Phil Simon » Book Reviews

Small Giants

philsimon — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:30:54 +0000

According to Norm Brodsky, “[y]ou need to feel in your gut that whatever you do is the most interesting, exciting, worthwhile thing you could be doing at that moment. Otherwise, how do convince anyone else?”

To be sure, these are inspiring words. Of course, this begs the question: Who is Norm Brodsky, other than a pretty passionate guy. What does he do, exactly?

You might think that he’s an artist of some sort. You’d be wrong. He must be a crusader. Nope, try again. Getting annoyed at guessing? Fine. I’ll tell you. He works for a document management and storage company, CitiStorage.

And there are plenty of people like Norm in the pages of the excellent book, Small Giants. In it, Bo Burlingham tells amazing stories about particularly passionate entrepreneurs who intentionally keep their companies small. It’s a great read about how many people have found that it’s much better to run a small company–as opposed to a large one.

Mojo

Burlingham starts and ends the book with a detailed description of something very difficult to define: mojo. The small giants have it and face constant challenges to keep it. Many companies start with it and, at some point, lose it. Once that happens, its practically impossible to get back.

Particularly noteworthy was the story of Gary Erickson of Clif Bar. I don’t want to give away too much here, but let’s just say that the musician and rock climber faced challenges unlike any that he could have possibly imagined. His commitment to preserve the company and culture he had created almost by accident simply blew my mind.

Simon Says

Small Giants resonated with me on a number of levels. As a small business person, I enjoy what I do and working for myself. Some of my clients are large organizations, many of which are rife with internal politics and dissatisfied employees–never mind customers. Over the course of my career, I have enjoyed working with small companies because you could actually solve more problems and make more of a difference. Evidently, I’m not the only person who feels this way.

On a completely different level, it was very refreshing to read about companies that are doing the right things. They are cultivating interesting places and creating meaningful jobs. They’re not beholden to quarterly earnings. Customers are loyal beyond belief. Reading about so many problems and issues gets tedious. Sometimes it’s simply a nice change of pace to read about people that get it.

Small Giants is a post from: Phil Simon

Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger

philsimon — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:56:01 +0000

Serendipity is an interesting thing. I had just hit the “publish” button on my recent post Tell me a Story, a quasi-rant that underscores (at least for me) the need to draw readers in via compelling stories and anecdotes. Needing some time away from the screen, I picked up my copy of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I had heard good things about it and was searching for a good read.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Printing Supplies

Everything Is Miscellaneous starts out with the great story of how Staples stores are arranged. To paraphrase Renee Zellwegger’s character in Jerry MacGuire, this book had me at “Staples.”

Why are printer cartridges and cables in more than one place? Because not everyone walks into the store to buy printer cartridges and cables for precisely the same reason.

Some people already own printers and cartridge refills. They will look for cartridges in a dedicated section and it would never occur to most of them to go to printers.
Some people need to buy new printers; it’s easier for them to stay in that section and get everything they need at once. They don’t want to go to another section of the store. Nor do they want to return to the store and feel stupid for not remembering that printers don’t come with everything needed to print documents from their computer.

And that’s the whole point of the book: different people find similar things in different ways and for vastly different reasons. Everything is rife with great anecdotes and case studies supporting the author’s central thesis. Hamlet, Flickr, and Wikipedia are just a few of the examples manifesting the importance of shared knowledge and more efficient ways of searching the vast streams of information today.

Beautiful Trees and The Third Order of Order

Physical stores like Staples are constrained by where they place items. This is not the case with the web. Weinberger writes:

“In the third order of order, a leaf can hang on many branches, it can hang on different branches for different people, and it can change branches for the same person if she decides to look at the subject differently. It’s not that our knowledge of the world is taking some shape other than a tree or becoming some impossible-to-envision four-dimensional tree. In the third order of order, knowledge doesn’t have a shape. There are just too many useful, powerful, and beautiful ways to make sense of our world.”

From a technology standpoint, this can only happen online with pervasive and accurate tagging and metadata.

Polarizing Topic?

For me, the timing of reading this book (although released in 2007) could not have been better. Lately, I’ve been reading, writing, thinking, talking, and learning a great deal about the semantic web. Everything enhanced my knowledge of the topic, although it’s not formally mentioned until page 190 or so.

Evidently, not everyone shares my viewpoint on the book nor on the importance of the semantic web. I saw the one star reviews for the book on Amazon. To me, it’s evident that some people refuse to see how internet is changing things–and will continue to do so.

Everything Is Miscellaneous is an important book for not understanding what’s going on now, but what’s going to happen with the web as it “goes semantic.” I blew through this book in two days, unable to put it down. Great read.

Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger is a post from: Phil Simon

Methland by Nick Reding

philsimon — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:30:56 +0000

I’ve always been many things, most of which are way, way outside the scope of my blog and site. (Trust me. There aren’t too many skeletons in my closet. There are no trysts with Hooters’ waitresses or big scandals.) As my regular readers know, I tend to write about consulting, project management, software and technology trends, and topics related to writing and publishing, many of which are peppered with Rush references.

Spending so much of my time writing and reading about these things is not without its own rewards. However, I’d be lying if I claimed to never get a bit tired of covering all of those areas. I enjoy the occasional silly movie and book completely unrelated to the business of being me. One of my recent escapes was Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding.

Before continuing, you may be wondering why I decided to read a book about meth. (No, book sales aren’t that bad and I’m not considering a career change.)

Hands down, my favorite TV show right now is Breaking Bad on AMC. It’s about a 49 year-old high school chemistry teacher with cancer, a pregnant wife, and a kid with cerebral palsy. Intent on providing for his family, he begins to manufacture meth or become a “cook”, as they are called. It’s just an amazing show and I wanted to learn more about the problem.

Review

An accomplished journalist, Reding explores the methamphetamine epidemic in the United States through the lens of Oelwein, IA, a rural community about 300 miles from Chicago. Oelwein is vintage Small Town, USA, sporting a population of just over 6,000.

Reding did his research for the book–something to the tune of five years. While this is no scientific journal about the physiological effects of meth or “crank”, there’s enough of that information to, quite frankly, scare the hell out of you. Particularly disturbing were the stories of the children of meth addicts born with simply horrible problems. It’s just scary.

Methland is anything but a “drugs are bad” or “just say no” kind of book. Rather, Reding explores the economic, political, and sociological factors that contributed to the rise of crank in this country. While not exclusively to blame, for example, pharmaceutical companies’ lobbying against certain legislation contributed to the rise of meth addiction. Long story short: the industry fought “stop-buy” language that would have prevented individuals from buying massive amounts of Sudafed and other medicines typically bought en masse to produce meth.

Reding also touches on touchy subjects such as the legality of drugs and America’s relationship with immigration–legal and otherwise. These are all important in understanding why “the world’s most dangerous” drug reached epidemic proportions in this country.

The Downside of Globalization

Having studied the effects of globalization in college and attending school in Pittsburgh (a city no stranger to the erosion of its industrial base), the book certainly resonated with me. What do people do when wages go from $18/hr to less than one-third of that? Many try to work more and meth evidently enables that. On a different level, at one point (and I’m paraphrasing here), an unemployed and depressed Oelwein addict makes the argument for meth, saying, “What else makes me feel good here?” It’s a hard question to answer for Reding or anyone else.

This is a powerful book and one that had me mesmerized and cringing at the same time. This isn’t light reading but, if you need the occasional escape from your daily grind, it should be right up your alley.

Feedback

What books have you read that allow you to escape?

Methland by Nick Reding is a post from: Phil Simon

Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan

philsimon — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:01:18 +0000

Anyone else notice an interesting trend in publishing? Some authors are going blog-to-book, meaning that they are publishing books that are largely based on the content in their blogs. I recently read one such book: Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online by Chris Brogan.

Disclaimer

Chris and I both have publishing deals with John Wiley & Sons.

Combining Micro and Macro

Much like Chris’ blog, there’s so much valuable information in Social Media 101that it’s kind of scary. Now, I like to think that know a great deal about social media. I must admit, however, that I broke out the pen many times to scribble things down in the front of the book.

I particularly enjoyed the pieces about “community managers” and how those roles don’t fall into traditional corporate departments–HR, Marketing, IT, and PR. Brogan understands that social media requires new paradigms and a stronger sense of collaboration among different people and departments in the work place.

Brogan does much more than list the sites that you should utilize in building–and maximizing–your web presence. Yes, he knows that Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are important. But how do you use each site to its maximum effectiveness?

Despite the book’s blog-type style, there are many underlying themes throughout the book. Perhaps my favorite is: You can distinguish yourself from your competition via a certain self of selflessness. It’s kind of zen-like: you promote yourself by promoting others.

Book Style

Let’s be clear here. Books like Social Media 101 are not organized like traditional books. That didn’t bother me; I knew that before I picked it up. That’s both a pro and a con, depending on your point of view. On one hand, you don’t have to get to the last chapter to find valuable pieces of advice. They’re sprinkled throughout the book. On the other hand, the lack of a traditional book structure could possibly frustrate those unfamiliar with basic social media concepts.

I’d argue that this very style makes it much easier to reference on the fly. Social Media 101 is written in a a “call to action” type style in the book that makes you want to get in front of your computer and start taking Brogan’s advice while you are reading it. I suspect that not too many books can be picked up quite as easily and digested in parts or used for reference.

Finally, and I might be in the minority here, I enjoyed the book precisely because I am not going to read 80 blog posts on a computer. I like having a physical copy of the book. Along these lines, because Chris chose the best of his posts for the book, you don’t have to search through his blog. Translation: While you can get most of the content for free, Social Media 101 is money well spent.

Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan is a post from: Phil Simon

Recently Read – 02/17/2010

philsimon — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:01:41 +0000

A few highlights from the blogosphere this week and an incredible book.

Navigating the Many Social Networking Sites

In Attention as a Currency and Noise, Chris Brogan describes the importance of attention and priorities in the context of limited time.

Simon Says

I can see why Brogan is, like me, a bit skeptical about Google Buzz. I also agree with him that Google Wave is so much more than just another IM tool. You can save serious time collaborating and minimizing the amount of email back-and-forth.

Square One

In Microsoft Starts Over in Phone Software, Ashlee Vance of The New York Times writes about how Microsoft has recognized the need to blow up the current version of its mobile operating system. Vance writes:

The revamped software represents a rarity for Microsoft — it scrapped previous versions of its software to build something from scratch. Microsoft spent the last 18 months trying to add gloss and sophistication to a product that had been ridiculed as clunky and too wedded to the company’s PC roots.

Simon Says

Give Microsoft Credit. They know when it’s time to call it a day. Turning your back on a product with so much history (and dollars committed) is much easier said than done. From what I understand, however, the Redmond-based giant couldn’t patch its way out of this one. The decision to go in a different direction is probably the correct one if Microsoft is going to compete in the white-hot mobile market.

The IT/Business Chasm

In his post IT failure? Blame your CEO, Michael Krigsman examines the role of the CEO in IT project failures. Normally, CIOs are the ones held accountable for IT projects gone wild. In a post of a similar vein entitled Charm School: It’s Not Just for IT Anymore, my friend Jill Dyché makes some related points.

Simon Says

Michael’s completely on point. IT is no different than other areas of the business. In his post, Michael writes about the history of IT and the “high priests” who used to develop software. We’re not in the mainframe days anymore, though, and haven’t been for quite some time. It’s time that traditional barriers come down.

Jill’s premise is that IT can’t always be the scapegoat and, as usual, she’s right. If I had a nickel for every time that “business” users couldn’t articulate their requirements during the middle of a project, I’d have at least two bucks. I’d hope that more technical functional folks can meet more business-savvy IT folks in the middle, as the diagram in Jill’s excellent post suggests.

The Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played

OK, this one has nothing to do with technology but I like to pretend to be multidimensional. In Strokes of Genius, L. Jon Wertheim recounts the story of arguably the greatest tennis match of all time: the 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

Simon Says

This is easily the best tennis book I’ve ever read and one of my favorites in the last five years. Expertly told and weaved with fascinating anecdotes, Wertheim somehow brings drama to a book whose outcome is already known. Among the best sports’ books out there.

Recently Read – 02/17/2010 is a post from: Phil Simon

Googled by Ken Auletta

philsimon — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:01:41 +0000

Midway through Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, I found myself fascinated reading about a meeting at the eponymous company. Now, I’m not big on participating in meetings, much less reading about them. But this meeting was different.

Company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were becoming increasingly frustrated with the tenor of a meeting with engineering VP Sridhar Ramaswamy about the latter’s proposed recommendations to improve AdWords. Google’s first incarnation of AdWords (version 1.0, launched in 2002) provided enormous revenue but many parts of the program had remained clunky–by Google’s lofty standards at least. Auletta writes:

“I named this 3.0 for a reason,” Page interjected. “We wanted something big. Instead, you (Ramaswamy) proposed something small. Why are you so resistant?”

Ultimately, Page and Brin push Ramaswamy and his team to overcome their hesitations to radically upgrading AdWords, forcing them to be as bold as possible. You see, at Google, marginal improvements are not acceptable. In a phrase, that sums up Google–the company and the culture.

Fundamental Questions about Where We are Headed

Is there overlap here with other books, such as Planet Google? Of course. How can there not be? However, if there’s one thing that distinguishes the two books, it’s that Auletta is not merely content to tell the obligatory tale about how two grad students at Stanford met and ultimately redefined search. No, Auletta’s excellent book is as much about the company as it as about content in the Internet age and the fundamental questions that Google is making us ask, such as:

Are Google’s efforts to digitize books, television, and music ultimately good for society?
What is Google’s role in the decline of newspapers and “proper” journalism?
Should Google buy The New York Times?
By making so many things essentially free, is Google disintermediating too much?
Is Google naive? Or has Google become the new “evil empire”, despite its corporate credo to never be evil?
Can “old media” compete with Google properties such as YouTube and Google News?

Auletta’s eleven week-long trips to Google and access to key current and former employees pays enormous dividends. Even elusive insiders such as Bill “The Coach” Campbell chime in with their thoughts about very sensitive internal matters.

Simon Says

Ultimately, Googled is not just about Google. Consider the book’s apropos subtitle. It’s a profound book about an amazing company but also about its enormous implications for the present and future. In this sense, Googled is redolent of Chris Anderson’s two books–Free and The Long Tail.

If you’re merely looking for a short, simple story of how Google became so big, then you might want to pass on Googled. If you’re up for a book that challenges core assumptions held by so many and asks troubling questions about all things digital, then dive in. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Googled by Ken Auletta is a post from: Phil Simon

Eating the Dinosaur

philsimon — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:01:22 +0000

I often take a much-needed respites from the world of technology. As much as I consider myself a “tech boy” and proselytize the benefits of new toys, technologies, and applications, I need to occasionally just take a break. Activities may involve:

Intentionally leaving my CrackBerry at home while I hit the gym
Enjoying the relatively low-tech activity of watching TV
Tennis and golf (my favorite headache, to steal a phrase from Geddy Lee)
Reading a book without (direct) implications about technology

Whatever my vice, sometimes it’s just nice to go “off the grid”, to steal another phrase, but this time from The Matrix.

To this end, I recently engulfed Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, a collection of twelve disparate essays about a wide range of topics. Failure, Garth Brooks, time travel, and Abba are just some of the subjects of covered in this killer compilation from an exceptional and prolific writer.

Oh, the Guilt

My favorite essay in the book (“Oh, the Guilt”) deals with Nirvana’s second album In Utero. I was never heavily into the band or grunge in general back in the early 90s. Still, I found Klosterman’s take on the band’s reaction to its new found fame fascinating. Klosterman writes:

But Nirvana (or at least Cobain, and possibly bassist Krist Novoselic)…could not reconcile the dissonance between mass success and artistic merit; interestingly, they assumed combining mass success with dissonance was the only way to salvage any merit at all. And this really requires two very weird questions: Why did In Utero need to be conventionally “bad” in order for it to be exceptionally good? And–perhaps more importantly–why did that fraction of badness only matter if people knew that the badness was intentional?

Also noteworthy are the essays on football and laugh tracks. I had never considered the political nature of the former and the ridiculous nature of the latter.

References Galore

I have been a big Klosterman fan for about a year now, devouring books such as Killing Yourself to Live, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, and IV.

I can follow just about all of Klosterman’s references to 80s rock bands and relatively obscure TV shows and movies. After all, Klosterman and I are the same age and have similar tastes in many forms of entertainment. However, I suspect that many of his allusions are lost on more than a few people. After all, how many people know who Nigel Tufnel is?

Does this reduce their enjoyment of his books? I couldn’t tell you. I can tell you though that a quick peek through the index will reveal an amazing pastiche of pop culture references. You can call Klosterman many things, but “dry” is certainly not one of them.

On a different level, it seems as if Klosterman is maturing as a writer. I never had a problem with his drug-induced yarns from some of his earlier tomes, but the content Dinosaur is less about crazy high school days and more about broader societal themes. For example, the last essay, “Fail”, concerns The Unabomber and the problems caused by technology to society.

So much for getting away from technology…

Eating the Dinosaur is a post from: Phil Simon

Trust Agents

philsimon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:06:20 +0000

As my friend Jill Dyche writes in the foreword of my next book, social media is a “piping hot” topic these days. Upon the recommendation of my other friend Jim Harris, I bought and read Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I reviewed Chris Anderson’s Free last week and, for those of you who think that I should get out more, you’re right. Case in point: I seem to only have two friends and you just “met” both of them.

Up until recently, my book consumption process has been as follows:

Hear about book
Buy book
Read book
Repeat process

Things are changing in The Land of Simon these days. I seem to be picking up Jim’s habit of accumulating many books at a time. Due to my recent back injury, I have had more time recently to attack the stack. In other words, I now have more choice about which book to read next in my pile. I’m glad that Trust Agents was in that pile.

Required Reading

Brogan and Smith detail the many ways that one can use the Internet in general–and social media specifically–to establish a web presence, promote your wares, and build a brand. They’re justifiably big on collaboration. Trust Agents describes how one can “build an Army” using both technology and networking tools such as:

Collaboration-enabling tools such as blogging, RSS feeds, comments, and their ilk
Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a host of others
Attending conferences
Promoting others ten times as much as promoting yourself (paying it forward, so to speak)

If I had read this book a year ago, the content would have been more revelatory. Since I’ve been paying close attention to social media over the last year, some of the book’s concepts merely reinforced what I have learned in that time. This is not a criticism of the book. It’s just that I wasn’t exactly a blank slate going in and, for certain people, the book’s content won’t exactly be eyeopening.

Case in point: I recommended it to my chiropractor mid-adjustment this past weekend. This is not to call him a “blank slate.” Ticking off the guy who fixes my back is probably ill-advised. (Throw dentists, barbers, and IT folks into that bucket as well.) My only point is that my chiropractor spends his days healing people’s backs, not figuring out how to most effectively use Twitter.

A Few Minor Criticisms

I do have a couple of gripes. First, towards the end of the book, Trust Agents begins to repeat itself a little too often to my liking. To be fair, as Jim pointed out to me on the phone the other day, the authors write early on that this book need not be read in a traditional fashion–i.e., from beginning to end. It can be read piecemeal. To that end, you won’t feel lost if you just read the final chapter in and of itself.

Second, many of the case studies on the uses of social media used are important but a bit hackneyed. The success stories of Comcast and wine guru Gary Vaynerchuck have been told many times before. If you already know about them, then you may want to skip them.

Reading Trust Agents left me with the same feeling that I had thirteen years ago after reading the classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Most of the material I knew at some level; reading it reinforced what I knew. While I may not have learned a great deal reading the book, reminders about important concepts are probably good for me.

Next book review: Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker.

Click here to subscribe to my posts via RSS feed.

Trust Agents is a post from: Phil Simon

Free by Chris Anderson

philsimon — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:00:33 +0000

I try to stay on top of influential books these days, especially as summer gives way to fall and colder weather invariably limits my outdoor activities. My recent back injury only increased the amount of time I had to attack my reading list. Equipped with more time than I anticipated, I recently read Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. To cut to the chase, it is an exceptionally well-written, well-researched, and important book.

An Early Skepticism

I admit that I was a bit cynical going in, already believing that I understood the concept of Free quite well. I base this assertion on paying attention to the technology and business worlds over the past five years. Plus, everyone seems to be talking about this book and I had watched an interview with Anderson on C-SPAN a few weeks ago. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t sure that Free could sustain my interest for 250 pages.

I was wrong. Really wrong.

Anderson painstakingly details the evolution of Free (a concept that he capitalizes throughout the book). He delves where necessary into sometimes obscure–but nonetheless important–economic theories. (I’m glad that I remembered my college economics courses, not that that’s required to follow his concepts.) Rather than continue fill his text with dry economic analyses, however, Anderson moves quite easily into the social sciences, citing the works of scholars such as Herb Simon (no relation) and Abraham Maslow.

Lest you think that you’ll read a strictly academic book, Anderson’s real world examples simply jump off the page. The usual suspects are certainly accounted for: Google (more than once), Radiohead, the NY Times, and others provide proof that Free needs to be front and center these days for many companies’ business models.

A Scary Concept

Towards the end of the book, I realized that Free is as scary as it is important. With Gen Y growing up digital, to paraphrase Don Tapscott’s book of the same name, many people now take free goods and services as givens. This has huge implications for many areas of society and business, as Anderson demonstrates throughout the book. This leaves me wondering whether Free is sustainable in the long-term. At some point, companies and individual people (like me) have to make money.

Because of the book’s far-reaching ramifications, I would imagine that it’s required reading at many MBA programs and startup companies these days. If not, then it probably should be.

Like all of my favorite non-fiction books, this one makes you think. It acknowledges the evolution of an important concept and balances where we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. I can only hope that my own books do the same.

Free by Chris Anderson is a post from: Phil Simon

Change, Vested Interests, and Creative Destruction

philsimon — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:44:23 +0000

I have long been obsessed with words and phrases. Some of my favorite comedians (such as Dennis Miller and the late great George Carlin) had an affinity for words that left me envious as a kid, even if I wasn’t allowed to repeat some of their more “choice” selections.

One phrase that has stuck in my mind over the last two decades is creative destruction, a term coined by an obscure German economist that has had remarkable staying power. I have read two books recently have touched on this notion that as technology giveth, technology taketh away. Since I have an extra hour this weekend with daylight savings time, I might as well use it for something productive (I think).

A Better Pencil

The first book is A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution by Dennis Baron. I enjoyed Baron’s look at the history of the writer and the reader, especially when confronted with seismic shifts in technology. I found his research to be quite compelling; I always like reading books that take our current predicaments and contrast them with historical precedents to find similarities. (An amazing book on this is Floyd Norris’ The New York Times Century of Business.) I try to do the same with my own work, but I digress.

Particularly fascinating were comparable reactions between Plato and many people today regarding changes in communication. It turns out that Plato feared that the very act of writing would cause people ignore the subtleties of speech such as inflection and tone of voice. Many people today have the same concern about the demise of newspapers and magazines. With more and more people obtaining their news and entertainment fixes online, are the subsequent losses in quality control and fact-checking causing unforeseen consequences? Are we getting dumber? Lofty questions, to be sure.

Technopoly

Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology also delves into the nature of technological change. Postman’s book is hardly devoted to the written word; his research takes the reader into vastly different realms such as the medical industry, the Manhattan Project, and the psychology of Sigmund Freud. One of Postman’s main points is that blindly embracing technology’s benefits is just as wrong as universally refuting them. Only a Luddite would maintain that technology only makes things worse across the board. Postman forces the reader to ask himself, “Where should society draw the line with technology?” Again, this is another really big question.

So, let’s get back to creative destruction. Technology has long provided opportunities for those willing and able to embrace them–and cause for concern for those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Examples of massive changes caused by technology are way too numerous to list, but consider a few examples:

Many products have simply died–e.g., typewriters and LPs .
Products such as CDs are on the brink of death.
Some face an uncertain future, such as the physical book as we know it.
Apple computer was an also-ran before digital music and the iPod made it one of the most valuable brands today.
People who use social media have been able to connect with others in ways simply unimaginable twenty years ago.

So, where does this leave us?

Today, technology is challenging conventional wisdom on many levels. However, this has always been the case. Baron’s and Postman’s books only confirm what is happening today: things are changing. Perhaps the only difference between today and Plato’s time is the pace of that change.

While today’s technologies themselves might be unique, the issues that they are presenting are certainly not. More succinctly, to quote one of my favorite Rush songs, Tom Sawyer, “He knows change is not permanent. But change is.”

Change, Vested Interests, and Creative Destruction is a post from: Phil Simon