Kevin

i almost never give up on a book, but i gave up on this one. it's okay to put something down if you are halfway in to it and you can't stop rolling your eyes.

needless to say, this was not for me.

maybe there is a terrific twist that makes the first half of the book worthwhile, but i will never know unless i get into some spoilers here.

what i was able to stomach i could only characterize as reactionary, boomer self-indulgence; forrest gump for men of letters.

woah now i understand twin peaks

Pretty good. Meanders a little. Has some vignettes that don't add to the thesis. A few leaps of intuition and maybe a couple Gladwellesque load-bearing-but-weak-connections.

However, might be a good jumping off place for serious research. I think the core thesis that it's important to make time to do your real job is correct.

I'm surprised at his contention that non-engineering disciplines don't use taskboards, sprints and similar tools to organize their work, and I'm not sure the ideas in this book are much advanced from David Allen's ideas that were popular a couple decades ago. I'm sure this is true for many organizations but not any that I've been involved with for the last 10 or 15 years.

You'd be surprised how many organizations do not use email internally anymore!

A really interesting discussion of the immense power that social media firms wield, the danger that comes from it and what to do about it. McNamee makes a strong case for building a muscular regulatory regime around technology that 2.2 billion people use without being made properly aware of the risks to their health and attention.

Sometimes McNamee (who was an early investor in and advisor to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg) seems to try to complicate his own culpability in creating Facebook, claiming repeatedly that he didn't understand how the culture of the firm had crystallized into something that made the firm's self-reflection and self-correction impossible. He also drops a lot of names in an irritating way: Bono and Nancy Pelosi both make appearances.

McNamee is also wrong about a few elements of Facebook's explosive growth, presenting his opinions about their real name policy as fact. And i think he is naive to believe that the general public would prefer networks and services that explicitly protect their privacy. I hope I am wrong about that, but privacy and security seems to be relegated to the world of “nerd stuff” now.

Despite its shortcomings, the book is worthwhile: it presents the problems with globe-spanning social media, clearly exposes and explains problems in facebook's culture and presents solutions.

really enjoyed this! it is a very quick and light read. there is something about doing something or being part of something that is really special and lasts only for a moment.