100 books like Connections

In addressing decision makers, an understanding of forces affecting human behavior is essential. The author provides a comprehensive view on the work of Kahneman and Tversky mapping their journey which lead to their highly impactful behavioral economic body of knowledge. The bias they address provides data scientists a widened perspective on their role and how to address organizational challenges. This provides a language to recognise and address bias inherent in human thinking. The book provides a very powerful set of tools for data scientists who want to see behind the numbers and understand forces affecting human behavior.

To truly stay ahead of failure, one must embrace discomfort and avoid becoming stagnant. Life is a constant race, and if you stop running, you cannot win. Who Moved My Cheese? serves as a great example that is easy to read, digest, and a powerful reminder to keep pushing forward in the race of life.

The book highlights the importance of not taking good fortune for granted and avoiding getting too comfortable. It teaches that everything is constantly evolving, and it is essential to remain vigilant and open to new opportunities.

I once used this book to teach a group of high schoolers how to stay alert to opportunities and overcome the fear of discomfort.

Information overload threatens our ability to educate ourselves, leaves us more vulnerable as consumers and less cohesive as a society, and diminishes control of our own lives. As such David Shenk offers numerous “Laws of Data Smog," i.e: Information is now plentiful and taken for granted. I was immediately impressed by his pithy observations: Putting a computer in every classroom is like putting an electric power plant into every home; education cannot be fixed with a digital pipeline of data. Too many experts spoil the clarity, and lead to the paralysis of analysis.

The law of diminishing returns, says Shenk, applied to the growing speed and abundance of information, will produce an infoglut that will no longer add to our quality of life. Infoglut is already cultivating stress, confusion, and, yes, ignorance. I have found this to be too true!

In a glutted environment, he says, the most difficult task… show more.

Success in today’s rapidly changing business world, says Michael LeBoeuf, requires moving quickly. This doesn’t mean pushing yourself and others to work at an over-stressed, breakneck pace. No way. It does mean taking a whole new approach to working, selling, managing, and leading to speed up the business.

Much of what the author writes was new to me: For example, speed improves morale because employees are working for a more successful, responsive company. Speed also forces management to give employees more autonomy and flexibility. Perhaps most important, speed creates an innovative edge. Speeding up (shortening) the product-development cycle enables a business to bring out more new and improved products. Most important, I think, is that the business with a shorter product-development cycle gets products on the market that are way ahead of the competition.

In Fast Forward, I learned that speed pays even when things go wrong! How so? 70%… show more.

The authors maintain that everybody experiences flashes of insight: those moments when an "aha!" reaction leaves us feeling enlightened and empowered. I have felt this and you probably have too. Insights are the bits of knowledge in different parts of ourselves and they can be harnessed into a more integrated and effective whole.

Learning To Use What You Already Know explains how you can encourage insight. Consider that each of us knows more than we think we do. Thus we can employ a reflective process, described in the book, that integrates our conscious and unconscious resources, and prompts our perceptions of everything from getting along with coworkers, to being a visionary leader, to coping with technological change.  

Here are what I consider to be some of the book’s amazing takeaways: Life repeats itself until we learn. Lack of fit is not failure. If you get it right the first time,… show more.

Those who laid the foundations for the scientific revolution—Newton, Bacon, Descartes—were religious men. But, so the story goes, science has now left religion behind—except it hasn’t. In this extraordinary book, Meghan O’Gieblyn argues that, having turned its back on God, science and technology are now sleepwalking us into a new religion: transhumanism. Faced with the increasing and enormous complexity of artificial intelligence, like priests interpreting the oracle, the programmers and analysts of today must simply guess how an algorithm has arrived at a particular solution—and have faith that it is correct. They lust for the Rapture-like Singularity, where machines will take over the future, gifting us all digital immortality. Hmm, is this starting to sound a bit familiar…?

As a Washington journalist time and again I watched sources rely too much on assurances that situations were under control, surprises would probably never happen and technology was utterly reliable. Airplane cockpits were safe. Climate change would never disrupt the world. Disease was under control. Fail-Safe terrified the world and helped ignite a global movement by asking the question, what if – in the nuclear age – the assurances we are fed are wrong. 

I am a huge fan of making complex things simple and understandable, Kevin does this superbly well with Futureproof. From putting the nine rules on the cover to explaining each in a way that makes you shun the Hollywood stereotypes that are burned into our brains, the book explores how AI and automation will change the way we do business and beyond. It’s a must-read. 

This excellent book provides a detailed history of technology and employment during the Industrial Revolution and up to the present. It is very well-researched and provides many useful insights.

For example, although the term ‘Luddite’ is often used negatively to describe those resistant to technology, the real Luddites were justified in their concerns as they were ultimately displaced due to automation. People were even put to death because they destroyed some of the new machines.

One of the main ways AI might affect our lives is in terms of employment, or rather, a lack of employment.

Frey empowers us to have a greater understanding of previous technological innovations and how they affected workers so that we are able to have more nuanced opinions on the matter. 

By giving up screens one day a week for over a decade, Internet pioneer and renowned filmmaker Tiffany Shlain and her family have gained more time, productivity, connection, and presence.

I have always found connection with Tiffany’s films and writing because of our mutual interest in the impact of technology on our culture and people’s lives. With humor and wisdom, Shlain showed me how the ritual of unplugging from the screen one day a week, which is based on the ancient Jewish ritual of Shabbat, can help you feel more calm and connected to people in your life.