I had planned reviews on two separate books. But with the Snowden-NSA Leak Story, it made more sense to put both books in one review that tie them to this breaking news story.
The two books are: The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen; and The End of Big by Nicco Mele.
They’re both worth reading – if you’re looking for the 30,000 foot view of the future of the Internet. They’re both fascinating romps of what’s ahead in cyber space and your life. Both reminded me of Peter Schwartz’s great piece from the last decade, “Inevitable Surprises.”
However, if you’re a nerd or geek, you probably know all this.
Some takeaways:
Both books are optimistic about the future, but they warn of pitfalls.
Both books talk about the escalating need for technology that is happening among governments, businesses, and terror groups.
The New Digital Age has a great chapter for journalists and future journalists. The authors’ advice for journalists: team up with a geek who is a master at encryption. (We’ve seen that with the Snowden story and with the DOJ subpoenas of Fox News and AP.)
The End of Big talks about how David can take down Goliaths. Appropriate, huh? But he believes politically we are entering an era of what would be described as liberal politics since geeks and nerds will control the world and they hate conformity and big corporations.
These are on my lists of summer reads for you.
Again, the Informed Not Inflamed book reviews are short – designed to make you read the authors and not me.
Go for it.
One more summer read suggestion is coming.
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