ReviewSien

On Intelligence

sienko — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:58:47 +0000

On Intelligence (2004) by Jeff Hawkins is a short crisp book where a theory of the brain is described that Hawkins believes will allow artificial intelligence to be created and a framework for the brain to be understood. Hawkins was one of the inventors of the Palm Pilot.
Hawkins describes the brain as a ‘feed forward hierarchical state machine’
The book’s description of the brain is interesting. Hawkins makes lots of interesting points about the brain about the structure of the neocortex and the way that neurons fire far more slowly than electronic gates switch.
It’s a short, fascinating read.

Managing Humans

sienko — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:20:10 +0000

Managing Humans (2007) by Michael Lopp is an entertaining quick read about management and software engineering. The book is a number of short pieces on various aspects of software engineering. The book is broken into 3 parts, ‘The Management Quiver’, that deals with how a manager should act, ‘The Process is the Product’ and ‘Versions of You’. The book has it’s moments, “Don’t be a prick” is great advice. The characterisations of people Lopp writes up in ‘Versions of You’ are also informative. The Free Electron (i.e. guru), incrementalists and completionists and organics versus mechanicals are all clever and give some ideas about how to think of people you deal with as a software engineer.

Moab is my Washpot

sienko — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:56:51 +0000

Moab is my Washpot (1997) by Stephen Fry is an autobiography that covers the first 20 years of Fry’s life. Fry is a very clever and funny guy and has been very successful as a comedian. The book cover’s Fry’s first government school, his two private schools and the government schools he attended after that.
The book is incredibly self-indulgent much of which is to be expected in an autobiography but it is hard to imagine this won’t bore most people. Fry also covers his defects in detail, in this case his lying, thieving and vanity. Defects and falls into alcoholism, such as American on Purpose can be really interesting but somehow this book isn’t. The biggest weakness is probably that it is simply too long. An editor who had taken half the book out would have made it considerably better. After the umpteenth description of one of Fry’s school friends it’s very, very hard to care.

The Fatal Conceit

sienko — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:55:25 +0000

The Fatal Conceit (1988) by FA Hayek is an incredible book. It is a short summary of Hayek’s thought and his huge contribution to economic thought. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises were remarkable thinkers who correctly predicted that Communism would fail because it destroyed price information and argued against much of modern macro-economics on the basis that it ignored what they saw as the real roots of wealth creation.

The book looks at how the market system evolved rather than was designed and how traditions upheld and expanded it. Hayek looks at how much of history concentrates on states because they retained records while ignoring the information that was created by private individuals. Hayek points out that it was in the relatively weak states of Europe rather than the stronger European or even stronger Chinese state that modern society took off due to the increase in wealth due to private property and free exchange.

The book looks at how socialists have failed to grasp the remarkable features of the catallaxy or the order that has slowly created itself for the benefit of all. Hayek points out how people refuse to accept that people can do good while maximizing profit rather than ‘doing good’ by design. Hayek’s skepticism about how little people understand of the overall picture is remarkably insightful.

The book also looks at how religion provided a social good that encouraged people to work hard, save and be loyal to their family. It’s an interesting addition for a book by an agnostic.

The Fatal Conceit is a book that young adults would be well advised to read. Most would probably not appreciate it but for those who do it would provide a view of one C20’s important thinkers. For anyone who wants to know what ‘Austrians’ are on about it is very much worth reading.

Death In Venice

sienko — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:02:05 +0000

Death in Venice (1913) by Thomas Mann is another short classic book. It’s a book of few pages that has had great acclaim and has been made in to a film.
It follows Aschenbach, an aging German author who makes a trip to Venice and sees a very handsome young man with whom he falls in love before the title of the book is followed. But to reveal the plot is to reveal little of the book. The skill of the writing and the engagement of ideas is what sets the novella apart.

Siddhartha

sienko — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 23:45:51 +0000

Siddhartha (1922) by Herman Hesse is a wonderful short book that explores Buddhism and Eastern Religion by an accomplished western novelist.
The story of the book is the story of a Brahman who follows religious life and then leaves it for wordly life. In following worldly life he learns about love, lust and materialism before becoming a ferryman again.
It’s a remarkable short novel which is definitely a short classic.

The Gated City

sienko — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:27:57 +0000

The Gated City (2011) by Ryan Avent is another Kindle Single that is, in part, a reply to The Great Stagnation. Avent is an economist who has decided that the big limiting factor for growth is zoning and the restrictions on new construction due to planning laws.
Avent believes that instead of moving to the places where economic output is greatest because housing prices are so high that economic growth is being impaired. The thesis is an enormous stretch. While a lack of housing construction, due in some degree to zoning laws, does really drive up prices it’s hard to blame the reduction in economic growth over the past few decades on this fact.
It would also do Avent well to look at other countries where housing costs are higher than the US, the zoning laws more restrictive but that had travelled a different path to the US. Avent also glosses over the fact that elecommunication has made more remote places far more able to contribute to high growth.
Nonetheless the book has quite a lot of interesting information in it. The comparison of prices and wages data is interesting.

Race Against the Machine

sienko — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:45:47 +0000

Race Against the Machine (2011) by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee is another Kindle short that takes on the themes raised by The Great Stagnation and presents the authors views on how technology is changing work and employment.
Brynjolfsson and McAfee are both professors at MIT that study how IT is affecting business and their answer to the issues raised in The Great Stagnation are, unsurprisingly largely about their area of expertise in how computers are affecting business.
The two are well aware of the changing in society that technology has already brought, namely the dramatic drop in farming employment from 95% of the workforce in 1750 to about 2% in 2000 and the drop in manufacturing employment. They are also aware of the way that demand can limit growth and use the excellent quotation about one of the Ford’s showing a union rep and asking the union rep how he was going to get the robots to join the union and the union rep replying how Ford was going to get the robots to buy a car.
The book suggests that some light intellectual work will be lessened in value as computers continue to replace clerking work and more basic intellectual work while services that computers cannot do, such as gardening and high-end intellectual work will continue and in the case of high-end intellectual work the value will increase.
Their suggestion is that people need to work out how to harness computers so that people and computers work together as a team is highly sensible and is in fact what is happening. They don’t really have an answer for how to reduce current levels of US unemployment but then again no one really does. Somewhat disappointingly they don’t look at how other countries have handled the great recession. They are also aware that in 2007 when technological conditions were little different employment was far higher.
The book also suggests that fixing the US patent system, improving education by paying teachers more and making them more flexible, increasing school hours, improving entrepreneurship, improving US communications links and increasing the numbers of educated foreigners allowed into the US. These are all fairly common suggestions. The book doesn’t look at why some of the steps may have little impact. Little is said of how the US already leads in exploiting technology in computing and other areas even though US schooling is not great. Still, the book isn’t a bad read. The two are experts in their field and write well.

How To Be A Rogue Trader

sienko — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 08:30:22 +0000

How to be a Rogue Trader (2011) by John Gapper is an account of how and why Rogue Traders are now appearing with greater frequency and what could be done to reduce their impact. Gapper is an editor and chief business commentator at The Financial Times so he is well placed to understand the problems that allow Rogue Traders to wreak havoc.
The book looks at various Rogue Traders including Nick Leeson, Jérôme Kerviel, Kweku Adoboli, the NAB rogue traders and various others. Gapper points out that they tended to have things in common. All were outsiders to some degree, most had worked in the back office or could oversee how their trades were booked and so they could hide losses. They tended to appear to do well for a period before getting into serious trouble which they hid before the losses became so enormous that leaked out.
Gapper thinks that the rogue trading can also be reduced if proper controls are used. He points out that the really big successful Wall Street trading banks have not suffered from rogue traders. This could be because they have, as yet, been lucky, but it could also be because they have better controls in place and make sure someone always oversees other people’s trades.
Gapper also makes the point that rogue traders are quite similar to the way in which the whole financial crisis, with the use of credit default swaps and other financial instruments set up something that worked well for a long time before conditions turned and huge losses became apparent.
The book is a fine use of the short ebook format. Gapper has written a very readable, very interesting account of Rogue Traders that is a well worth getting.

Launching The Innovation Rennaissance

sienko — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:36:51 +0000

Launching the Innovation Rennaissance by Alex Tabarrok is another fine Kindle short. Tabarrok is an academic economist and co-author of the very successful Marginal Revolution blog. The book examines how innovation is important for economic growth and how the US performs on innovation and how it could do better. The book links in with The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen which is another excellent Kindle short.

Tabarrok puts forward the view that the US can reignite innovation by changing the patent system, in particular reducing the time for software patents or abolishing them altogether and having patents of different durations and patents that the US government would then buy under certain circumstances. Tabarrok is also a big fan of prizes for innovation and thinks that more of them will improve innovation citing examples like the Ansari X-Prize and others. Tabarrok also thinks that better teachers are required. He believes that paying teachers more for performance and allowing the removal of poor teachers would improve the system. He is not a fan of increasing college attendance and points out that while college graduation rates have increased in the US they have increased in majors that are not creating innovation and not in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. He also makes the very much needed point that the greater wealth of the world will mean more innovation as there is more demand and there will be more people with the time and education to innovate. Tabarrok also looks at US spending on innovation against welfare spending.

Tabarrok doesn’t look at are why with the average education the US has long had how it continues to be the center of world computer technology and a major centre for medical and other research areas. He doesn’t look at how the US has produced Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Genentech and others while the rest of the world seems to capitalise less on this sort of innovation. He also doesn’t get into detailed questions such as if permanent bodies such as NASA and the NIH are better at research than grants for Universities.

The book is impressively crisp and thought provoking. It’s a really interesting book that is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in what could be done to enhance innovation and wealth. It’s not a complete popular study but hopefully Tabarrok or other people inspired by the book will follow this important area of economics and public policy.