Slowly paced, familiar narrative of tech dreams and youthful hubris.
Journalistic account of an ambitious, ill-fated attempt at creating a privacy-oriented alternative to Facebook.
New York Times columnist Dwyer (co-author: 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, 2004, etc.) lays out the improbable narrative of Diaspora, a project hatched by four New York University students that too quickly gained attention worldwide among digital cognoscenti and “shot like a comet through the venture capital wings of Silicon Valley, but flamed out.” The author explores the strong personalities behind it, quintessential millennials with an intense focus on the virtual world (and quirky pursuits like Burning Man). Unfortunately, the most idealistic of the four became so overwhelmed that he committed suicide at age 22, a looming tragedy that checks Dwyer’s tone of futurist optimism. At first, Diaspora’s bright prospects were due to its open-source software code and a promise of user-controlled data. Suspicious about how Facebook “hoarded and peddled personal information without so much as asking,” the founders attracted supporters worldwide. An initial Kickstarter campaign allowed them to set up shop in San Francisco and spend a year coding; however, the four principals thwarted their own ambitions, starting with a disastrous meeting with a venture capital firm that they alienated with a $10 million “ask.” As Dwyer notes, “Diaspora did not fall under the standard rubric for evaluating startups.” Despite his positive spin (he followed the project from its early days as a columnist), the project never seemed close to practicality. As the rambling narrative follows the crew through many tech-geek happenings and increasingly tense board meetings, the author chronicles how Diaspora’s most promising components were ruthlessly emulated by competitors: “Google came out with circles months after Diaspora had introduced the aspects settings, each of them a digital corral…it was a perfect example of how quickly digital innovation could lose its novelty.” Ultimately, the increasingly estranged partners entered a venture-capitalist incubator program and were advised to abandon the project, though volunteers continue to develop its source code.
Slowly paced, familiar narrative of tech dreams and youthful hubris.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02560-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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