Five
Hundred Browseworthy Books
on
Understanding and Guiding Accelerating Change
If
you wish to visit Stanford on Friday (before the 6pm reception
at SAP Labs, Palo Alto, 2 miles from campus), you might
print out copies of our AC2004
Booklists, linked below.
Then go peruse these fascinating books, all available next
to Tresidder Union at Stanford
Bookstore (SB), the largest and best academic
bookstore on the West Coast. SB will also run a Presenter's
Bookstore at AC2004 on Saturday 12-6pm and Sunday 12-4pm,
with selected works of our distinguished speakers.
First,
visit the Futurist's Bookshelf below to
skim our current Top 50 titles we recommend you know about
to gain a broad, strategic understanding of accelerating
change in the human environment.
Futurist's
Bookshelf
Below
are additional noteworthy titles in each of our Science,
Technology, Business, and Humanist conference dialogs. Together
this list comprises 500 particularly insightful works in
a wide range of topical interests.
Science
Titles
Technology
Titles
Business
Titles
Humanism
Titles
Marcel
Proust has said, "The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new
eyes." ASF's goal is to promote better observation,
measurement, understanding and guidance of the accelerations
and efficiencies that are constantly emerging in our increasingly
technological world.
With
better social foresight we learn to distinguish kinds of
accelerations that are continually renewed (e.g., computation,
process efficiencies) from those that are more periodic
(e.g., economy, specific technologies and business models),
the kind that we prefer (productivity, connectivity, compassion,
security) from those we seek to avoid (zero- and negative-sum
disruption, discrimination, nonsustainability).
Both
Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance
and Michael Alexander's Stock Cycles
forsaw the post-2000 financial market depression, for example,
using compelling independent arguments. Periodic major recorrections
are fundamental to any accelerating economy, especially
after the initial overpromotion of broadly disruptive new
technologies (railroads, automobiles, internet).
SFI
Economist Brian Arthur (Increasing
Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy) notes that
the real phase of applied acceleration occurs after the
bubble, when more mature and much less expensive infrastructure
can be deployed, and the profusion of initial entrants can
strongly consolidate into a few strategic survivors. In
Clockspeed, MIT management professor Charles
Fine discusses the strategic advantage (when benefits
can be articulated) of cheaply revamping supply chain and
engineering process for acceleration, and many others have
written on the impact of ICT on acceleration in the service
and knowledge economies.
We
have selected these works in an attempt to help you:
