Essential for anyone who creates or works with what the old laws once called “the tangible expression of ideas”—a...
Fluent arguments against those who maintain that ripping a borrowed CD or pirating a video is a victimless crime.
At the micro level, such acts are not necessarily world-ending. And doesn’t Hollywood make enough money already? Perhaps, but, onetime Ross Perot running mate and long-time Washington insider Choate (The High-Flex Society, 1986) writes, consider that in China, the world’s largest single market, the largest legal film distributor sold 300,000 copies of Titanic, whereas pirates sold something like 25 million of them. Similarly, in Russia three out of four recordings are pirated, in eastern Europe only one of four software packages is legally licensed, and in Italy (and Washington, for that matter), buying fakes is now a fashion statement. The economic implications are enormous, costing Americans jobs and lots of money. (What’s more, think what would happen if airplanes started using pirated or faked parts, Choate suggests just before offering statistics on how many planes in the U.S. have crashed for just that reason.) Choate goes on to present a vigorous and to-the-point summary of the history of copyright and other intellectual property laws in the U.S., which, he argues, have been economic engines in their own right, rewarding innovation and ingenuity while allowing public-domain provisions to assure the general good. In that light, Choate examines current models of protection, designed to serve the interests of wealthy corporations, not individual inventors. He observes, for instance, that present law locks up economically dead material along with material that lives on and on, such as the song “Happy Birthday,” which should have fallen into the public domain in 1991 but was given a term extension to 2009, the better to enrich Time Warner. To liberate this material, as the framers of the Constitution would have wished, Choate proposes a flexible program that would both protect rights owners and “quickly move copyrighted works into the public domain after their commercial life is ended.”
Essential for anyone who creates or works with what the old laws once called “the tangible expression of ideas”—a significant readership, that is, in the Knowledge Economy.Pub Date: April 30, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-40212-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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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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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