Sixteen books about the future of academic libraries

And how come none of them have librar* in the title?

Here's a bunch of books I've read (or will be reading) to help me figure out what's going on.

1. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by charlene Li & Josh Bernoff
   
   
2. The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove
   
   
3. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
   
   
4. Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become by Peter Morville
   
   
5. Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres
   
   
6. The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin
   
   
7. Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger
   
   
8. Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow
   
   
9. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig
   
   
10. The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain
    
    
11. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler
    
    
12. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser
    
    
13. The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle
    
    
14. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn
    
    
15. True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo
    
    
16. Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now by Gary Hall
    

It could just as easily been twenty or thirty. They're also evenly split between books I've already read and ones that I feel I need to read. The books I haven't read would constitute an entry in the "Books I'd Like to Read" category. (The Doctorow book I've read but not reviewed yet.) As usual, if you know of any books out there that I should read but haven't listed, feel free to let me know in the comments.

And what's up with me choosing teh ye olde paeper bookes for looking into the future anyway -- shouldn't I have chosen blogs, wikis, podcasts, video and ejournals and the like? Go on, set me straight. What should I be reading?

(Next up, I think I'll see if I can round up a list of relatively recent reports and white papers that look interesting. Yes, I'm obsessed, so shoot me.)

Books I'd like to read

Some more interesting-looking books for your reading and collection development pleasure. Apologies for such a long list, but I wanted to clear out all the stuff that's been accumulating for a while.


Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe

Jeff Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing. How were a bunch of part-time dabblers in finance able to help an investment company consistently beat the market? Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? The answers lie within these pages.

The blueprint for crowdsourcing originated from a handful of computer programmers who showed that a community of like-minded peers could create better products than a corporate behemoth like Microsoft. Jeff Howe tracks the amazing migration of this new model of production, showing the potential of the Internet to create human networks that can divvy up and make quick work of otherwise overwhelming tasks. One of the most intriguing ideas of Crowdsourcing is that the knowledge to solve intractable problems—a cure for cancer, for instance—may already exist within the warp and weave of this infinite and, as yet, largely untapped resource. But first, Howe proposes, we need to banish preconceived notions of how such problems are solved.

Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet by Ian F. McNeely, Lisa Wolverton

Here is an intellectual entertainment, a sweeping history of the key institutions that have organized knowledge in the West from the classical period onward. With elegance and wit, this exhilarating history alights at the pivotal points of cultural transformation. The motivating question throughout: How does history help us understand the vast changes we are now experiencing in the landscape of knowledge?

Beginning in Alexandria and its great center of Hellenistic learning and imperial power, we then see the monastery in the wilderness of a collapsed civilization, the rambunctious universities of the late medieval cities, and the thick social networks of the Enlightenment republic of letters. The development of science and the laboratory as a dominant knowledge institution brings us to the present, seeking patterns in the new digital networks of knowledge.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (Import edition via Amazon US)

How do we know if a treatment works, or if something causes cancer? Can the claims of homeopaths ever be as true – or as interesting as the improbable research into the placebo effect? Who created the MMR hoax? Do journalists understand science? Why do we seek scientific explanations for social, personal and political problems? Are alternative therapists and the pharmaceutical companies really so different, or do they just use the same old tricks to sell different types of pill? We are obsessed with our health. And yet – from the media’s ‘world-expert microbiologist’ with a mail-order PhD in his garden shed laboratory, via multiple health scares and miracle cures, to the million pound trial that Durham Council now denies ever existed – we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes even misleading information. Until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the dodgy science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases and missed opportunities of our time, but he also goes further: out of the bulls---, he shows us the fascinating story of how we know what we know, and gives us the tools to uncover bad science for ourselves.

The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World by Ralph Benko (Via Lessig Blog.)

The Websters' Dictionary examines the work of people and groups that reach millions online. In clear and simple terms, it shows you how it's done. Download a free eCopy of the complete work here by taking the Websters' Oath.

This also will sign you up for breaking news of the Web advocacy sector. (You can safely and completely unsubscribe with a click. There's no obligation -- except to use your powers only for Good.) And join the Websters' Bar and Grill, a social network for web-advocates, to hang out with other Websters and get the latest gossip. (No cover charge.)

The Websters' Dictionary lays it out from the basic to the sophisticated. How to get a domain name? What domain name to pick or to avoid? How do you create a great website or select someone to do it for you? How to harness the power of Web 2.0. (In fact, what the heck is Web 2.0?) What style gives you impact? What content works? How much should you spend? What kind of team do you need? It lays out best practices briefly, clearly, picturesquely, and above all accurately.

This is the dawning of the Age of the Internet. Be part of that. Become a Webster -- an activist, an operative, or a wonk who is using the Web to transform the world.

The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by by James Boyle

In this enlightening book James Boyle describes what he calls the range wars of the information age—today’s heated battles over intellectual property. Boyle argues that just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen should also understand intellectual property law. Why? Because intellectual property rights mark out the ground rules of the information society, and today’s policies are unbalanced, unsupported by evidence, and often detrimental to cultural access, free speech, digital creativity, and scientific innovation.

Boyle identifies as a major problem the widespread failure to understand the importance of the public domain—the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee. The public domain is as vital to innovation and culture as the realm of material protected by intellectual property rights, he asserts, and he calls for a movement akin to the environmental movement to preserve it. With a clear analysis of issues ranging from Jefferson’s philosophy of innovation to musical sampling, synthetic biology and Internet file sharing, this timely book brings a positive new perspective to important cultural and legal debates. If we continue to enclose the “commons of the mind,” Boyle argues, we will all be the poorer.

Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer

What time of year do teenage girls search for prom dresses online? How does the quick adoption of technology affect business success (and how is that related to corn farmers in Iowa)? How do time and money affect the gender of visitors to online dating sites? And how is the Internet itself affecting the way we experience the world? In Click, Bill Tancer takes us behind the scenes into the massive database of online intelligence to reveal the naked truth about how we use the Web, navigate to sites, and search for information--and what all of that says about who we are.

As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life. Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

Books I'd like to read

It's been another little while since I've done one of these lists, so here goes, a two part massive list for your reading and collection development pleasure. Part One today with Part Two I hope next week.


Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott

The Net Generation Has Arrived.
Are you ready for it?

Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital--and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay.

The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future.

If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer: This is your field guide.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn

According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.”

Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories.

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig

Criminalizing our children and others is exactly what our society should not do, and Lessig shows how we can and must end this conflict—a war as ill conceived and unwinnable as the war on drugs. By embracing “read-write culture,” which allows its users to create art as readily as they consume it, we can ensure that creators get the support—artistic, commercial, and ethical—that they deserve and need. Indeed, we can already see glimmers of a new hybrid economy that combines the profit motives of traditional business with the “sharing economy” evident in such Web sites as Wikipedia and YouTube. The hybrid economy will become ever more prominent in every creative realm—from news to music—and Lessig shows how we can and should use it to benefit those who make and consume culture.

Remix is an urgent, eloquent plea to end a war that harms our children and other intrepid creative users of new technologies. It also offers an inspiring vision of the post-war world where enormous opportunities await those who view art as a resource to be shared openly rather than a commodity to be hoarded.

Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan To Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross

Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive "Googleplex," acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company's recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world's information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us?

Experimental Heart: A Novel by Jennifer L. Rohn

During his many long nights in the lab, scientist Andy O'Hara has plenty of time to wonder about the mysterious and beautiful Gina, first glimpsed in a lit window across the courtyard. He doesn't realize she is consumed by her vaccine research, concerned about her biotech company's financial problems, and about to become the prime target of animal rights activists. She is also distracted by a charming pharmaceutical mogul who offers funding for her work and a glamorous escape from her past mistakes.

When Andy finally meets Gina, his monotonous life starts to unravel. Soon he becomes embroiled in an increasingly complex web of deception as he scrambles to discover his rival's true intentions. When Gina abruptly disappears, Andy sets off to find her. But is it too late? Is there a more sinister reason behind Gina's involvement with the company? Is Gina's vaccine all it appears to be? And is Andy ready to acknowledge that there is more to life than work?

A few of these are fairly typical business-oriented hype-fests so it should be interesting to see how they stack up to a reality-based approach. I can't wait to read them. I also look forward to the lablit novel Experimental Heart by LabLit-site pioneer Jennifer Rohn. Published by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, no less.

Books I'd like to read

It's been a while since I did one of these for your reading and collection development pleasure:


Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software by Christopher M. Kelty

In Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelty investigates the history and cultural significance of Free Software, revealing the people and practices that have transformed not only software, but also music, film, science, and education. Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. Kelty shows how these specific practices have reoriented the relations of power around the creation, dissemination, and authorization of all kinds of knowledge after the arrival of the Internet. Two Bits also makes an important contribution to discussions of public spheres and social imaginaries by demonstrating how Free Software is a "recursive public"--a public organized around the ability to build, modify, and maintain the very infrastructure that gives it life in the first place.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

On first glance, back-to-the-land hippies and dot-com entrepreneurs might not seem much alike, but it turns out that they have a whole lot in common underneath those scraggly beards and goatees. Drawing a direct line from dog-eared copies of the Whole Earth Catalog to the slickly techno-libertarian Wired magazine, Stanford University communications professor Turner follows countercultural figures like Stewart Brand, who shaped the information revolution, according to their aspirations to break down the boundaries of individual experience and embrace a larger collective consciousness. Less a biography of Brand than of the swirl of relationships surrounding him, the book shows how the ride of the Merry Pranksters and LSD experimentation led to the early online discussion board Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the WELL), and into the digital utopianism surrounding the hyperlinked World Wide Web. Turner offers a compelling genealogy of both the ideals and the disappointments of our digital world, one that is as important for scholars as it is illuminating for general readers.

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson

In this richly detailed and passionately argued book, Jackson (What's Happening to Home?) warns that modern society's inability to focus heralds an impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a civilization amid abundance and technological advancement. Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's relevant and permanent. The author provides a lively historical survey of attention, drawing upon philosophy, the impact of scientific innovations and her own experiences to investigate the possible genetic and psychological roots of distraction. While Jackson cites modern virtual life (the social network Facebook and online interactive game Second Life), her research is largely mired in the previous century, and she draws weak parallels between romance via telegraph and online dating, and supernatural spiritualism and a newfound desire to reconnect. Despite the detours (a cultural history of the fork?), Jackson has produced a well-rounded and well-researched account of the travails facing an ADD society and how to reinvigorate a renaissance of attention.

The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives by Michael Heller

For forty years, "the tragedy of the commons" has set the frame for an extraordinary range of social, economic, and legal thought. It oriented policy prescriptions. It set the baseline on reasonable policy alternatives. Its strong conclusion in favor of assigning property rights whenever possible has had a profound effect on everything from intellectual property policy to spectrum regulation. Its simple, intuitive analysis became second nature to a generation of policy makers.

Heller's book, The Gridlock Economy, completely inverts this framework for some of the most important policy questions we will face in the digital age. His clear and beautifully crafted analysis is absolutely compelling, and will fundamentally change the debate in core policy areas. There are very few books that reorient a field. Almost none that reorient many fields. This is in that "almost none" category: Paradigms will shift. Many of them. --Lawrence Lessig

War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence H. Keeley. (via)

Throughout much of this century the notion has been gaining ground, bolstered by genocide and Holocaust, that modern warfare is more barbaric than war has ever been. Alongside this view has grown a romantic impression that primitive cultures were, and are, more peaceful. Lawrence Keeley, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, aims to dispel this inversion of the connotations of "civilization." He cites the historical evidence that humans have always been just as bloodthirsty as they are today, and that indeed in the days when death was less clinical it was often nastier. War, it seems, has always been with us.

Books I'd like to read

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 by Sarah Lacy

Everyone has heard the story of the Internet Bubble. Beginning with Netscape’s IPO in 1996, billions flowed into Internet startups, and companies with no revenues and shaky business plans earned sky-high valuations on Wall Street. It was the era of paper millionaires, $800 office chairs, and Super Bowl ads for dotcoms. Then in 2000 the Bubble burst, with the NASDAQ losing 75 percent of its value and hundreds of companies closing up shop. It was all written off to “irrational exuberance,” and everyone moved on.

Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good is the story of the entrepreneurs who learned their lesson from the bust and in recent years have created groundbreaking new Web companies. The second iteration of the dotcoms—dubbed Web 2.0—is all about bringing people together. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace unite friends online; YouTube lets anyone posts videos for the world to see; Digg.com allows Internet users to vote on the most relevant news of the day; Six Apart sells software that enables bloggers to post their viewpoints online; and Slide helps people customize their virtual selves.

Business reporter Sarah Lacy brings to light the entire Web 2.0 scene: the wide-eyed but wary entrepreneurs, the hated venture capitalists, the bloggers fueling the hype, the programmers coding through the night, the twenty-something millionaires, and the Internet “fan boys” eager for all the promises to come true.

The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science by Sheilla Jones

Theoretical physics is in trouble. At least that's the impression you'd get from reading a spate of recent books on the continued failure to resolve the 80-year-old problem of unifying the classical and quantum worlds. The seeds of this problem were sewn eighty years ago when a dramatic revolution in physics reached a climax at the 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels. It's the story of a rush to formalize quantum physics, the work of just a handful of men fired by ambition, philosophical conflicts and personal agendas.

Sheilla Jones paints an intimate portrait of the key figures who wrestled with the mysteries of the new science of the quantum, along with a powerful supporting cast of famous (and not so famous) colleagues. The Brussels conference was the first time so many of the "quantum ten" had been in the same place: Albert Einstein, the lone wolf; Niels Bohr, the obsessive but gentlemanly father figure; Max Born, the anxious hypochondriac; Werner Heisenberg, the intensely ambitious one; Wolfgang Pauli, the sharp-tongued critic with a dark side; Paul Dirac, the silent Englishman; Erwin Schrodinger, the enthusiastic womanizer; Prince Louis de Broglie, the French aristocrat; and Paul Ehrenfest, who was witness to it all. Pascual Jordan, the ardent Aryan nationalist, came uninvited.

This is the story of quantum physics that has never been told, an equation-free investigation into the turbulent development of the new science and its very fallible creators, including little-known details of the personal relationship between the deeply troubled Ehrenfest and his dear friend Albert Einstein. Jones weaves together the personal and the scientific in a heartwarming--and heartbreaking--story of the men who struggled to create quantum physics: a story of passion, tragedy, ambition and science.

The Edge of Reason: A Novel of the War between Science and Superstition by Melinda Snodgrass

It’s difficult, when you’re tackling hot button issues like religion, to avoid writing a polemic. I hope I succeeded. I tried very hard to personalize these questions to the characters. But larger issues do intrude. When three of the ten candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination said they didn’t believe in evolution, when school boards try to force the teaching of “creation science” and allow students to opt out of astronomy classes when the Big Bang is discussed, we’ve got a problem. (via)

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson

Award-winning science writer Johnson (A Fire in the Mind; Strange Beauty) calls readers away from the industrialized mega-scale of modern science (which requires multimillion-dollar equipment and teams of scientists) to appreciate 10 historic experiments whose elegant simplicity revealed key features of our bodies and our world. Some of the experiments Johnson describes have a sense of whimsy, like Galileo measuring the speed of balls rolling down a ramp to the regular beat of a song, or Isaac Newton cutting holes in window shades and scrambling around with a prism to break light into its component colors. Other experiments—such as William Harvey's use of vivisected animals to demonstrate the circulation of blood, and the truncated frogs Luigi Galvani used in his study of the nervous system—remind us of changing attitudes toward animal research. Joule's effort to show that heat and work are related ways of converting energy into motion, Michelson's work to measure the speed of light, Millikan's sensitive apparatus for measuring the charge of an electron: these experiments toppled contemporary dogma with their logic and clear design as much as with their results. With these 10 entertaining histories, Johnson reminds us of a time when all research was hands-on and the most earthshaking science came from... a single mind confronting the unknown.

The Craftsman by Richard Sennett

ennett considers an array of artisans across different periods, from ancient Chinese chefs to contemporary mobile-phone designers, in this powerful meditation on the "skill of making things well." The template of craftsmanship, he finds, combines a "material consciousness" with a willingness to put in years of practice (a common estimate of the time required to master a craft is ten thousand hours) and a strategic acceptance of ambiguity, rather than an obsessive perfectionism. Sennett’s aim is to make us rethink the notion that society benefits most from a workforce trained to respond to the metamorphoses of a global economy. Ultimately, he writes, the difficulties and possibilities of craft can teach "techniques of experience" that help us relate to others, and lead to an "ethically satisfying" pride in one’s work.

Books I'd like to read

Here's two books I'd love to see duke it out in a cage match. One seems to take an essentially positive view of the effects of the new multimedia landscape on the current generations and the other...doesn't.

First, the optimists.

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey, Urs Gasser

The most enduring change wrought by the digital revolution is neither the new business models nor the new search algorithms, but rather the massive generation gap between those who were born digital and those who were not. The first generation of "digital natives"--children who were born into and raised in the digital world--is now coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our cultural life, even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed.

But who are these digital natives? How are they different from older generations, and what is the world they're creating going to look like? In Born Digital, leading Internet and technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer a sociological portrait of this exotic tribe of young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.

Based on original research and advancing new theories, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical: What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? Should we worry about privacy issues? Or is privacy even a relevant value for digital natives? How does the concept of safety translate into an increasingly virtual world? Is "stranger-danger" a real problem, or a red herring?

And now, the pessimist.

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein

Can a nation continue to enjoy political and economic predominance if its citizens refuse to grow up?

For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down popular culture available to young people and the impact it has on their futures. At the dawn of the digital age, many believed they saw a hopeful answer: The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children. The terms “information superhighway” and “knowledge economy” entered the lexicon, and we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map. The Dumbest Generation is a startling examination of the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its consequences for American culture and democracy.

In fact, I think the books may be a bit closer than at first glance. Afterall, the summary for the first does have an interesting quote, refering to this "exotic tribe of young people who can seem ... both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow." And I think that's more or less what the second book is getting at -- the strangely narrow part. Now don't get me wrong. Old fogies have always complained about the youth of the day being lazy, dumb, ignorant, disrespectful and lacking in intestinal fortitude. And it's always been true, to a certain extent. When we get old ourselves, we forget how we really were when we were young and how we thought that our elders were clueless and irrelevant. Pretending these generational disconnects are new is wrong, as is underestimating the uniqueness of the one were currently experiencing.

I think that these two books, taken together, probably make up one very important book. After all, the students that fill our libraries everyday are these millennials and we have to deal with them in all their extraordinary sophistication and strange narrowness.

(For a deliciously mean take on the narrowness part, check this out.)

Books I'd like to read

The first highlighted book is one I'm definitely going to read, because I already bought my copy this past Saturday. It's Canada's Fifty Years in Space by Gordon Shepherd and Agnes Kruchio. This one has a York connection as Gordon Shepherd is a long-time York faculty member and director of York's Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science. It was launched as part of the York activities for Science Rendezvous.


Canada's Fifty Years in Space by Gordon Shepherd and Agnes Kruchio

International space science began suddenly with the creation of COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) in October, 1958, and its first plenary meeting was held in London, in November the same year. Canada was at the table for both the creation and the first plenary meeting. Canada's Fifty Years in Space describes the parallel growth of the Canadian space science program from that date up to the 50th Anniversary of COSPAR, to be celebrated in Montreal in July, 2008...

The final achievement of the fifty years is a Canadian-built lidar that is part of the NASA Phoenix mission and is on its way to Mars, destined to land there in May, 2008. This work is about these missions over the fifty years, but also about the people who built them, launched them, captured the data and published the scientific results.

Hackerteen Volume 1: Internet Blackout By Marcelo Marques

This engaging graphic novel probes the modern online world where an increasing number of middle school- and high school-aged kids spend their time. Hackerteen teaches young readers about basic computing and Internet topics, including the potential for victimization. The book is also ideal for parents and teachers who want their children and students to understand the risks of using the Internet and the proper ways to behave online.

Note: My sons will love this one! (Ok, I'll love it too)

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture by Robert Bruce Thompson

For students, DIY hobbyists, and science buffs, who can no longer get real chemistry sets, this one-of-a-kind guide explains how to set up and use a home chemistry lab, with step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments in basic chemistry. Learn how to smelt copper, purify alcohol, synthesize rayon, test for drugs and poisons, and much more. The book includes lessons on how to equip your home chemistry lab, master laboratory skills, and work safely in your lab, along with 17 hands-on chapters that include multiple laboratory sessions.

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer

What is life? Can we make it from scratch? Are there rules that all living things must obey? Can there be life without death? Biologists today are seeking answers to these fundamental questions about life. Few people know that many of those answers may reside in a species of bacteria that live in our guts: E. coli.

In this startlingly original biography of a germ, Carl Zimmer traces E. coli's pivotal role in the history of biology, from the discovery of DNA to the latest advances in biotechnology. Zimmer describes the remarkably sophisticated strategies E. coli uses to stay alive, from practicing chemical warfare to building microbial cities. He reveals the many surprising and alarming parallels between E. coli's life and our own. Zimmer describes the profound insights E. coli has offered about evolution, by changing in real time and by revealing billions of years of history encoded in its genome. E. coli is also the most engineered species on Earth, and as scientists retool this microbe to produce life-saving drugs and clean fuel, they are discovering just how far the definition of life can be stretched.

Microcosm is the first full story of the one species on Earth scientists know best. It is also the story of life itself, of its rules, its mysteries, and its future.

Books I'd like to read

A bunch more, this time some of them in paperback reprint:

The Canon by Natalie Angier

THE CANON is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time—from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it's for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or how electricity works. Angier's sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works. "Of course you should know about science," writes Angier, "for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun and fun is good."

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained—or lost—by the decisions we make today.

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit

At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not. In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. In Not Even Wrong, he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth. In the face of many books from enthusiasts for string theory, this book presents the other side of the story.

The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing edited by Richard Dawkins

Boasting almost one hundred pieces, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "the discovery of Lucy" to "the terror and vastness of the universe." Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more.

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

In True Enough, Manjoo presents findings from psychology, sociology, political science, and economics to show how new technologies are prompting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact. In an age of talk radio, cable TV, and the Internet—the blog- and YouTube-addled million-channel media universe—it is no longer necessary for any of us to confront notions that contradict what we "know" to be true. Stephen Colbert calls this "truthiness"—when something feels true without any evidence that it is. Here Manjoo probes the cognitive basis of truthiness, exploring how biases push both liberals and conservatives to select and interpret news in a way that accords with their personal versions of "reality."

Why has punditry lately overtaken news, with so many media outlets pushing partisan agendas instead of information? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they've been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture. We meet people who espouse far-out interpretations of reality—about everything from the history of John Kerry's time in Vietnam to the integrity of the 2004 election to the truth about 9/11—and dig into the mechanism by which they came to hold those beliefs.

(Why, you ask, do I list far more books that I'd like to read that I would ever possibly get a chance to actually read? Well, you know the old saying, "He who dies with the most books wins!"

FWIW, I try and read one science/net culture book per month, aiming for about 15 per year.)

Two more books I'd like to read

First of all, Clifford Pickover emailed me about his most recent book and it looks pretty cool:

Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

Throughout this fascinating book, Clifford Pickover invites us to share in the amazing adventures of brilliant, quirky, and passionate people after whom these laws are named. These lawgivers turn out to be a fascinating, diverse, and sometimes eccentric group of people. Many were extremely versatile polymaths--human dynamos with a seemingly infinite supply of curiosity and energy and who worked in many different areas in science. Others had non-conventional educations and displayed their unusual talents from an early age. Some experienced resistance to their ideas, causing significant personal anguish.

Pickover examines more than 40 great laws, providing brief and cogent introductions to the science behind the laws as well as engaging biographies of such scientists as Newton, Faraday, Ohm, Curie, and Planck. Throughout, he includes fascinating, little-known tidbits relating to the law or lawgiver, and he provides cross-references to other laws or equations mentioned in the book. For several entries, he includes simple numerical examples and solved problems so that readers can have a hands-on understanding of the application of the law.

Next up is one of the big buzz books from the last month or so, this one by Jonathan Zittrain:

The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.

The Internet’s current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true “netizens.”

We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity

Another in the recent series of posts on books I want to read: We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity by Charles Leadbeater.

The Amazon.co.uk summary:

Society is based not on mass consumption now but on mass, innovative participation - as is clear in phenomena from Wikipedia, Youtube and Craigslist to new forms of scientific research and political campaigning. This new mode of 'We-think' is reshaping the way we work, play and communicate."We-think" is about what the rise of these phenomena (not all to do with the internet) means for the way we organise ourselves - not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. For the point of the industrial era economy was mass production for mass consumption, the formula created by Henry Ford; but these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a new kind of society, in which people want to be players, not spectators.This is a huge cultural shift, for in this new economy people want not services and goods, delivered to them, but tools so they can take part. In "We-think" Charles Leadbeater analyses not only these changes, but how they will affect us and how we can make the most of them.

Just as, in the 1980s, his "In Search of Work" predicted the rise of more flexible employment, here he outlines a crucial shift that is already affecting all of us.

Sadly, it doesn't seem to have a publish date outside the UK.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Another cool looking book to read, this time by Clay Shirky!

Here Comes Everybody is about why new social tools matter for society. It is a non-techie book for the general reader (the letters TCP IP appear nowhere in that order). It is also post-utopian (I assume that the coming changes are both good and bad) and written from the point of view I have adopted from my students, namely that the internet is now boring, and the key question is what we are going to do with it.

And why don't we consider this an open thread for book recommendations -- fiction, non-fiction, library-related or not.

Some other interesting books I'd like to read

Nothing like finding one book you'd like to read to suddenly get a whole bunch more popping up in front of your consciousness. All of these are reflections of the stuff I'm obsessed with these days, the conversations I'm having inside my own head.

Starting with the one from the last post:

• The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove
  
  
• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr
  
  
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres
  
  
• Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web by Gene Smith
  
  
• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
  
  
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

And yes, I find it odd and somewhat disturbing that so many of the books I want to read are in the business section. Of course, if there's a book that you feel I should be reading, please drop a comment and let me know!

Also, related to the last post on The Future of Reputation, Michael Nielson pointed me to an article by Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net. Goldhaber also has a blog covering much the same territory.

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

Now this is a book I've got to read!

As anyone who's heard me speak recently, I'm thinking more and more about how the twin demons of attention and reputation are shaping our lives. It seems to me that we can use online attention to shape our online reputation and that this nebulous online reputation can shape the way things happen off-line.

It was Ricard Akerman's post several weeks ago on The Currencies of the Digital Realm that really crystallized these thoughts for me. As I've quoted in my last couple of presentations:

Attention is the first currency of the digital realm...
Reputation is the second currency of the digital realm...
To me this means that in the digital realm, you have to stop thinking that you're in the XYZ business...and start thinking that you're in the attention and reputation business.

And I think this is hugely important for libraries to be aware of. What we're really trying to do is build our reputations so we can get the attention of our faculty and students. Or are we using our reputations to get the attention of our patrons? Or is it a little of both? In a world where there are a million options for searching the scholarly literature, we need that edge to get our point of view heard.

So, what about The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove? From the author's web page, I can see that he has put the entire full text of the book online for free. Which is in itself a gambit to get our attention, to actually get us to read the book. Then, perhaps we'll buy it or invite him to speak at an event. Perhaps having a widely reviewed and commented upon book can help him build his academic reputation? It's all intermingled and cross-promoting.

The points he is trying to make are actually quite skeptical, worrying more about the damage to our reputations that can happen online rather than what we can do positively:

What information about you is available on the Internet?

What if it’s wrong, humiliating, or true but regrettable?

Will it ever go away?

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Longstanding notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance among privacy, free speech, and anonymity, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

But it still looks to be an interesting and provocative book. Perhaps we're still waiting for a book to make the counter-argument, that the Web can be used to build and foster our reputation too. I have to admit, that Chris Anderson's upcoming book Free might just be what I'm waiting for.