Books

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman Every five years or so, there comes a book that you just want to tell everyone to go get and read, so you can talk about it. There comes a book that has such a compelling story line that the way you view things will be forever changed. SO GO GET THIS BOOK (AND READ IT)! The rest of these books are very compelling, but this book is at the top of the stack for a reason - it's timely and very signficant. Trust me.

Those are pretty strong words, but then, this is a pretty strong set of ideas. NY Times Foreign Affairs Editorial writer Tom Friedman picks up on the theme he began five years ago with his bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which described the globalization of the world since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. In this fascinating book, Friedman describes his epiphany regarding the dramatic changes to the world economy since he wrote The Lexus and the Olive Tree in 1999.

I'll try to describe in a few words what took Friedman over 400 pages: The Internet bubble in the late 1990s led to a dramatic build out of telecom networks, which resulted in tremendous amounts of fiber being laid to connect the world, and the companies that built the networks promptly went bust and the lines were purchased out of bankruptcy at pennies on the dollar, resulting in nearly free capacity to connect the world's countries and cities. At the same time, the highly trained and skilled workers in India, China, and Eastern Europe/Russia, all countries big on science and math, began to benefit from more liberal economic policies, so the best and brightest could now stay at home, rather than wait for visas to travel to the US, long the promised land for smart energetic young workers the world around.

Y2K and a maturing technology landscape led coporations to outsource work to this highly qualified set of workers, and now that trend is maturing. No longer do cities and individuals in the US compete primarily within their state, region, nation, or even hemisphere. The global economy effectively doubled in size with the addition of the labor forces in these three regions, and those smart, aggressive workers in India, China, and elsewhere are wearing track shoes. They want your job, for half your wage.

This book is a MUST READ for city planners because metropolitan wireless networks enable and accelerate the technologies that will enable cities worldwide to compete on this new playing field. One executive interviewed says that these changes may well prove as significant to the world as the invention of the printing press. The reason is that never before has so much information been so readily available to so many people. Get the book, read it, and let's talk!

Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt Hewitt promised to keep the book short enough to read on a single trip - true to his word, I was able to knock this book out on my flight back from Los Angeles. In this recently published work, Hewitt takes you into the world of blogs and opens up possibilities for anyone who ever had an opinion and needed to find someone to listen to them. This is the third book that I've read recently that draws comparisons between events of the 17th Century Reformation and Guttenberg's movable type printing press and our 21st Century information revolution. Hewitt works it into his title.

In essence, the invention of the printing press allowed Luther's ideas to be widely disseminated, leading to the emancipation of the people from the dominance of the Roman Catholic church. New technology opened up the world for cultural change. Similarly, Hewitt shows how personal blogging software frees readers from reliance on traditional media and editors, who process information for the reading public and choose what we call news. Easy-to-use blog software provides aspiring writers and those with an opinion with a tool so that anyone can publish. Bloggers just have to be good enough to draw an audience - there is nobody stopping them from publishing, or telling them what to write. Increasingly, these blogs are being viewed as more trustworthy than Mainstream Media, according to Hewitt.

Blogs and communities go hand in hand. My vision is for our budding metropolitan wireless community to develop around UnwireMyCity.com. I encourage you to get this book and start a blog to help you manage your wireless effort, to get your whole community involved in the effort, and to let others share in and contribute to your experience. And, to link your blog to mine. It really is too easy and too cheap not to. Come on in, the water's fine!

I recommend, ironically, Movable Type software (and the Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition) to get you started down the blogging path. What a deal - find your inner blogger and help to change the world, all with one website!

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi This book is a wonderful, very readable story about the new science of Networks. Before the Internet, Barabasi explains, the science of networks was a sleepy academic backwater. With the Internet, scientists found a tool to study how networks work, and their discoveries are breathtaking. Networks are the best means to organize complexity, and could there be a better word than "complex" to describe our lives today? From the role of hubs, to the Power Curve distribution, to emergence, Barabasi shows how much alike networks are: from the network of the human body to social networks, cities, railroads, airports, the Internet, it becomes clear the impact that networks have on the way we live.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson This book made a lasting impression on me. Johnson shows how working from the bottom up, with a few simple rules, individuals can create new, complex things that seemingly "emerge" from out of nowhere. How, for instance, do neighborhoods form when they are not planned? What will be the impact of all the Hot Spots, Hot Zones, Metropolitan Networks, and coming WiMax networks, cellular networks, DSL networks, and Cable networks when they all start working together? To understand the complex nature of change in our world, this is a great book!

The City : A Global History by Joel Kotkin This recently published book gives great perspective on the city and its impact on our lives. The city, Kotkin says, is one of man's greatest inventions because it concentrated the learning of people into a dense area and allowed that knowledge to pass down through generations. Civilization really took off when cities became connected, first by ships (Phoenicia), then roads (Rome), then canals, then railroads, then telecommunications. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell This term has entered the popular vernacular - the tipping point is the point when a trend goes mainstream. That may be where we are getting to in the near term with municipal networks. This book will help you to understand popular behavior and give you a vocabulary for some things you already know.

The Wisdom of the Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki Believe it or not, studies show that a roomful of average people, with adequate information, will arrive at better decisions than a handful of experts. This is a compelling study that will change the way you look at things. When the Internet and modern communications technology empower those crowds with the information they need to be smarter than the experts, you can see how much of the change we envision is starting to go on Autopilot. Hold on to your hat!

Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive by Making Innovation a Way of Life by Gary Hamel With all the new tools that buyers have, companies are left with nothing but being good at innovation to provide them with competitive advantage. As technology and the Internet increasingly dominate our economy, it is innovation that becomes our watchword. Hamel argues that organizations, public or private, must make innovation a core competency if they are to have a hope for success.

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen does a great job of explaining how innovations (and innovators) have to struggle to gain support and mindshare in large organizations. He looks at well-run, etablished companies and examines how they are able to counter the threat from new companies, which enter the market on the low end with lower quality, cheaper products and in time improve the products and take greater market share. Either private or public sector management will benefit from the insights offered herein, as innovation becomes an ever greater presence in our lives.

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World by Kevin Kelly In Kelly's own words: "Communication is the foundation of society, of our culture, of our humanity, of our own individual identity, and of all economic systems. This is why networks are such a big deal. Communication is so close to culture and society itself that the effects of technologizing it are beyond the scale of a mere industrial-sector cycle. Communication, and its ally computers, is a special case in economic history. Not because it happens to be the fashionable leading business sector of our day, but because its cultural, technological, and conceptual impacts reverberate at the root of our lives." Read this book.

Creating Value in the Network Economy by Don Tapscott This compendium of Harvard Business Review articles from 1999 is a great view of how the impact of the Internet was interpreted during the boom. Prescient in their analyses, I believe many of these guys got it right.

Leading Change by John P. Kotter With change becoming one of the few constants in our lives, this book written at the dawn of the Internet (1995) offers a practical approach to an organized means of leading, not managing, change. Kotter presents an eight-stage process of change with highly useful examples that show how to go about implementing it.

The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace by Thomas Petzinger With intriguing stories of the people behind innovative companies, this book details the personal stories in the new economy. Petzinger sees workers who are entrepreneurial, not corporate; stressing adaptation rather than bureaucratic planning, "teamwork" and "empowerment" rather than rigid command-and-control structures.

The History of Knowledge by Charles Van Doren is a good read to put into context what may be a new revolution in the world's capabilities regarding knowledge and awareness, brought on by technological convergence. Van Doren, the same individual who was caught up in the Quiz Show scandal of the 1950s, came out with this book in 1991, after spending the previous twenty years editing the Encyclopedia Britannica. We've certainly come a long way in our time here on earth, and Van Doren tells a good story of how humans got to be so darn smart.

SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE : Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen Covey I find myself quoting from this book so often, I thought I better add it to the list. Published in 1990, this book has sold over 10 million copies and there's a good reason for that. It is well written, and Covey has assembled a system and anthology of the world's greatest personal success lessons, from the Bible to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Covey has woven an easy-to-remember set of habits that will make you more effective at whatever it is you choose to do. To become effective, Covey argues, you must first have a Paradigm Shift to see things differently, and then incorporate these habits into your daily life.

For the record, here are the habits with the associated skills in parentheses: A. Personal Independence 1. Be Proactive. (initiative) 2. Begin with the End in Mind. (leadership) 3. First Things First (Management) B. Social Interdependence (4. Seek First to Understand, and Then to be Understood (listening) 5. Go For Win Win Solutions (cooperation) 6. Synergize (creativity) and C. Regeneration 7. Sharpen the Saw (health and balance).

I read this book in the early 90s, read it again, outlined it, and then gave seminars on it at my job. That internalization of these concepts has made a huge difference in my effectiveness, both in my business life and my personal life. This book is worth the time.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie If there is a better, more timeless set of principles on human relationships, please let me know. This book, written in 1937, has sold 15 million copies. I first read it in 1977, when I was a young man going door-to-door selling books in Appalachia, a life-changing experience for me in what is now a dying profession. The principles, such as "People love to hear the sound of their own name" ring true today. This book will make you think twice about how you relate to others, and your friends willl thank you for taking the time. And you will have more of those. Friends, I mean. And what's wrong with that? Spending a few bucks or so for this paperback will be the best few bucks you have spent in a long while.