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Livre exceptionnel, lecture magnifique

Revisado: 11-10-22

C'est un livre comme on est heureux que la littérature française en produise encore, alors que les prix récents (Nobel et Goncourt) n'ont récompensé qu'un nombrilisme rabougri. La profondeur historique est ici servie par une langue superbe, riche mais jamais gratuitement virtuose, d'autant plus remarquable que ce n'est pas la langue maternelle de l'auteur (ce qui est aussi une belle tradition de la littérature française).
La performance du lecteur sert parfaitement le texte, en particulier le rendu différencié des voix des personnages est remarquable

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A must read for our age

Revisado: 03-31-18

Bill Gates may have cited it a his new favorite book, but this is not the reason why you should read it ;-)...Besides, his promotion was certainly counterproductive to entice those people who, alas, would most need to read this book : the flat-earthers, the conspiracy theorists, the misinformed,scapegoat-seeking, angry, resentful, or bigoted masses who vote for populist politicians peddling anti-science propaganda to promote their ideological agendas.
Pinker is best positioned among world-renowned intellectuals to update against all current challenges and repudiations the great tradition of european englightenment, which is not , as some would have it, a euro-centric quirk, but the only sound, time-proven and universal basis for an open liberal society.
Many self-help/positive thinking books advise people to "count their blessings" every day, but this book should be the ultimate blessing-provider : remind every day that you live in a time where the risks of suffering or dying a violent death are lower than they have ever been, thanks, ultimately, to science and reason. And it should make deservedly proud all those who have contributed, through the patient incremental collective efforts of science and engineering, to this secular achievement.

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esto le resultó útil a 22 personas

Platforms, the disrupters of the network economy

Revisado: 05-01-16

What did you love best about Platform Revolution?

The book does a great job of explaining platforms form an economist's viewpoint

Any additional comments?

It does not provide too much background, however on the technological underpinnings of this revolution, nor on the difference between closed platforms managed by single operators and fully decentralized platforms. It is appreciable that the book does not only mention the well-known examples like Uber, but also future platforms that have yet to materialize as such and disrupt their own markets, like smart grids,

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

An epic narrative of ICT

Revisado: 11-13-14

What did you like best about this story?

As ICST (Information & Communication Science & Technology) professionals, we sometimes might have an inferiority complex towards the longer-established disciplines such as physics and mathematics. Part of the difference lies in the narratives that have been built around the "great men" of these sciences, from Pascal, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz to Einstein and Stephen Hawking. This book makes up for the difference by contributing to build this narrative around a few of the great men (and women) of Information & Communication Science and Technology. Not all of them arelarger than life figures, or true geniuses, but they probably contributed to the progress of humanity more closely and directly than their forebears in the physical and mathematical sciences. They deserve to be honored and this honor should extend to all scientists and engineers who dedicate their life to this domain.

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A supremely enlightening view of moral philosophy

Revisado: 05-25-14

What did you love best about Moral Tribes?

I have read tens of philosophy books, but this is the one that made me feel the most enlightened after reading it. It helped clear away the cosy rationalizations of tribal moralities that I self-righteously indulge in, like every one else, and it does not claim to replace those by another absolute moral truth. At the same time, after demonstrating the hopeless relativity of moral emotions, Joshua Greene does fully acknowledge their worth as an "automatic mode".

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

A scientific understanding of the dual processes at work in moral decision-making leads to a reappraisal of the much-maligned utilitatrian viewpoint as the only realistic inter-tribal "moral common currency"

Which scene was your favorite?

The little fable told at the beginning is nice, but you definitely shoul reread it after completing the book.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

This is a book you have to think over, I read it twice and will certainly read it again.

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Should have been read by a professional narrator!

Revisado: 12-21-12

What didn’t you like about Christopher Hitchens’s performance?

The elocution of Hitchens is very poor, horribly straining and almost imposible to follow for a non-native speaker of english like me. It is really a pity because the contents are so compelling!

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Biased, dishonest

Revisado: 06-04-11

I tried to read this book because it is good mental hygiene to read authors you don't agree with, at least when their views are based on facts and sound reasoning. But this book is just pure ideology and the author does obviously not apply to himself the standards of verification and unbiased judgment that he exacts from the intellectual class at large.

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A taste of a bygone France

Revisado: 05-29-11

Being born in France at the time this novel is supposed to take place, I found the story doubly fascinating, not only for the suspense, but also for the depiction of a country that was still much closer to the 19th century than to the 21st, so different in every regard from what it has since become.
It is just a pity that the narrator does such a terrible job of pronouncing french names, they are barely recognizable...

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stealth propaganda for intelligent design!

Revisado: 11-01-05

I have been caught by surprise, as some of the participants in this program are reputable people (e.g. Neil Postman, Howard Rheingold) but the last part of it is a piece of not-so-subtle propaganda for intelligent design, with a bunch of advocates of this pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo posing as victims of the scientific establishment, just as Galileo was a victim of the Inquisition : this is a bit hard to swallow, considering that these people are closer in their orientation to the religious obscurantists who condemned Galileo than to Galileo himself.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas