Reader’s Diary

Clay Shirky

The idea that technology makes it easy to organize people and projects isn’t exactly news but there are some valuable ideas in this book.  For example,  Shirky maintains that open source software succeeds because failure is free.  Compare this to proprietary software from companies who can’t - and whose executives can’t - afford to fail.

I enjoyed the book, but like many other tech/business books by popular gurus it has too much cheerleading and not enough insightful criticism.

Sarah Lacy

First of all, if you want to know what “Web 2.0″ is, read what Tim O’Reilly, the term’s originator has to say about it.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can talk about Sarah Lacy’s book.  For her, “Web 2.0″ isn’t about the web as a platform, user-generated content, or rich Internet applications, it’s just “any fortune made after the dot com crash”.  This is a good account of the rise of 2nd generation web gold mines like MySpace, Facebook, Digg, and YouTube.  It focuses on personalities at the expense of perspective and is marred by her seemingly uncritical affection for her subjects.   Despite my criticism, I enjoyed the book and it fills - or at least occupies - a previously empty slot on the Internet history bookshelf.

John Battelle

Internet search: what it is, how it’s done, and how it turns into money is the topic of this book.  Battelle gives looks at the past, present, and future of search.  While the emphasis is on the 800 pound gorilla of Google, he also recounts the stories of its predecessors and competitors.  It’s an interesting book on a topic that’s taken so much for granted that it’s hardly ever examined.

William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich

“Days of Infamy” continues the alternate history storyline begun in “Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th“.   The plot centers around a Midway-like battle immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  There’s lots of military action based in intelligent counterfactual speculation and none of the first book’s faults.  My only complaint is that it takes Forstchen and Gingrich too long to crank these things out.

Ian Ayres

This book shows how huge databases combined with cheap massive computer power allow mathematical techniques like regression analysis to be applied to business, medicine, sports, and entertainment.  It’s an interesting book full of real-world examples that’s accessible to the non-mathematically inclined reader.

(Note: Plagiarism accusations have been made about some of the contents of “Super Crunchers”.)

Jessica Livingston

This collection of interviews with founders of start-up companies is interesting but limited: every tale is a success story filtered through the “heroes’” memories.  The author is a former investment bank marketing VP and current venture capitalist.  A journalist would have asked more penetrating questions and, possibly, gone beyond the conventional dot com era myths.

What about the guys who didn’t make it, the founders pushed out of their own companies, and the early empolyees who saw their equity diluted by venture capitalists?   You’ll find none of that here, nor will you find much about then new model “Web 2.0″ start-up that doesn’t take much, if any, outside investment.