A couple of months ago, I read Daemon by Daniel Suarez, recommended by many tech pundits from the US. Similarly, I have also recommended to many people I know within the Singapore tech community. They all loved the premise behind Daemon because it is technologically feasible to see the concept behind Daemon actually brought to real life. Daemon ended with the protagonist, the detective Peter Sebeck was locked in a series of intrigue set up by the deceased game designer, Matthew Sobol, who created the daemon that unleashed upon human civilization.

The second book is split up into a couple of threads based on three central characters and the antagonists of the story. While in the first book that Daniel Suarez portrayed Matthew Sobol as an evil genius who conceived a deliberate plot that murdered many in the process, the second book took a different perspective by taking on the theme of necessary evil. Freedom explored the breakdown of our modern day civilization and the Daemon took on the establishments from Wall Street to the power brokers of multi-national corporations. While the war between the Darknet (on the Daemon front) and the establishment were on-going, Peter Sebeck was tasked by the late Matthew Sobol to go on a quest to find the Cloud Gate, similar to how modern day gamer would do in MMORPG games like World of Warcraft.

The most interesting feature of the book is the use of augmented reality and how the online world interfaced with the real world, in particular, the D-Space in Suarez’s book. Of course, if you are a fan of online gaming, you would see how the characters are ranked by gaming mechanics and level of the profession he took. The irony that Loki, one of the main characters of the book, who was known to be the deadliest of the Daemon operative, was given a level 10 sorcerer and extremely low rank of trust. One probably pondered the author’s intentions to integrate social interactions within the Internet and focused on how Daemon attempted to change and redistribute the way how the human civilization.

While the book reached a probably satisfactory ending, one might wonder if there will be a sequel. Of course, the most exciting part of the book is when Sebeck succeeded in the quest and to make a decision on the whole of human civilization. What’s the question that one might probably ask? I would let you to follow the excitement in reading both “Daemon” and “Freedom”.

P/S: This is the first fiction e-book that I have completed reading on my iPad.

Related posts:

1. Daemon by Daniel Suarez

“The End of the Free Market” written by Ian Bremmer, is the 2nd book I have purchased via the iTunes Store on my iPad. It is the second book which I have finished after my first e-book “Game Change” by J. Heilemann & M. Halperin. Bremmer’s book take a hard look at the free market and properly set the stage for state capitalism for the 21st century, with clear examples from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and southeast Asia moving across the book. It ended with some scenarios to how state capitalism will evolve in the next 50 years.

In some sense, the book kicked off with an anecdote from the author in his meeting with China’s Vice Foreign Minister, He Yafei. The Chinese minister kicked off with a rhetorical question that have taken into the context of the recent global financial crisis triggered by the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection of Lehman Brothers on Sep 15 2008. In his words, “Now that the free market has failed … what do you think is the proper role for the state in the economy?” Through six long chapters, Bremmer described the emergence of the new strand of state capitalism which authoritarian governments have learned to compete internationally by embracing market driven capitalism. In some sense, these governments has managed to utilize wealth creation to show their legitimacy of their rule in the country. China and Russia have successfully incorporated state capitalism after the end of Cold War.

While the author weaved the story with a brief history of capitalism and how the markets have failed through the madness of crowds and herd behavior following bubbles that drove economies near the brink of collapse, for example, the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that led to the Great Depression. With each crisis, the state introduced regulation into the system. It also attempted to debunk the myth that democracies and free markets are interwined and how state capitalism can still provide a semi-free market to function within a government tightly controlled environment.

By clearly demonstrating the fundamental differences between free-market & state capitalism, the author showed that the latter is not an ideology bur rather a tool for retaining political control. Policy makers do not embrace state capitalism as a knee-jerk reactions to rebuild or jump-start a new economy out of recession but rather a long term policy choice. Second, the state capitalists view markets as a tool that serves the national interests of the ruling elites rather than an engine of opportunity for the individual that is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 1776).

In the final part of the book, the author warns that the free market is likely to meet its end, when countries with such economies start closing door on trade, investment and immigrants. He also pointed that the dynamics between US and China has to be balanced without compromising their values for example in the protection of intellectual property rights and currency issues. He also made it clearly that if corporations (such as Google) has to taken on state capitalists, it is likely that Google will lose as compared in the past where the British East India Company has managed to secure control of India in the 18th century. However it does not clear up the issue on whether corporations have the propensity to be a state of its own. It’s a book that is highly recommended for policy makers and economists to get a clearer look on how economies are run in this century and where it is all heading on an macro-economic scale.

You can watch the video of Ian Bremmer giving a talk about his book here:

Related posts:

1. Free by Chris Anderson
2. Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott
3. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

When I was listening to Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech special episode on the CES, Tom Merritt mentioned and recommended the book “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez. The author self-published the book, sought the influencers in Silicon Valley and ended up with a book deal. A science fiction thriller destined to be made into a movie, the story left me thinking about the inter-connected world which we lived in even though the premise started from the online gaming world. So, here are some thoughts after reading the book which I highly recommend for those who loved science fiction.

The story invokes the concept of daemons (condensed from the word Disk & Execution Monitor), which are computer programs running continuously in the background and performs specified operations at predefined times or in response to certain events. The concept is essential and you will see how the concept of Daemon unfold that transits from an online to offline world. The novel starts with the obituary of Matthew Sobol, a brilliant architect of computer games and that sets off a dormant daemon that unleashed into our world where it recruits, corrupts and kills people. The protagonist of the story, Detective Peter Sebeck has to work out the entire malevolent, self-replicating virtual enemy and comes to grips with the actual motivation of the Daemon program in the end.

What I liked about the book is how the Daemon launched from the creator was able to set off a series of events that led the protagonist towards a state which one door closes and another opens. Only till you are close to the end of the book, the chain of events you traced thru the eyes of Peter Sebeck becomes inter-connected and it made one terrified that how much we have given up our privacy and data to the Internet. With social networks and location based services, one do wonder if the Daemon in Suarez’s book is unleashed thru an online gaming landscape. It also reminded me of Hari Seldon in Asimov’s Foundation series where he put up videos of himself making several predictions to the people in the future and advising what steps to take. It also reflect how a genius can turn the online world on its head with the use of the Red Queen hypothesis and prepares a series of complex programs that led to the extermination of spammers. In consequence within the book, that action unleashed by Daemon reduced 80% of the spam in the Internet.

You will probably wonder after reading the book that such a reality can happen in our real life.

Related posts:

1. Freedom by Daniel Suarez
2. Free by Chris Anderson
3. Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson

The book “The Audacity to Win” by David Plouffe focuses on the inside story from the perspective of the campaign manager for the Obama Presidential campaign 2008 and the lessons learnt from the historic victory to elect the first African-American president. With an insider view, the story starts from how David Plouffe together with Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod put together an inner circle with candidate Barack Obama that subsequently led to a two years campaign culminating to his presidency. The book does not talk about the present day where we are debating whether President Obama have lived up to expectations, but provide the snapshot of the years that end with the day of his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States.

The book is an easy read and have taken me a day to complete at a brisk pace. The whole structure of the book is broken into three parts: (a) how the Obama team was assembled and the reluctance of David Plouffe taking the role of the campaign manager given his family commitments, (b) the Democratic primary that the Obama team defeat the Hillary Clinton juggernaut and (c) the final passage to the general election where they convinced the electorate to take Obama over McCain with the unpredictability of two events – the collapse of the US economy that come with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the emergence of Sarah Palin as a VP candidate.

One common message that comes very clear for this book was to defy the odds of electing Obama as president will depend on breaking free of the standard political paradigm and turn the whole campaign into a movement. A few interesting examples were raised in the course of the book but the most memorable of all was the fact the Obama campaign focus all their effort in building grassroots support and infrastructure than to seek endorsements from civil activists groups, unions and even prominent politicians. In fact, for their campaign to succeed, there is no margin for error and also in the decisions on resource allocation. In fact, the Obama campaign ran it on tight budget as compared to the other campaigns. The interesting point which David Plouffe put forward as a best practice to his campaign is the rule of consistency which cuts through the two years of campaigning. Another example was how the Obama team have the guts not to listen to a community organizer in South Carolina and concentrate on building a local grassroots community instead of engaging paid political operatives who will bring the voters close around the elections. The same consistent approach to build up grassroots infrastructure in the different states within the US eventually created a groundswell that allowed Obama to defeat Hillary Clinton by exploiting their weaknesses in the caucuses.

The best practices in the Obama campaign is conveyed in an anecdotal approach throughout the book but Plouffe acknowledge how they identify past successful approaches from other candidates who did not eventually win the primaries and apply it to the present situation. One of the strengths is the exploitation of using Internet technologies to do fundraising, organzing supporters and vote canvassing. In fact, he also agreed that the dragging and bruising Democratic primary with Hillary Clinton did help to make Obama stronger and ready for the generals. Even with all the unhappiness that has emerged thru the primaries, David Plouffe acknowledged that the Clinton team have put the differences behind and moved on after conceding the nomination even with small tensions that led up to the generals. Perhaps, thru the lens of David Plouffe, one can identify the thought processes of Obama as a candidate in the way on how he solicit the pros and cons of a policy issue and then comes to make a decision.

Of course, the most interesting part of the book that revealed a lot about Obama is that he did want to take Hillary Clinton as his VP candidate but worried about the complications with former president Bill Clinton. It also gave a lot of insider information on how they vetted and picked a VP candidate in the process. From the Democratic convention in Denver to the finishing line, the team ran a very disciplined campaign that defy many standard conventions. In fact, they also changed the way on how fundraising is done for a political enterprise thru the use of online social networks and social media tools. The focus on metrics and numbers is very evident in David Plouffe’s approach to the campaign.

I highly recommend this book for those who are interested in political history and grasping how difficult it was in the beginning before they reach the end goal of electing Obama into office. After all, David Plouffe manage to create a US1B start-up from nothing and adopting the mantra of defying the convention to change the electorate (or consumer base) for an electrifying political campaign.

Related Video: Watch David Plouffe’s talk in Authors@Google:

Related posts:

1. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
2. An Afternoon with Scott Goodstein in Ad-Tech Singapore 2009
3. Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott

My interest in football started with my research paper on hiring and firing of football managers. For the past few years, I have been following football games and news on the English Premiere League and their European counterparts out of interest on the validation of my model and also the excitement and enjoyment of the sport. Recently, I am intrigued by the issue of the diamond formation in football tactics, particularly, with both Ancelotti’s Chelsea and Mourinho’s Inter Milan which are now adopting it. Jonathan Wilson’s recent article on the diamond formation in the Guardian has prompted me to read deeper into the subject. So, as usual, I visited Kinokuniya bookstore in Singapore and checked out the book “Inverting the Pyramid” by Jonathon Wilson whether it is available. Luckily they have it and here are my thoughts after reading the book.

If you are interested in the history of football and tracked the development how the idea of football formations come about, Jonathan Wilson’s book “Inverting the Pyramid” will be a great exposition on the subject. It is reminiscent of international chess history books that tracked the tactics, Wilson’s book puts a good degree of scrutiny on the known football formations such as the boring 4-4-2, the dynamic switching of 4-5-1 and 4-3-3 adopted in modern football or even the 3-5-2 with interesting examples by looking at how the tactics improved or cancelled the sides in gaining victory in the game. It is important that the term “centre-half” known to most of us as the central defender in the English game which can also be interpreted as the central midfielder in the early history of the game.

The book began with a concise history of English football and the emergence of the first football formation known as the 2-3-5 system. Gradually, the book discussed how the first prominent football manager, Herbert Chapman from Arsenal introduced the third full back and introduced the W-M system (3-2-2-3) that was designed to counter the offside rule. He was also credited to be the one who had introduced the numbers behind the shirts of the players to facilitate identification.

Of course, the tale gradually moves towards on how managers such as Jimmy Hogan brought new ideas on the evolution of tactics in Holland. One realize that the history of football started with most British managers who acted as pilgrims of football and brought the game out of England to South America and continental Europe. The irony that one could realize is that these pilgrims of football all ended up as the founding fathers of football for other countries, for example, Charles Miller for Brazil and Jimmy Hogan for Hungarian, German and Austrian football. Yet none of them are recognized back in their homeland for their contributions of the game.

One of the sad tales of this book is that Hogan did not do so well when he came back to England, managing Fulham and Aston Villa. However, he was vindicated with the legacy he left behind in Continental Europe when England suffered the trauma shock of loss with a score of 3-6 by a Hungarian team at Wembley in 1953. That led to England into soul-searching for its own place in football. Ramsey, the only English manager who won the World Cup, brought a pragmatic view to incorporate a 4-2-4 formation which was used by Brazil, but changed it to 4-1-3-2 and made it work for the English team.

Moving along with history, Wilson also talked about how Reed’s flawed statistical analysis in football games. The circumstantial evidence on average amount of three passes brought about the belief that direct football is the best model for English football. It is also responsible why the English adopted the long ball approach that was totally outclassed by the teams in contemporary Continental Europe teams. The later parts of the book explore the contemporary formations, for example, the 4-3-3 used by Mourinho in Chelsea, and philosophy of football formations outside and within England and concluded how the initial adopted pyramid formation (2-3-5) ended with being inverted (4-4-2, 4-3-3) in today’s world. One of the chapters I enjoyed most was the story of how total football emerged from Holland.

The book is worth a read and will offer anyone a glimpse on how the world of football has changed with respect to football formations and tactics from the past to present. It is a treatise that showed how the South Americans have turned it into a beautiful game with the way they played and the continental Europeans adopted a holistic approach in molding individual players towards a robust team structure, for example, the Germans and how they trained themselves in taking penalty kicks.

Interesting Links:
[1] Jonathan Wilson, The Question: Is the midfield diamond here to stay and how do you counter it?, Guardian.
[2] Barney Ronay, The Manager Series.
[3] Guardian Football Weekly with James Richardson – my favourite football podcast and I enjoyed the sarcasms and bantering between Barry Glendenning and the rest of the guests in the show.

Related posts:

1. Freedom by Daniel Suarez

While traveling in China, I was reading Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” that accompanied most part of my journey. For most of who you who not know, Chris Anderson (Editor, Wired Magazine) is also the author of another interesting book entitled “The Long Tail“. The main premise of this book is that one can create a huge global economy around a base price of zero. Fast evolving technologies, for example, the Internet have transformed the production and distribution costs which causes the prices to plummet to very low levels close to zero, and that flexibility provided by the online world allows producers to trade ever more creatively. So, here are some of the interesting points that arise from the book.

Basically, the book is broken up into three parts: (1) What is Free – that introduces the concept of free and how it impacts economics and psychology of consumers and the author introduces the four major major models that how free is categorized with two concepts which are old but evolving: (a) direct cross-subsidies and (b) the third party market, and another two that are emerging with the digital economy: (a) Freemium and Non-monetary markets; (2) Digital Free – how the Internet and IT industry are creating an economy around a base price of zero, and details a few case studies: (a) Microsoft vs the Open Source Movement, (b) Yahoo vs Google over Email, and (c) Google’s evolution from inventing a way to do search to adopt a way for advertisers to create ads which match keywords or content of sites and finally, the countless services and products (Google Office, GMail, Google News and many others) that increasing consumer attachment to the company and extending the company’s reach towards more and more users; and (3) Freeconomics and the Free World, where he applies the idea that the every new abundance creates a new scarcity, and drawing lessons from China and Brazil, the developing nations that he coined as the frontiers of free.

If you are interested in looking for new business models around this idea of free, this book offers an excellent guidance, particularly a complete exposition of the freemium model, which is categorized into four different tactics: time limited (offer the product/service for a limited period of time and then get the user to pay), feature limited (give a basic version of the product free but makes the user pay when he or she wants more advanced features of the product), seat limited (can be used up by a limited number of people) and customer type related (small and young companies get it free & bigger and older companies pay). An interesting part is the appendix of examples used by companies which are built on free.

Towards the end of the book, Anderson tries to clarify the doubts of free from critics who do not agree with the concept. Ultimately, can anything be truly be free? Sure, reminds me of an important concept in physics that states that energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely transform from one form to another. Do enjoy the book.

Related posts:

1. The End of the Free Market by Ian Bremmer

After listening to Dan Ariely’s TED talk on our buggy moral code, I become interested in his research on behavioral economics. During a transit flight in Frankfurt airport back to Singapore after my trip to Monte Carlo, I managed to bought myself a copy of his book “Predictably Irrational” (and you can hear the story what prompted him to write the book in another TED talk entitled “Are we in control of our own decisions?“). Upon reading the book, I found that he was basically reiterating the examples from the book during the TED talk. It’s a fascinating book providing a different perspective on how we make decisions using the combined discipline of psychology and economics. In fact, you will be convinced by his reasoning why there is hidden rationale behind people performing the acts of cheating and dishonest behaviour. So, I thought I might just summarize two interesting concepts that popped up in this book:

• The strange truth about Relativity in decision making: In the book, Ariely explained that we tend to focus on compare things with one another but also tend to compare things that are easily comparable while avoiding comparing things that cannot be compared easily. In his model, he explained by giving a person two options A and B. By placing an additional option or decoy (-A), which is similar to A and looks slightly better than B, the individual will tend to choose A as a result. In the book, he used the following example from the subscription options available for “The Economist” magazine: (Option A) Print and Web Subscription priced at US$125, (Option -A) Print Subscription priced at US$125 and (Option B) Web Subscripton priced at US$59. Since the decision is originally between (A) and (B), with the introduction of (-A), the individual will end up picking (A) given that it looks like a viable choice.
• The cost of social and market norms: I appreciate the distinction made by Ariely on the two worlds characterized by social and market exchanges respectively. There are different norms that attributes to different relationships. Once if you make a mistake in the social norm by introducing market norms into social exchanges. I thought the example on “the most expensive sex is free sex” in the book. The unfortunate fact is when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time, i.e. social relationships are not easy to re-invigorated. The cases on how corporation introduced social norms to make workers more dedicated to the business and open source movements gave us some intrinsic insights on how these two different norms operate. It did prompt me to realize the distinction between bloggers and journalists. Bloggers gain trust and credibility through the quality of their content (social norm), while journalists writes articles to earn a living (market norm). Once a blogger overstepped and become more commericalized by writing too much advertorials, that social norm may be violated.

Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational” is definitely worth a read and if you are not convinced by my recommendation, you can always watch the TED videos (and his talk on the buggy code is one of my all time favourite TED talks which presents actually all you need to know in the last two chapters of the book) here to make an informed decision.

Related posts:

1. The Problem of Relative Choice for Singaporean Voters
2. My 5 Favourite TED Videos

I have been contemplating about purchasing William Cohan’s “House of Cards” on different occasions. It is not until the interview with William Cohan by Jon Stewart in the Daily Show, I have decided to grab a copy and read about the chronology on how the collapse of Bear Stearns have triggered the eventual downfall of Lehmann Brothers and proceeded by the global meltdown in Sep 2008. Of course, the most memorable line between them during their exchange on the Daily Show where Jon Stewart asked, “What is the difference between a Ponzi scheme and an investment bank?” His tacit reply is that the investment banks are playing by the rules whereas the Madoff scandal is playing outside the system. Once I started the first hundred pages of “House of Cards”, I realized where Jon Stewart drew the chronology of the material when he fired at Jim Cramer and CNBC for their faulty reporting on the financial institutions earlier. Of course, Stewart highly recommended this book on his show. It will be interesting to review Cohan’s book in detail here.

In a short summary, Cohan’s book account the incredible panic that happened during the first phases of the financial meltdown in Wall Street. The whole book is basically broken into three parts. The first part of the book reveals the ten days before the investment bank JP Morgan Chase offered to acquire Bear Stearns at a price of $236 million, or $2 per share on March 17, 2008 with pressure coming from US government (US Treasury) and Federal bank who have to step in to bail out the bank from the subprime mortgage crisis that eventually led to the global financial crisis beginning from the eventual collapse of Lehman Brothers.

After a detailed account of the ten days in March that led to the beginning of the end for Bear Stearns, the book shifted gear to a historical mode and talked about the history of the firm back from the beginning when the firm was founded as an equity trading house in 1923 by Joseph Bear, Robert Stearns, and Harold Mayer with US$500K in capital. Tracing the chronology of Bear Stearns, we are offered details on the three key players who dominated the company over the past 85 years: Cy Lewis, Alan “Ace” Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne. In each of the three personalities, the rise of power for subsequent leader of the firm is characterized by strong tension and conflict within the firm. Thru a historical review of the firm, the author attributed corporate infighting and the reckless of the bankers within Bear Stearns as possible causes of its downfall. For example, he elaborated the crucial role of competitive bridge that matters in how each of the key players have recruited talent into the organization. The last part of the book reveals the eventual downfall of the firm and how the cascading series of events led to the eventual bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the global financial crisis in 2008.

Of course, in the end, the investors in Bear Stearns re-negotiated and got back US$10 per share as compared to the US$2 per share imposed by the US Treasury (because of the moral hazard argument). It is a book which reflects the greed of Wall Street on the whole. Of course, it’s an interesting book to understand why we can have the “smartest talents” in Wall Street and they can still fumble due to greed, recklessness and ego. I highly recommend this book to anyone for a good understanding of the mortgage crisis that led to the financial meltdown last Sep 2008.

P/S: Check out the interview of William Cohan with Jon Stewart in the Daily Show.

Related posts:

1. The End of the Free Market by Ian Bremmer

During the US 2008 Presidential Elections, during a press conference, Senator Barack Obama (now President of the United States) offered his answer to a question from the press on how he would select his cabinet through quoting this book “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, an acclaimed historian. If you have watched “Meet the Press” in the days of Tim Russert, she was often invited as a political pundit to comment and reflect on how lessons from past presidents can be applied to look at the presidential elections or politics of today. The summary of the book narrates how the US President, Abraham Lincoln (famous for the abolition of slavery and winning the civil war) had managed to rope in his rivals (who ran against him in the 1860 election) in his Cabinet from 1861 to 1865. The most notable of his rivals who served him as  Cabinet members are: Edward Bates (Attorney General), Salmon Chase (Treasury), and William H. Seward (State). The book revolves around how Lincoln manage to reconcile people of conflicting egos and personalities (with their political factions) to resolve the greatest crisis which faced US at that point of time.

“The idea of progress comes naturally into one man’s mind; the desire to rise swells in every heart at once, and all men went to quit their former social position. Ambition becomes a universal feeling.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

Basically, the whole book is divided into three parts (instead of the two in how the author structured it). The first part depicted how Abraham Lincoln has won over his other rivals to the nomination. In the early chapters, Goodwin discussed in detail about the four men: Bates, Chase, Seward and Lincoln, from their family background, education, their “longing to rise” and subsequently how they were lured into politics. Goodwin also described carefully how each one of them acquired the recognition and status that led them to run for the nomination, and the political background. In fact, one of the essential themes of the book revolves around the timing of when these characters came about, where the country has gone past a century of independence and moving towards a state of enlightenment that led these characters into working for a common notion to abolish slavery. It might be of interest to those who will find out that Lincoln was an unlikely candidate to win the nomination as compared to his three other rivals, given the family background and the education privileges they have over him. Interestingly Lincoln spent most of the time educating himself and carried a book everywhere he went. Even in the midst of hardships, Lincoln was able to put himself through to acquire knowledge and appreciation of the arts from poetry to music.  In fact, an interest passage I quote from Lincoln when he told a law student who sought his advice, “Get the books, and read and study them … The books and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places … Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”

What follows after, the author shifted the emphasis on the rise of the Republican party and how the political climate and events in the 1850s propel the United States into a civil war. In the process, Lincoln, like his rivals become the chief architect of creating the party machinery within his state Illinois (coincidentally the same place where Barack Obama started his political career and eventually won the presidency recently), and lost an essential bid for senator against Stephen Douglas. Of course, it was through the bid for senate, Lincoln engaged in a series of famous debates on slavery with Stephen Douglas, a democrat that come to known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Although Lincoln lost the war, through compiling the points in the debate won him popularity that eventually sprang his next leap to be the Republican nominee for the president of the United States. Interestingly, it was his moderate views of slavery and his less privileged background that took him to the highest political office. On reflection, it took the US a century to abolish slavery and another century to give equal rights to the African Americans. It took many small steps to reach a tipping point, and Lincoln’s moderate position should show that in his struggle to unify the country and abolish slavery will take the Americans another hundred years to reach where they are today. Such is the story beautifully weaved in this biography.

In the final part of the book, revealed how Lincoln had to bring his rivals together and even in the midst of internal strife within his cabinet particularly Chase who continued to eye on his position. There is an  interesting analogue between Seward & Lincoln and Hillary Clinton & Obama. Both Seward and Hillary were both senators from New York and were very well-known to the foreign states (and shared the front-runner status when running for the nomination in their party as President). In the last half of the book, Seward helped Lincoln to deal with the British while the administration had to deal with the Confederacy and the secession of the southern states from union. Truth be told that Lincoln has to contend a bad economy with a nation in a civil war, even with a bold and controversial political move through Emancipation Proclaimation that forced the European states such as Britain not able to intervene.

While it is an inspiring biography, it also shares the truth about politics that there are no forever enemies and forever allies. It also revealed what happened to all his rivals in the end and none of them has managed to become President in the end. With the Lincoln’s success in the American civil war and the tragic tale of his assassination, he left a legacy behind that is much admired till even today. Of course, it is worth a read and if you are a lover of political history, don’t miss this book.

Related posts:

1. The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe
2. The End of the Free Market by Ian Bremmer

If you have read the book “Wikinomics” by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, then you should not miss this new book “Grown Up Digital” by Don Tapscott.  Believe it or not, ten years ago, the same author wrote a book entitled “Growing Up Digital”. In some sense, this book is a sequel and traces how the Net-Geners have evolved. The book was inspired by a US$4M project “The Net Generation: a Strategic Investigation” started by the company “New Paradigm” founded by the author and funded by large companies. With a survey of 11,000 young people, this book looks at the new generation who have literally grown up digital, a cultural phenomenon characterized by a few things they do: (1) texting friends, (2) downloading music, (3) uploading videos, (4) watching shows on YouTube, and (5) communicating via social networking platforms such as MySpace and Facebook. If you are a practitioner of social media or a policy maker involved in crafting new policies for the net generation, this might just be the book to read to understand the trends and strategies in the realms of education, citizen activism and parenting. So, here is my review of this interesting treatise:

• The balance between the naysayers and the optimists: Tapscott started off the book with the dark side of the net generation which includes cynical, skeptical and negative observations from academics, journalists and pundits: (i) The net generation are dumber than we were at their age, (ii) They’re screeagers, Net addicted losing their social skills and they have no time for sports or healthy activities, (iii) They have no shame – the Lolita effect, (iv) Because their parents have coddled them, they are adrift in the world and afraid to choose a path, (v) They steal – i.e. violate intellectual property rights, downloading music, swapping songs or sharing anything on a P2P network, (vi) They’re bullying friends online, (vii) They’re violent, (viii) They have no work ethic and will be bad employees, (ix) This is the latest narcissistic “me” generation and lastly, (x) they don’t give a damn. Throughout the book, Tapscott tries to take each one of these issues head on at the end of the book with a more balanced perspective. What I believe, the author is not try to show a dichotomy but rather the spectrum of attributes (both positive and negative) for the Net generation. At the end of the book, Tapscott recommends some solutions to engage the Net Generation and one lesson does stood up: engagement with the young generation rather exerting authortiy and control.
• Politics 2.0: One of the things that has not been documented very well in the mainstream media for the US Presidential elections 2008 is how the Obama campaign has utilised the internet for vote canvassing and fundraising. In this book, they documented how Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook left and joined the Obama campaign as the director of online organizing. Instead of using tradition internet techniques such as email, Hughes adopted social networks and also built a social networking site known as my.barackobama.com to build support, hold ralllies and raise money and also allow supporters to post blogs and organize themselves into groups for canvassing votes and fundraising. In this book, Tapscott also narrated why the Obama campaign has succeeded what the Dean campaign did not do in 2004. One interesting takeaway is that it challenges how government will engage the citizens in the formulation of public policy, and they brought up the interesting E-Petitions platform which was done in the UK since 2006.
• Characteristics of the Net Gen – 8 Net Gen Norms: Through the research data, the author characterize the norms of the net generation that may give some indication to how the family, workplace, markets, learning, education, politics and society will have to adapt and change with them. In the middle part of the book, he listed these 8 norms: (1) They want freedom in everything they do from freedom of choice to freedom of expression, (2) They love to customize and personalize, (3) They are the new scrutinizers, (4) They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work, (5) The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education and social life, (6) They are the collaboration and relationship generation, (7) The Net Gen has a need for speed and not just in video games, (8) They are the innovators. From here to the rest of the book, the author tries to flash up more examples and numbers and discuss the trends emerging from this net-generation.

Of course, for a reader like myself in Asia, the first criticism I have is that the dataset is constructed based on a North America population. Even in one part of the book, where the author brought up an example based on Shenzhen in China, it will be interesting if their research extends to different parts of Asia, Europe and Middle East. Particularly in the politics and the workplace, the net generation in these countries that I observe from day to day don’t really adhere to some of the examples. For example, in Asia, a lot of people gains knowledge via rote-learning, and hence that also translates to how they work and think in net generation. We see more copying rather than innovating in the process, and if you want examples, from the Back Dorm boys to the clones of Web 2.0 in China. However, this book may offer policy makers in my part of the world to how they can slowly change their attitudes with an emerging net generation.

All in all, it is an interesting read and provides some guidance to how e-engagement is done in the process. I do recommend the book to anyone looking to understand and engage those who have grown up digital.

Author’s Note: This article has also been published in Web 2.0 Journal Book Review under Sys-Con.

Related Links:

• Grown Up Digital site by Don Tapscott.

Related posts:

1. The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe
2. An Afternoon with Scott Goodstein in Ad-Tech Singapore 2009
3. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin