Innovation is an overused word, companies like to have it associated with their brand, products and services as it affects both the share price: covering management sins and providing investors with a veneer of hope for future growth. In a previous life, I worked at a firm where we used to talk about doing ‘innovation [...]
In Silicon Valley, Bill Hewlett and David Packard were like the old testament prophets. Despite the fact they didn’t get into semiconductors until pretty late in their enterprise they set the tone for the technology sector. Their ethos, egalitarian way of working and organisation culture is part of the Bay Area’s DNA. Their business is [...]
Tokyo Vice is the memoirs of an American who managed to get a job writing on domestic issues for Yomiuri Shinbun – one of Japan’s most prestigious and highest circulation newspaper. The title of the book rests on its status exposing the yakuza groups, in particular the Yamaguchi-gumi and its former member panderer turned police [...]
Douglas Coupland is unique in modern authors for his combination of being able to write with a sense of keen observation and a unique knack of getting under the skin of the zeitgeist. Generation A continues these traits for the late noughties. Coupland skillfully pulls together a multi-threaded story that pulls together globalisation, environmental angst, [...]
I was in Gosh! Comics and decided to take a punt on a book based on its cover. That book was The Winter Men by John Paul Leon and Brett Lewis. Leon and Lewis shake up the traditional superhero canon by basing their story in the post-communist Russia. The main protagonist is a former special [...]
Post-war Japan was a hotbed of creativity. The improving economy meant that there was increased demand for entertainment, but television was not yet widespread. So a national network of lending shops sprung up around Japan that provided access to manga for an entertainment hungry audience. It was for this market that Yoshihiro Tatsumi started writing [...]
One of the problems that I have with many environmental tracts is that they articulate their message as an anti-science based dogma rather than as a discussion where you can make your own mind up. That issue and Stewart Brand’s status as a nexus point between green issues, counterculture, technology, web communities and futurism made [...]
Tim Pat Coogan is better known for his Irish historic biographies, but The Irish: A personal view is an interesting collection of essays from the early 1970s reminiscent of of the New Journalism style of Tom Wolfe pre-Bonfire of the Vanities or The Right Stuff. Wolfe and other exponents of new journalism who covered low [...]
Drexler’s book Engines of Creation discussing the potential and ramifications of nanotechnology has influenced the great and the good of futurism from Wired magazine to science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. I decided to revisit the book, even though it is about a quarter of a century old now. Drexler writes with stream of consciousness-style drawing [...]
The evolution of useful things is a book about innovation and product design by engineering professor Henry Petroski. Petroski covers the history of how different products have evolved from cutlery, pins, paper clips and McDonald’s food packaging. The key hypothesis of Petroski’s book is that irritation is the mother-of-invention. One particular example that I liked [...]
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