from the Prophet of the Internet
To Digital or Not to Digital; Was That The Question? Chocolate/Vanilla, Either/Or Options?

The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan , and Quentin Fiore
Manufacturer: Gingko Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1584230703

Amazon.com

The Medium is the Massage is Marshall McLuhan's most condensed, and perhaps most effective, presentation of his ideas. Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.

Book Description

30 years after its publication Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage remains his most entertaining, provocative, and piquant book. With every technological and social "advance" McLuhan's proclamation that "the media work us over completely" becomes more evident and plain. In his words, 'so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered'.

McLuhan's remarkable observation that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication" is undoubtedly more relevant today than ever before. With the rise of the internet and the explosion of the digital revolution there has never been a better time to revisit Marshall McLuhan.

Customer Reviews:

Very good book. Almost prophetic........2007-05-16

Some of McLuhans stuff is really unaccessible for average readers... It's deep stuff... BUT we see much of what he was talking about occuring in our modern day. It's really interesting. I think if he could have found a better way to present his philosphies he could have really made much more of a difference to our "global community"

My view of the world ..........2006-12-16

... was profoundly influenced by this book. I read it about 30 years ago. I'm pleasantly surprised to find it still in print.

Where are the Audio and Video Versions?.......2006-10-21

Yes, back in the late 60's or early 70's there were both audio and a movie version of this title. I use to own the LP album and frequently watched the short movie version that played on college campuses more than 35 years ago. Hopefully, the LP and movie will eventually be transferred to CD and DVD? Better yet: podcast? clyde

Wisdom from the Prophet of the Internet.......2006-06-20

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) never conceived of the Internet. But the great communications theorist understood where communications was going, and the revolutionary effects of its direction.

This book takes his sometimes impenetrable prose and places it in a context of compelling photographs, advertisements, and cartoons in order to dramatically illustrate the meaning of his words, and the radical effect that changes in communications technology have on the lives of all the world's citizens. "It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of the media," he writes.

The Medium is the Massage begins and ends with quotes from Albert North Whitehead. The first is that "The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." The last is that "It is the business of the future to be dangerous."

There always are jeremiads against the new by those who are accustomed to the old. McLuhan quotes Socrates: "The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves...You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing."

The effects of the media on individuals are profound. "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, pyschological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty--psychic or physical."

Media affect you, the individual citizen. "Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community's need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions--the patterns of mechanistic technologies--are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank--that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early 'mistakes.' We have already reached a point where remedial control, born of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted...."

Media affect your family. "The family circle has widened. The whirlpool of information fathered by the electic media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage."

Media affect your neighborhood. "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstitued dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the the new technology than 'a place for everything and everything in its place.' You can't GO home again."

Media affect your education. "Today's television child is attuned to up-to-the-minute 'adult' news--inflation, rioting, war, taxes, crime, bathing beauties--and is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines."

Media affect your job. "From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there is a steady progress of fragmentation of the stages of work that constitute 'mechanization' and 'specialism.' These procedures cannot serve for survival or sanity in this new time. Under conditions of electric cicuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and 'human' service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty."

Media affect your government. "Nose-counting, a cherished part of the eighteenth century fragmentation process, has rapidly become a cumbersome and ineffectual form of social assessment in an envrionment of instant electric speeds. The public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today, the mass audience (the successor to the 'public') can be used as a creative, participating force. It is instead merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions. A new form of 'politics' is emerging, and in ways we haven't yet noticed. The living room has become a voting booth. Participation via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing EVERYTHING."

Media affect our relationships with groups of other citizens. "The shock of recognition. In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained, ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."

This book is, in short, a superb introduction to McLuhan's thinking. Ideally, it would be read before any of McLuhan's other books. Understanding McLuhan takes some time and thought, but the effort is well worth it to understand today's media and today's world.

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing," McLuhan quotes Meister Eckhardt as saying. McLuhan erases preconceptions of media being relatively insignificant, and demonstrates how the media affect the way each of us sees the world in which we live.

A memorable photo in the book is one of a middle-aged man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase standing upon a surfboard, riding the waves. "In his amusement born of rational detachment of his own situation, Poe's mariner in 'The Descent Into the Maelstrom' staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool," says McLuhan's accompanying prose. "His insight offers a possible strategem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl."

The last cartoon in the book--from the New Yorker in 1966--summarizes McLuhan's essential theme. A young man with a guitar discusses McLuhan with his father in a well-appointed library. "You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the enviroment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential, thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?"

We all should get McLuhan. The development of Internet--likely even more transformative than television--has greatly revived interest in McLuhan's view of technological changes as changing us as people, and of creating a global village for all of us to live in. "We impose the form of the old on the content of the new. The malady lingers on," McLuhan warns. We should heed his warnings and recognize, embrace, and work for constructive improvements in the ever-changing world in which we live.

To Digital or Not to Digital; Was That The Question? Chocolate/Vanilla, Either/Or Options?.......2005-12-05

Do printed Words create a sick society of antisocial eggheads with their noses hovering habitually above pages of ink? Duh, what? He said what when?

Here are a few of the words McLuhan used to politely and perceptively express this concept and much more.

>> Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.... The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media. Anxiety is, in great part, a result of trying to do do today's jobs with yesterday's tools, with yesterday's concepts. <<

Of course, the above quoted passage makes more sense today; imagine the awesome brain blower it would have been to a regular Jane or Joe reading it in 1967.

Possibly the only concept McLuhan hadn't yet tasted on his perceptive palate, was the idea that we could choose both chocolate AND vanilla, as we now do.

On other words, what is Amazon.com?

Possibly one of the best examples of a chocolate/vanilla marbled merger (what IS it with all these "M"'s) is the existence, style, and success of Amazon.com, where a graphically-enriched, ethereal electronic medium sells BOOKS... which have WORDS in them, on printed pages! Oh my, (dear McLuhan) we (humans) still like to bow out of the global, communal bombardment and READ in isolated luxury, in addition to enjoying the social, "interconnected" facets of electronic ease (sometimes coming through as sleazy cheese, and now we have Velveeta, too).

The 60's were truly gooey with phobias of solitude. Wonder what THAT was all about?

When composing my review of Jill Churchill's FEAR OF FLYING (posted 11/24/05, on Thanksgiving morning, with 2 other gourmet, sizzled turkey offerings), I was Right-Brain kicked into mentioning McLuhan's Massage, which hadn't crossed my mind in ages. In the FoF review, due to the Right Brain being basically non-verbal, my syntax around McLuhan's hallmark, landmark book tied itself into a Freudian slip-knot which I was forced to untie with a postscript:

P.S. Marshall McLuhan wrote THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE (implying more than "message"). I visited the Amazon buying page for that book to check spelling of his name. The editorials and 15 customer reviews there were amazingly insightful as well as delightfully (and crisply) worded. Even the slight criticisms felt clean, clear, and honestly helpful. Without reservation, I voted "Yes" on each of the reviews. They told me more about the book than I "got" when I read it in college (umpteen Ages ago) and they returned to memory and life what I did get. Born in 1947, I'm in the Baby Boomer crowd. (Maybe I should go post this P.S. into a review?)

(End of P.S. added to my review of Jill Churchill's FoF.)

In the last half of the 60's, my soul was still asleep and my body was off base with the hormones of youth (no OUT-of-the-body's personal repertoire of drugs were intended, needed, or used). In this condition, my mind was somewhat in a state of "Duh, Maynard" when I read McLuhan's Massage picture book. The reading was done as a university class requirement, along with Joseph Wood Krutch's desert book (Alvin Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK came a bit later), and a few other offerings of that type of mind-blowing, nearly hallucinogenic publication which seemed to come out in waves in that cultural push-&-shove period. I didn't/don't use drugs, but for all practical purposes some of the "Hey, DUUUUDE" peer-poking effects were "totally" unavoidable. (Admired the uniqueness of the review written with Hippie slang syntax.)

The fascinating thing (a la Spock) is, though, that a surge of shocking, sometimes brilliant conceptualization was being published then. While some of it exposed prolific, prophetic genius, some appeared to be a result of fried brain cells flashing toxins on their way to being an ash.

Was that time-frame also when shock treatment was initiated as a cure for depression, to give the brain a cellular-zapped clue that life was supposed to be a bed-of-roses, not a pain-in-the-patootie? What irony.

And, were heart-shocker paddles originally put out then to keep a soul trapped in a body when it was attempting a back door exit? What horror.

When will Pet Sematary reach its age of prophesy undone (my review 10/16/05). Okay, I'm drawing an extreme here. Electrically convincing the heart to begin-again beating when it had hiccuped and halted doesn't always return an unwilling soul to an almost cold, warn out body. Sometimes that medical miracle extends life as a very good thing for all concerned. And, how would I know whether shocking a heart back to beating is good or bad? I don't know.

However, for me, Stephen King's Pet Sematary makes a good point to ponder.

When is Death doing us a favor?

I'm going to have to reread (or would that be "redo") McLuhan's book from my current state of having worked a Quantum particle beyond "huh?" The reviews here on TMITM have peaked my curiosity for a return visit, though my taste for culinary mystery novels will probably take the cake and be the frosting on it as I read it, too, for a while yet.

What I got from The Medium then was, "Big things are happening, babe; better watch out! The Future is going to be lightning electrified. Not only is God dead; words are out."

I don't recall much Left Brain stuff from that time-frame, but I may have hoped that mass electrocution wouldn't be the Last Hurrah of Our Species." Looking back, it seemed then that some of the intellectual eggs were trying to scramble the Right Brain into the Left, using words so full of "meaning" they had leaped the gap of comprehension.

I love electronic mediums and the messages I'm able to send and receive through ozonic ether. And, I still love the grounded pleasure of reading a good book. A delightful, carnival-marriage of the best of both worlds is "Now Playing" on Amazon.

Strange how the future sometimes creates the whole (ball of wax, basket of eggs, whatever) as more than the sum of its pasts; and the future continues to arrive in spite of the best published intentions of Chicken-Little twinges, as enlightening and insightful though the small, salmonella-slinging-species may be.

This is not to say that any of the books I've mentioned are examples of Chicken Little syndromes. They are not. They are gems to be treasured in their prophetic intensity of down sides, which come to pass, somewhat, in uncanny manifestations of words made flesh, even as the future continues to save itself as it comes to pass by the present in one grand leap of time.

I'm not sure, but I may have just channeled a message from Confucius (or maybe Buddha), still receiving...

Who is (are?) the Author(s?) of The (actual) Laws of Physics?

Who designed this reality so precisely that we're allowed to make the messes we're in and still somehow grow out of them (to varying degrees, rather than to the Nth)?

Or... How many times have we started over?

All I know is I love books, and cozy escape fiction is my cup of vanilla-bean tea. As a chocaholic, I also love DVD's. All these mediums titillate my brain and (sometimes) make my soul glad it's agreed to this tour in a body glued to a planet by gravity.

Thanks, Amazon, for allowing us to be here and spout. A Fountainhead (see my review 10/15/05) I'm not, but my mouth often runs off without me...

I'm still wondering what McLuhan had against paper and ink.

I understand that he would have been disgusted with peoples' fears of electric and electronic progress, since he clearly saw the beauty of potential and sheer release of creativity in that mind-enhancing evolution. And, I'm beyond thankful for his contribution to holding gateways open for that evolution.

Even understanding McLuhan's obvious need to fight fears of progress, I feel there's more to ferret about his deal against paper/ink technology.

Certainly he would have been impatient with being forced to communicate that way, since his brain consistently made sonic booms beyond the speed of his typewriter clicks.

Yeah, and how hard would it have been for ancient scribes painstakingly etching records of existence with scratchy pen tip & sloppy ink bottle?

Likely, McLuhan was incensed with the lost time it took to communicate his brain farts & sparks, when he wanted to be OUT side playing in a (symbolic) sandbox with his friends. This man clearly had Sagittarius, Jupiter, and/or the 11th House in play at his time, place, day and year of birth. He was probably born right after a fresh New Moon had made its debut, maybe even right after the peak of a Solar Eclipse. He had more to say than several lifetimes would allow him to express. Who wouldn't be impatient with the slowness and lack of "out-of-the-house" drama of working on a typewriter or even one of the types of electronic mechanisms available in the early 60's (actually he probably began that surge-to-scribe-and-communicate process in the 50's or earlier).

I remember well how I felt when I realized (in 1986, when I was typing a 500 page ms for the first on an 8000 IBM Clone PC w/out a hard drive) that I didn't have to retype each and every page of 500 every time I needed a "clean copy" to work from. Oh man! I could do so much MORE in a given amount of time by chust (ironically, I'm reviewing Amish novels, too, see my Listmania's & reviews on Tamar Myers's PenDutch series and IN DUTCH AGAIN by Barbara Workinger) reprinting a page or so each time I needed to make a correction or edited improvement.

Unless you've composed, typed & re-typed, edited & revised several drafts of a 500 page ms, you might not be totally aware of this awesome feeling of relief to an intensely creative mind. Most book-length mss (manuscripts) done prior to PC & printer capacity, had to be retyped a few to several times, as revisions darkened the page with hand-scrawled changes, so much that the author was no longer able to see through the mess, and had to make a complete fresh copy of the whole work, with page-numbering-sequence corrected, which would often take even the best typist about a week of full-time-effort.

Oh yeah. I can see what caused McLuhan to develop such a putrid disgust of printed-word-technology, when I take time to empathize with the sheer drudgery of this tedious, mundane process to a mind surged with so much creativity it could design, in a few days, every detail of a new world in a strange universe (or "merely" explain the essence and fundamentals of our present world and its cultures).

Of course, given the level of minds we (as a species) have (and sometimes use) now, we might be able to design at Quantum Level a new world to be communicated within the pages of a novel (a book of printed words) or within a movie on DVD (yea, McLuhan we have THOSE goodies now!). We aren't quite yet at the level to design (then seed, activate or implement) whole physical universes with varieties of functioning sets of Laws of Physics to hold them together, from a massive core of gravity, and allow them to expand and contract, maybe even grow/evolve a few species of interacting critters on various world and galactic venues.

Or, would you like to be trapped in a physical world designed by our current state of mind? Oops. Maybe that's what's wrong with us? Still, there's a lot right with us, too. A species which created the novel isn't all bad (see my spotlighted review of THE NOVEL by James Michener).

In awe of a Consciousness so far beyond mine it actually created Time,

Linda G. Shelnutt

P.S. As a student English teacher in 1970, I was set up in a Denver suburb high school to teach a new class called "Filmic Statement." The class exposed a revolutionary concept of the Language of Film. Fresh out of college in 1970, still trailing tangents from graduate seminars in Language, Linguistics, History of Language, Semantics, etc., I didn't fully realize how much that high school class owed its existence to McLuhan. I can certainly identify with the English professor side of McLuhan. I'm still trying to recall through which course of study his Medium/Massage book was touted, English Lit or Sociology.

P.S.S. I see that the medium of communication says a lot more than many of us would have realized, without a mind like McLuhan's having burst its seams. But, I don't quite "buy" that the medium says more than its content. If so, why did I take days to compose this review, and why would you read it. You could just sit there and do a Right-Brain-"oohhhhmmmmm" to a blurry monitor screen without reading word one. Try that and see if you can comprehend what I've struggled to communicate. Words. Gotta love em. Syntax is sensual. And, as to the concept of Language, yes, we have to consider that it will probably grow well beyond these packages, eventually. I mean. After I pop out of this body for that Final Time, am I going to be forced to use words to express the experience? I ask you. Will I need a Notebook PC, on "the other side"? What link will I use then to get messages back to planet? Death is more than The Great Equalizer, and maybe it should be proud of its alternate set of Laws of Physics. Whew. What a release.

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The whole picture
A Polymath Desperately in Need of Focus
The Rise of Network Society
Is information technology the culprit?
Network society: Informationalization and globalization

The Rise of the Network Society
Manuel Castells
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0631221409

Amazon.com

The Rise of the Network Society, the first volume in a trilogy collectively known as the Information Age, has earned Manuel Castells comparisons to such illustrious social critics as Max Weber and Karl Marx. Just as they worked to make sense of industrial capitalism, so does Castells put forth a systemic analysis of the global informational capitalism that emerged in the last half of the 20th century. While many books have considered the development of increasingly sophisticated information technology, the shifting conditions of employment and responsibility within corporations, or the rise of corporations whose domains are spread out over several nation-states, Castells unites these topics in a comprehensive thesis, negotiating the tightrope between academic sociology and mainstream business analysis.

Book Description

Contents include the information technology revolution, the new economy, the network enterprise, the transformation of work and employment, the culture of real virtuality, the space of flows, and more. Reprint. Previous edition: c1999. Softcover. DLC: Information technology--Economic aspects.

Customer Reviews:

The whole picture.......2007-02-13

Definitely, Castells does not fall into the omnipresent ethnocentricity that most of the literature evaluating world trends does. He picks evidence from almost everywhere to support his arguments in an effort to explain the emergence of informationalism and its consequences. It is "a must-read" to understand societies evolution in the interconnected world. His trilogy has a prominent position in my book shelves; it became a reference for me.
It must be read carefully to avoid getting lost in the wide range of covered topics.

A Polymath Desperately in Need of Focus.......2004-03-23

Given Castells' huge range of understanding and the sheer ambition of his work, it seems a bit unfair to really criticize this book. Few writers would try to tackle the huge ideas that Castells covers here - vast theories about the state and direction of humanity in relation to the rising information society. On the other hand, theory-of-everything books like this, as frequently attempted by polymaths such as Fritjof Capra, have their own unavoidable problems which deserve to be criticized. When a theorist tries to combine knowledge of everything into a huge integrated and unified theory, the writing becomes monstrously diffuse and unfocused. That is the exact problem with this book.

Castells obviously has an understanding of all the disparate theoretical areas that would be encompassed by such a huge endeavor. As the book progresses, Castells is not afraid to move from areas like astrophysics to rural sociology to corporate architecture to programming language to everything else you could think of, often in successive paragraphs. But when describing everything, Castells eventually reaches conclusions on nothing. Bringing together disparate realms of knowledge is one thing, but reaching insights that make sense is much more difficult.

That all makes this book extremely tiresome for the reader. In that exasperating theory