A surprisingly absorbing foray into the optimization of product flow.
A survey of the logistical innovations that bring a product to your doorstep with the tap of a keyboard.
In his first book, Wall Street Journal technology columnist Mims follows the trail of a USB device, an everyday piece of computer equipment, from its construction in a Vietnamese factory (and back even further, to the extraction of the elements that went into making its intricate interior) to its arrival at a buyer’s home. This device is only one of “100 billion—the number of parcels shipped every year, worldwide, as of 2020.” The author goes on to recount the lives of the people in the global supply chains that make it possible for the designers to get their inventions—also well explored—to market. Mims also chronicles the relevant history, from the scientific management theories of Frederick Taylor (and the alienation left in their wake) to the construction lines of Henry Ford (ditto) and the “centuries of experience, craft, and technology accumulated by sailors and naval architects” that allow a crew of 30 to 40 individuals to pilot a vessel three football fields long, stacked with thousands of containers, across entire oceans. Mims writes in a digestible style that conveys a pleasing you-are-there quality, and he does not shy away from describing the vast economic inequalities involved in the movement of commodities and the indifference of many managers toward their workers—from injuries to psychological impacts—since they can be trained in hours and discarded if they do not hit their “make rate.” Inevitably, there is plenty of predictive analytics, load-balancing algorithms, fulfillment engines, and dynamic route planning—right down to a minimum of left turns for delivery trucks. Remarkably, Mims makes docking a cargo vessel and loading conveyor belts, and even making that left turn, well worth close examination.
A surprisingly absorbing foray into the optimization of product flow.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-298-795-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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