Mirek's Blog - Passionate Reading ...

„Too big to know” — and yet optimistic

2012-01-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Before I read this book from cover to cover (or rather from first Kindle screen to the last, and listened in parallel, from first seconds to the last of its 8 hours narration by Peter Johnson :-) ) I was a bit afraid it would bear large dose of pessimism. First, I got some such impression from some posts on its author, David Weinberger, blog. The book's very title and some of its chapters' titles „Knowledge Overload” seemed to support my initial feelings.

But despite all that, perhaps mistaken anticipation, „Too big to know” is deeply optimistic. It's closing sentences read:

We will argue about whether our new knowledge will bring us closer to the truth, as I think it overall does. But one thing seems clear: Networked knowledge brings us closer to the truth about knowledge.

Weinberger has unusual talent for explaining the difficult concepts and deep thoughts about the cultural and social changes brought about by the growth of the Web in a simple way, easy to understand for everybody. As co-author of „Cluetrain Manifesto” he explained (or maybe even foretold) Web 2.0 revolution; as the author of „Small Pieces Loosely Joined” he expounded the essence of the core of the Web along dimensions like, inter alia: Space, Time, Matter and Hope. In „Everything is Miscellaneous” he analyses the profound challenge to all classifications and categorizations both in science and in life — created by the digital age.
And now in „Too big to know” he analyses the challenge to the most important building block of our civilisation: the knowledge itself.

First comes the apparent syndrome of knowledge overload. The syndrome is different and more profound from that of „information overload”:

Of course, the Net can scale that large only because it doesn’t have edges within which knowledge has to squeeze. No edges mean no shape. And no shape means that networked knowledge lacks what we have long taken to be essential to the structure of knowledge: a foundation.

Then comes the History of Facts and the transformation of the concept of fact from a gem-like, rare „classic facts” tightly bound to the physical medium of their expression: paper — to the „networked facts” obeying only a law: „On the Net, every fact has an equal and opposite reaction” (in a wit typical for Weinberger, it is called „a version of Newton's Second Law”).

The first chapters set up the stage and put things in context. In the core of the book David Weinberger explains what constitues today's „Body of knowledge”. We go through concepts of networked expertise (The Expertise of Clouds) and the knowledge diversity and its dangers (with absolutely fantastic explanations of Echo Chambers). Then, we get the fundamental chapter „Long Form, Web Form” that explains the difference between long-form thinking typical of the era of books and the new hyperlinked/networked-form thinking. This chapter is marked by the dialog with two authors whose deep thoughts explored the difference before (Nicolas Carr „The Shalows" and Sven Birkerts „Guttenberg Elegies”) (and who have been particularly important to me ...)

The impact on science and on its main medium: scientific journals, is analysed in „Too Much Science", ending with just glorification of impact of the Web on science (or, better named, „networking science”). Decision making and the profound changes that underline even such rigid structures as that of military or corporate knowledge are covered in „Where the Rubber Hits the Node”.

In the final chapter Weinberger discusses the new emerging infrastructures of knowledge and explains both Semantic Web and Linked Data initiatives (SW/LD). It seems to me that he provided one of the best and the simplest explanation of what these fields are really all about. And he concludes with a note that the web richer in metadata (provided by SW/LD) is in fact „richer in more usable and useful knowledge.”

Where does all this take as to? Paradoxically, we get the answer in the Prologue to the book:

As knowledge becomes networked, the smartest person in the room isn’t the person standing at the front lecturing us, and isn’t the collective wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the room itself: the network that joins the people and ideas in the room, and connects to those outside of it. It’s not that the network is becoming a conscious super-brain. Rather, knowledge is becoming inextricable from—literally unthinkable without—the network that enables it.
(...)
Networked knowledge is less certain but more human. Less settled but more transparent. Less reliable but more inclusive. Less consistent but far richer. It feels more natural because the old ideals of knowledge were never realistic, although it’s taken the networking of our culture to get us to admit this.

So, we get the answer, before we even ask the question! I do not know if that was Weinberger true (a bit machiavellian I could say :-)) intention — but despite this uncommon approach, the book is even more worth reading and is realy, truly and deeply optimistic.

I could perhaps add a grain of salt to my otherwise enthusiastic review. I do not quite agree with authors opposition to the thoughts from Nicolas Carr „The Shallows”. True, the price we pay for benefit of serendipity on the Web is distraction it also brings. It is a trade-off we must understand. But I do not agree in the underestimation of the mental changes the distraction caused by the Net brings. This aspect of the Web is very problematic and if not addressed by ourselves soon, may in turn reduce our ability to create and absorb the networked knowledge. I do not want to write at length here — it is perhaps worth a separated post...

Waiting for the movie after a little disappointment of the audiobook ...

2012-01-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

This is about Brian Selznick's novel „The Invention of Hugo Cabret” that gave rise to famous 3D movie by Martin Scorsese. The story of 12 year old boy living in Paris, who cares for Parisian train station clocks after his father's death. The hunger and solitude force the boy to steel food. The boy tries to restore the artificial, mechanical man - The Automaton, discovered by his father in the museum he worked for, and where he later dies from fire. The boy finally succeeds to animate it and the automaton draws sketches that led to discovery of ... Well, I will not spoil it completely ...

I must admit, that the audio rendering in this case was not a good idea for such a book. It seems to have no climax, no conclusion one expects from the first few minutes of listening ...
Now, the physical book had about 300 illustration. And apparently these illustrations are as important as the words themselves.... See it in the book website.

The audio book has a lot of sound effects, but as it often happens these media are not quite convertible ...

So I do not say it was not good — I say that such books are designed to be visual... I also doubt it could be rendered properly as e-book. And that's paradoxically the best outcome from this disappointing experience. Finally we've got a book that saves the value of real, paper, physical books against all these bits...

And I will await the movie to be in cinemas in Europe....

.„... but we still carry its genes” — reflections on David's Bezmozgis „The Free World"

2011-12-31T01:34:00.000-08:00

I had quite special and unique impressions when I was reading „The Free World. A Novel” by David Bezmozgis. Born 1973 in Riga, Latvia Bezmozgis came to Canada as a child. Well educated in both Canadian and American universities, Bezmozgis debuted in 2004 with his „Natasha and Other Stories”. He is now well known filmmaker and writer. As it was for his debut, his new novel (published this year, 2011) „The Free World” reflects the experiences of Jewish refugees from former Soviet Union. The action of „The Free World” is set mostly in 1978 Rome with some episodes in Vienna and frequent comebacks to then soviet Latvia. Three generations of Krasnansky family of Latvian Jews, who escaped from USSR come through the painful process of getting accustomed to the free world. They look at this new world with their eyes which not long ago looked at the world through communist lenses. And to me this transformation, this change is the essence of the book. They are in the free world, but, to various degree they still „carry communist genes”.

On the other plane the book is very nostalgic and sad. There is a notion and a feeling of specific „uprootedness” the characters experience in Italy. A lot of thoughts about the feeling of Jewish refugees to the state of Israel, so often painted by remnants of soviet propaganda residing in their heads... Their specific reactions (Jews on one side of their souls and former soviets on the other...) to swift change of Popes (this was the year of Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II)

Reading (i.e. listening to incredible voice of Stefan Rudnicki) the book I had that specific feeling of listening to debutant, although that does not make it worse than any other books I recently read...

BTW, here is 8 minutes long recording of Bezmozgis reading from the novel...

Published in the last hour of 2011...

December 26 - Status of my reading ...

2011-12-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

After „11/22/63” (the review below) I read very interesting book by Clark Shirky „Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations” (review pending).

Now I'm dividing my spare time between Eco's „Prague Cemetery” (reading) and David Bezmozgis' „The Free World” (listening) ...

Cheers Everybody !

Steven’s King harmonic theory of time and universe – 11/22/63

2011-12-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

Stephen King’s writing has always been above the level of popular literature — whatever he used to write about. His horror books were not interesting because of the frightening horror scenes and plots — they were interesting because of the author mastery of storytelling. I could imagine King writing anything, even stupidest tales, yet I’m sure, it would be worth reading.

Travels in time, alternate histories — such themes were no seldom in novels. So, in some sense, the main theme of 11/22/63 is not very original. Yet King converts the seemingly banal sci-fi theme into a vehicle that he uses to portrait America of nineteen sixties with incredible meticulousness and color (we could even say — with a smell). He also uses it to tell us about his philosophy of time, of past, present and future…

In a synopsis to the novel I could only tell (not to spoil the pleasure of reading it) about its main hero, high school teacher of English from Maine who, with the help of seriously ill local diner owner, finds in this diner a time slip that enables him to travel in time to nineteen sixties. He finds many reasons to go there and “to correct” the flow of events that would later lead to some tragic facts. However, the diner owner’s mission, which he could not accomplish, was to revert the history of America by saving J.F. Kennedy, killed on November 22nd, 1963…

Let’s leave it for now whether the mission was successful or not. The paradox is that with King’s imagination comes deep thinking about history and its essence.

“The past is obdurate and it does not want to be changed”.

Would we have better world if Kennedy was not killed in Dallas?

Traditional views and our hero say — yes, but are such views justified? King takes us on a journey, where we start with strong conviction of the veracity of such conviction, but where we later end with deep doubts. Yet King's conjectures are not politically motivated, instead he sheds light on the nature of causality itself, on the incredibly connected world where „butterfly effect” of individual human freedom of choice is profound. Its effect is so strong that for many, the world existing in time appears like the pre-ordained rigid and obdurate structure, but when one dares to trust his own sense of freedom — he finds that he could indeed change the course of events. Would it be for good or for bad — that’s another question which usualy remains unanswered… (The novel seems to claim - for bad)

King's mastery allows the mere mortals to ponder on these deep philosophical conundrums without any kind of abstract and unrealistic “philosophizing”.
How often we, in our lives try to rewrite our past? It is hard to find a person who passed his life without thinking (or sometimes even doing) „it would have been better if I did so and so”… Many tried, usually to no avail. In almost all known cases, we come to that simple fact of the persistent obduracy of the past…

It is not a first time when the great literature of our age contemplates time. Kurt Vonnegut in his Slaughterhouse No. 5 makes his hero “unstuck in time”. For Vonnegut events in time are fixed and frozen:

A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears.' So it goes. "If You know this," said Billy, 'isn't there some way you can prevent it?
Can't you keep the pilot from pressing the button?' 'He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way.

For King, the time is open ended and our will can create parallel universes. They harmonize and we perceive all them as one single and consistent universe:

The multiple choices and possibilities of daily life are the music we dance to. They are like strings on a guitar, Strum them and you create a pleasing sound. A harmonic. But then start adding strings. Ten strings, a hundred strings, a thousand, a million. Because they multiply! (…) Sing high C in a voice that’s laud enough and true enough and you can scatter fine crystal. Play the right harmonic notes through your stereo loud enough and you can shatter window glass. It follows (to me, at least) that if you put enough strings on time’s instrument, you can shatter reality.

Here we come to the essence of the novel. The travel in time and Kennedy case are used to teach us the fundamental lesson about the higher harmony that exists in time and in events of history.

It is so easy to shatter the delicate harmony of the world. We must walk and live carefully.

“Every breath we take is a wave”…

The novel ends beautifully. You can read these words, they will not impair your future reading:

„She speaks in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music, but I hear her — I always did. „Who are you George?” „Someone you knew in another life, honey.” Then the music takes us, the music rolls away the years, and we dance.

It was one of the best novels I ever read...

George Whitman of „Shakespeare and Company” — Paris famous English bookstore — dies ...

2011-12-18T06:53:00.000-08:00

It actually happened almost when I arrived this time to Paris... So it was also a sign to me - I am unquestionable lover and patron and frequenter of this little yet incredible Parisian bookstore...

I only pity that I can't stay here for George's funeral (Thursday, Père Lachaise) - yet I kindly invite all my French friends to pay tribute to this unusual person...

The bookstore will stay as it was, led by his daughter, but it is hard not to notice that certain era in Paris' cultural life ended....

mirek@paris

„11.22.63” by Stephen King: Life Turns on a Dime

2011-12-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

I finished reading (listening to) „11.22.63” on my way from Warwick to London....
It is remarkable book and probably the best of all King's books....

Promise to write more soon !

Semantic Web is NOT for machines to understand !!!

2011-12-07T22:26:00.001-08:00

Quite shocking title - isn't it?

First — a word of explanation: I used to write here reviews of books that I read. But I'm also a businessman and, still, a scientist... Recently mostly computer scientists doing my mostly private research in Computer Sciences.

And on my trip to nearby Warsaw, for our conference for investors and media, I woke up in a hotel and suddenly an idea came to my mind that shakes the common understanding or interpretation of what Semantic Web is about. This was quite troublesome at that morning, as my conference had the title „Semantic Web for business”.

Traditionally, people in the field speak about „Machine Understanding” (like in the Wikipedia Semantic Web definition: „The Semantic Web, as originally envisioned, is a system that enables machines to "understand" ....). When machines are about to "understand" we come close to all these AI tales and predictions about machine intelligence and machine consciousness ...

It suddenly came to me, that, we, who care about Semantic Web, make a great harm to this fantastic field just by purporting that it will enable machines to understand.

Even if we put aside the dispute what exactly is this "understanding", it is clear that with all great achievements, we are very very far from the intelligent machines, AI, machine understanding etc. I know I will anger AI proponents, but there is quite common conviction that we are very far from any "understanding" on part of machines.

Semantic Web does not enable MACHINES to understand — it enables US, HUMANS to cope with vast sea of information (and the ground of data) and, in turn, TO UNDERSTAND the meaning of the data on the Web (and soon — everywhere). It does so by providing tools and techniques and specific frames and paradigms that enable PEOPLE to extract and UNDERSTAND, the MEANING of the information on the Web.

I know that this is nothing more but an interpretation and only a bit different point of view. I know, that when Tim Berners Lee spoke about "understanding" he used it in somehow metaphorical way. But I also know that many people today started to use this "understanding" in more literal sense, and that makes a big confusion in human minds, causing harm to this fantastic area of Computer Science...

So I will start making difference. Semantic Web is not for machines to understand, is for us to comprehend the meaning of the vast sea of information that form today's Web.

Written in Warsaw, 7.49, December 8, 2011

My Reading status...

2011-11-27T12:57:00.001-08:00

While I was happy I found some time to write a review about „Quantum Story”, that does not mean I'm well-timed with my reviews. The stock pile is still high and new titles arrived. After Scott's „Ivanhoe” (which, I must admit, I enjoyed very much) I read „Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web” — fantastic account about the strangest place of the entire web: 4chan.org.
As for now I read two books; on Kindle it is Eco's „Prague Cemetery” (very good) and on audio the latest Steven King's „11.22.63” — incredible ....

So... — stay tuned for more reviews...

Too short — (but still timely) — A review of The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments” by Jim Baggott

2011-11-27T00:28:00.001-08:00

Jim Baggott wrote one of the most fascinating books about history of science I ever read. It is written with a kind of wit and vigor that makes its reading no less fascinating than a good criminal story.

But quite seriously it brings readers closer to the understanding of the huge importance of quantum mechanics for our modern thinking, for our understanding of reality and for modern philosophy (although Jim does not indulge in „philosophizing” at all!). There are many important spindles around which the author threads his tale, like that about the responsibility of scientists for using their discoveries in politics and in wars (important part of the book is auto-citation from another Baggott's book „Atomic — The first war of physics”).

But the most important motif of the book is the quest to understand the peculiar nature of reality revealed by Quantum Theory in the beginning of XX century. The discoveries made by then became the central in the famous debates between Einstein and Bohr, and they continue to this day. Jim Biggott presents the latest experiments and their interpretations and shows how bizarre is this reality. It is the reality of our bodies and of our world and of everything we know. The reality QM portraits is of the world which cannot be thought of as objectively existing as it was assumed to be when only classical mechanics and our common perception were known. The book ends with this disturbing picture of the reality and leaves us with more questions then answers....

This is extremely interesting and open issue in science and it is really amazing that through exact science human knowledge comes to the fundamental problems philosophy tackled for centuries. Are we closer to solutions of these problems? Not really...

From the other perspective, the book was exceptionally pleasant to read for me, because the large part of my own life was closely bound to Quantum Physics. My 1992 PhD (Oh G ! — it was almost 20 years ago) and later, my great and long adventures (I was working for HyperCube) with Quantum Chemistry gave me fantastic opportunities to come closer to understanding of all these matters. In my PhD (link to database in Polish is here) and in my related works (see this) I explored the Feynman's Path Integrals. It was so nice to read a part of the book devoted to this remarkable theory! With Quantum Chemistry the book is not dealing — perhaps it could not deal with all offsprings of Quantum Mechanics :-)

Here is also a nice video recording of Jim, talking about the book himself !

Reading report :-)

2011-11-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

I hoped to find a time today for a review... Alas, despite "free" day, I had plenty things to do and I also was jogging for more than 2 hours reaching my record of 18 km in a single run...

Of course, jogging is also my best time for „reading” audio books, so from this perspective it was the another reader's good day :-)

I finished „The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments” by Jim Baggott and I must say it was extremely pleasant and rich experience. It deserves a longer review — and I promise, it will come !
Let me only tell you how sweet was reading about the importance of Feynman's Path Integrals in the evolution of Quantum Theory — the same Path Integrals I devoted my PhD dissertation to. It was 20 years ago ...

Them, in audio I switched to ... Walter Scott's „Ivanhoe”. Surprising ? Well - it is a bit of my tribute to Scotland, Edinburgh and my daughter studying there ... BTW, quite nice reading/listening.

In paper I'm inside „The use of weapons” though I made relatively small progress...

On Kindle, I put „All things shining” temporarily on shelf for the long awaited new Umberto Eco novel „The Prague Cemetery” and it indeed promises good reading !

That's all for today :-)

'm currently reading ...

2011-10-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

An update:

In paper: „Use of Weapons” (by Ian M. Banks)
On Kindle: „All Things Shining" (by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly)
By my listening ears: „The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments” (by Jim Baggott)

k

this tiny post posted while in Paris :-)

Too short — (but still timely) — A review of „The Mystery of the Aleph”

2011-10-16T01:16:00.000-07:00

Amir Achel's book „The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity” is essentially the book about the famous XVIII century German mathematician George Cantor — famous for his invention of set theory and its first formulation. The book focuses on his life-time long efforts to describe, define and understand the nature of infinity. The efforts, mostly related to his theory of transfinite numbers and the search for Absolute Infinity that transcends the transfinite numbers. The mathematical details, indispensable in such a kind of book, are presented in a simple way, so that any high school student can understand it. However, the main theme of the book is the detrimental impact the search on Cantor's mental health.

What was a bit disappointing in the book is the Kabbalah thread. First and foremost, we can't find too much of good explanation of the link between Cantor's search and search for Ein Sof — absolutely Infinite Being. Perhaps the intro to Kabbalah was too short, or, as I tend to think, one can't really understand Kaballah in a simplified way, so that we can see the relation between it and science. This seems to be impossible, and the disappointment I feel is perhaps the signal of something deeper....

Any way — it is interesting and fascinating book to all those who are interested in history of mathematics.

Too short — (but still timely) — A review of „Predictably Irrational”

2011-10-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

„Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely is amazing book. It challenges the common view that humans mostly behave rationally. Dan shows that this is very far from truth. Dan Ariely is practitioner and behavioral economics, and in his book he applied the methods of that branch of science to analyze many specific aspects of our behavior, mostly related to decisions related to economy. It is really amazing to discover how deeply irrational both markets and individual people in these markets are...

As this review is (by design) very short, instead let me point to you the fantastic videos that Dan has created for every chapter of his book. See them here. There is also fantastic talk Dan gave at TED.

Too short — (but still timely) — A review of „The Essential Talmud” by Adin Steinsaltz

2011-10-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is an exceptional person. Author of more than 60 books, he was one of the first of Jewish Rabbis who undertook the translation of Talmud from original Aramaic language into modern Hebrew and later in English and many other languages. His translations were not free from controversies, with many scholars from different circles of Judaism, questioning accuracy of his translation. Nevertheless, for such ignorant like myself his popular introduction into Talmud — „The Essential Talmud” — was a great experience.

It starts with explanation of the meaning and importance of Talmud.

„If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar.”

„The formal definition of the Talmud is the summary of oral law that evolved after centuries of scholarly effort by sages who lived in Palestine and babylonia until teh beginningof the Middle Ages”

It then describes the fascinating history of Talmud - and shows how its most important feature - of the book that never ends — it is rather realized in minds and hearts of those who study it.

„The Talmud is the repository of thousands of years of Jewish wisdom, and the oral law, which is as ancient and significant as the written law (the Torah), finds expression therein.”

„Structure and Content” come next, describing the Talmudic exposition of laws covering the entire scope of Jewish life. The relation between Mishnah - the core of Talmud and Gemarah (which is known as Talmud itself) is explained.

The last part of the book, called „Method” describes Talmudic logic, and Talmudic way of thinking. It ends with the fantastic short chapter „The Talmud Has Never Been Completed”, that underlines the essence of Talmud:

„Every day, every hour, scholars find new subjects of study and new points of view. (...) The work that is a compilation of the endeavors of many generations, is edited with excessive precision, and has been studied by tens of thousands of scholars still remains a challenge.”

Despite my knowledge about controversy around the author, I must admit that it was a great book for me...

Too short — (but still timely) — trying to cope with backlog of reviews

2011-10-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

I have such bad feeling about the number of books I had read and hadn't had time to write their reviews, that I decided today to make a sort of breakthrough. Of course, it is almost impossible for me to write my regular type of review for all that books - quite lengthy analysis of what is important for me in the book I just have read.

Instead, I will post a number of very short notes about each book. Some of the books on the list will have, in due time, a full review. However, as I noticed that the most important facts about these books slowly and steadily go into my mind's oblivion, I decided that I can't wait any longer...

Hope, you, my readers, will still get something positive from these notes ...

Lodz, Poland, October 15th, 2011

Neuromancer — „what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?”

2011-10-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of Sci-Fi books. Of the first kind are books that once described the space travels in gigantic cannon cartridges.The second kind of books uses the Sci-Fi „tools” to transmit a specific message. The message or thought that does not reduce itself to any specific implement or concrete futuristic scenery.

There are many primitive books (and movies) of the first kind.
There are much fewer books of the second kind….

I read number of books of both kinds. Sometimes you start a book, with a hope to find there a message, but it ends up in the proverbial „trip to moon in cannon ball”. Unfortunately the Sci-Fi book I read and reviewed here recently „WWW trilogy” is nothing more than such a stupid story. Even though its theme was artificial intelligence.

William Gibson’s „Neuromancer” is certainly of the second kind. But in the very beginning of this review, let me tell you that from the first sentence you know you encountered a great literature:

„The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

The language of the entire book has such specific colouring. As with many other books I read and reviewed, I find that kind of specific atmosphere, the best described via an analogy to color, as something rear and extremely valuable in books. However the colouring of Neuromancer is dark and void. Is not friendly, nor quite humane. Yet it exhibits beauty of its own kind.

What is so special about this book, the book that I discovered because of my son recommendation (he read it about 10 years ago !) and because of another book, „Infinite Reality:…” (by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson) ?? Perhaps it did not correctly predicted WHAT is cyberspace now, or HOW it is built. But many years before Web it very accurately captured its spirit:

„Cyberspace. A con sensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding....”

As many agree, it was Gibson, who in some metaphoric sense “invented” cyberspace. How true is this review title, borrowed from Jack Womack’s note about Neuromancer: „ what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?”. Impossible? Well… If you think about all these geeks and web inventors of the nineties who certainly have been reading Neuromancer before or during starting up their garage businesses? He also shed light on the aspect of cyberspace which we only recently discovered in web2.0 communities:

„It wasn't a name he knew. Something new, something that had come in since he'd been in Chiba. Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light; entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly.
"Go," he said. The Hosaka had accessed its array of libraries, journals, and news services.”

Gibson's painting of the virtual reality touches the most important aspect of it – total controllability and enumerability:

„And here things could be counted, each one. He knew the number of grains of sand in the construct of the beach (a number coded in a mathematical system that existed nowhere outside the mind that was Neuromancer). He knew the number of yellow food packets in the canisters in the bunker (four hundred and seven). He knew the number of brass teeth in the left half of the open zipper of the salt-crusted leather jacket that Linda Lee wore as she trudged along the sunset beach, swinging a stick of driftwood in her hand (two hundred and two).”

However, Gibson went further and beyond cyberspace as we know it today. He explores matters that are related to AI in a way nobody at his time did. Instead of writing about robots, he explores the roots of AI:

„The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games," said the voice-over, "in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks.”

Any doubts he is right? The game industry was, if not strongest, driving force of virtual reality technology — at least its most popular. But he drills it deeper. He explores what could be defined as personality problems associated with AI. He somehow predicted what later proponents of so-called Apocalyptic AI would preach. However, Gibson notices issues that, despite many years of development, were not yet addressed:

„Wintermute had built Armitage up from scratch, with Corto's memories of Screaming Fist as the foundation. But Armitage's "memories" wouldn't have been Corto's after a certain point.”

He also comes to the matters related to such, potentially omnipresent (nothing strange in today’s cyberspace) reality:

"So what's the score? How are things different? You running the world now? You God?"
"Things aren't different. Things are things."
"But what do you do? You just there?" Case shrugged, put the vodka and the shuriken down on the cabinet and lit a Yeheyuan. "I talk to my own kind." "But you're the whole thing. Talk to yourself?"

In many ways Gibson’s depiction of Virtual Reality denudes its deep and dangerous ramifications. What is human reaction to it? Suddenly we discover that rage is perhaps the most human reaction to it:

"Mean, motherfucker," he whispered to the wind. "Don't take a chance, do you? Wouldn't give me any junkie, huh?
I know what this is...." He tried to keep the desperation from his voice. "I know, see? I know who you are. You're the other one. "So what now?" He swung them back into the bank of cloud. "Where do we go from here?" "I don't know, Case. Tonight the very matrix asks itself that question.

This very aspect of Neuromancer – disclosing and denuding the consequences of AI concepts, plans and steps toward it – should be studied with diligence by any adept of the nascent Brave New World….

Great book. The movie is coming.

Stockpile, stockpile of un-reviewed books grows...

2011-09-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

I owe you (and to myself) the reviews of:

„The Name of The Rose” by Umberto Eco (read third time in my life)
„Foucault's Pendulum” by the same author (read second time in my life)
„Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution” by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson
„Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe” by Bill Bryson.
„Always On” by Brian Chen
„The Estate” by Isaac Beshevis Singer
Rabbi Jehoshua Ozjasz Thon — „Sermons”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón first novel „The Prince of Mist”
John Ratey's „Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”
Michael M. Lewis's „The New New Thing”
Amir D. Aczel's: „The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity”
„Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely
„The Essential Talmud” by Adin Steinsaltz

Wow !

I probably made this post not to boast about my long list of books read, but to remind me how bad I'm when it comes to writing these days. Shame on me :-)

Recalled in Zurich, in a beautiful Sunday morning, just before the trip to the foot of Matterhorn ...

Salome in Opera National de Paris ...

2011-09-25T01:14:00.000-07:00

During my last stay in Paris I went to Opera National de Paris at Bastilleto watch the performance of Richard Strauss „Salome”. It was very interestingexperience for many reasons.

Richard's Strauss music is that specific kind of music to which one couldattach a label „German” — however, unlike for some other composers of the lateromantic period and the tragic first half of XX century, Strauss's Germanicstyle is not frightening... Maybe it is reflection of his attitude doNazism....

The another reason was in, let me express it so, „lingual” aspect of theperformance. It was played in the heart of France by mostly French singers ...in German !!!

As I humbly admit to know not both these beautiful languages :-) I decidedto focus completely on the music, dance and specific body language of theOpera. The result was astonishing!
First and foremost, is was very easy for me to follow the action and theturns of the plot (I did not read the libretto before). Second, theinterpretation of the Opera without clear perception of its libretto issurprising!

Contrary to almost all typical interpretations — I did not find Salome (beautifullyplayed by beautiful German Angela Denoke) as an epitome of a kind of „femmefatale”! Of course, she was depicted as strange and almost perverse women, butwhat Denoke tried, and to me, succeeded in, was to show that her perversenesswas somehow provoked by her step-father, Herod, who driven by his lust anddesire to her body, somehow accepts her demands, when is satisfied by hersensual dance (and, needless to say, the Dance of Seven Veils was dancedfantastic by Denoke). Herod was depicted as a cowardly, perverse old man, who,on the surface tries to dissuade her daughter from the crime, but in fact doeswhat she wants — just because he first got what he wanted ...

So in some sense, not understanding the words, I found this performance ofSalome quite different in its meaning. Less focused on the proverbial fatalityof a woman, more on false meekness and cowardliness and lust of a man... When I read libretto of the Opera the day after - I was surprised by thetext painting a bit different picture of the story ...

Written in Zurich, Sunday, September 25, 2011

My favorite bookstore in Woody Allen's movie „Midnight in Paris”

2011-09-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

No No, I won't switch to writing movies reviews... First, I very rarely visit cinemas, second, books will remain my specialty :-)

But „Midnight in Paris” is exceptional movie. (See a very good review in New York Times). Maybe it deserves being mentioned here — because it is all about literature and ... about nostalgia.

But for me one, short scene, almost a cameo was worth more — The hero couple of seconds long walk out from „Shakespeare & Company” bookstore at La Bucherie street just on the left bank in Paris...
For me it is primary place for literature in Europe, unmatched in climate, selection of books (new and old), activities (Literary Festivals, meetings with writers etc).

Thanks Woody !

"Foucault's Pendulum" & "The Name of the Rose" revisited...

2011-09-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

Parallel to my life and other books I went through Foucault's Pendulum and The_Name_of_the_Rose again. I guess it was at least my third reading of each of them, and again and again a lot of new discoveries, new senses, new colors....

The reviews will come soon ...

Finding a great book by fluke :-)

2011-09-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

That happened in Edinburgh, during my first trip to Scotland and its beautiful capital...

I was passing by a street full of little bookstores - mostly antiquarian, when I dropped into this one:

And there among mostly old books of Philosophy, I found this very recent one: „Apocalyptic AI” by Robert M. Geraci. Minutes later I read a couple of chapters while sitting in a little French restaurant....

And I must say, I'm deeply and positively surprised. The author, who is a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, wrote an extremely interesting account about the parallels between certain "hard" AI theories and predictions and ... religious experiences and attitudes. In the conclusion to the first chapter he writes:

„Apocalyptic AI is a technological faith that directly borrows its sacred worldview from apocalyptic Judaism and Christianity”

Sounds interesting ...

I started to think a bit, and when I recalled my first encounter with Ray Kurzweil thought (despite my criticism there) I came quickly to a realization that there indeed must be a deeper link between highly technological belief in the possibility of uploading our mind with our consciousness to a computer and the beliefs in human immaterial soul. What at the first glimpse looks like the strong anti-religious argument (i.e. the mind can be „run" by a machine) is paradoxically just the argument for the opposite view. If one, indeed could upload our mind - that means this mind is completely different from the brain and indeed is the soul sought by religious people through our history....

Well, don't take me wrong. As the author in the introduction, I'm not a strong AI faithful..
However, the argument and the whole idea — and The Book — seems to be extremely interesting ...

The review will come ... :-)

Written in Edinburgh ...

Orhan Pamuk's great novel — „My Name is Red”

2011-08-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

I start this review of the acclaimed Orhan’s Pamuk novel „My name is Red” in a specific climate. As I indicated in my harbinger of this review, when I was reading the novel, I could not put away all my recollections and feelings related to Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”. So just after I finished great Pamuk’s novel and even before writing this review, I switched my MP3 player to equally famous Umberto Eco’s book. That gives me another opportunity to ponder over the cultural differences between the European culture I was born to, and the Eastern, now by-gone culture of Ottoman Empire, that has some reflection in today’s Turkish culture, and with more general outlook — in Islamic culture.

However, before exploring the analogy deeper (what I probably postpone to another post) I will try to tell something about „My name is Red” itself.
The novel takes place in Istambul at the end of XVI century. It introduces its readers into a world of miniaturists and painters devoted to book illustrations. At the outset, this is extremely interesting – as we well know, painting in Islam is quite restricted – even a depiction of any human form is a kind of idolatry and is forbidden. This is why Islamic cultures developed more in directions of calligraphy, illumination of manuscripts, miniature painting, painting on ceramics and extremely flowery rugs and carpets creation.

The novel’s intriguing plot throws us into the world of late Ottoman empire, under the rule of Sultan Murat III, who purportedly, ordered an extended and rich set of illustrations, apparently borrowing from Venitian style of painting, to the book (Thousands Years of Hagira) which was to be offered to some European envoys as an expression of Ottoman or, more precisely — his own, pride. However, amid strong opposition from fundamentalists of the era, he did that in secrecy and commissioned the task to a specific workshop of talented miniaturists and illuminators. Partially because of another wave of pride and competition among them, partially because of the restrained love affairs and desires of the young people, and most importantly because of the influence of fundamentalists – the mysterious murders start to shadow the peaceful work of the illuminators. And this face of the book — the numerous plots, almost criminal-like tension and great dramatizing is extremely well designed and rendered in words. Let me however not reveal anything from these plots because I do not want to spoil the readers’ future impressions. Anyway, let me only say shortly that the mystery about the identity of the main murderer is not revealed almost to the end of the novel. Yet when the conundrum is finally solved, it is of a very specific climate of surprise. Contrary to our today’s literary experiences it is almost non-surprising, we could probably conclude the truth well in the mid of reading – yet – just because of the fantastic way Pamuk intertwines the plot – it becomes a true crescendo of the book.

There is also a beautiful love story. The love from the first sight, yet almost tragic and almost unfulfilled, it finally finds fulfillment in a way perhaps different than its actors expectations, and a bit different to our expectations as readers. And that makes it even more beautiful. As its frequent references to the story of „Hüsrev and Shirin” by Persian poet Nizami …

Beyond all these features, the book has also many philosophical connotations. We are exposed to specific way Muslims in Ottoman Empire pondered about God and human soul, the afterlife, the reward and punishment. I wanted to stress a thought that, to me, was probably the most important. It is a consideration about books and painting. First and foremost, it shows the incredible role of writing, books and libraries in the development of Islamic culture. But it also shows, that just after armies, their soldiers and all the military power, the books were assumed to have equal power. Pamuk recalls an attack on a city where, after the massacre of its inhabitants, the books were the next victims ...

We are exposed to the numerous deep thoughts that decorate the action packed pages, like:

„Painting is the silence of thought and a music of sight”

„I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.”

„Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

„A letter doesn't communicate by words alone. A letter, just like a book, can be read by smelling it, touching it and fondling it. Thereby, intelligent folk will say, 'Go on then, read what the letter tells you!' whereas the dull-witted will say, 'Go on then, read what he's written!”

„What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.”

„Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.”

The ideas about painting („… the farthest one can go in illustrating; it is seeing what appears out of Allah’s own blackness”) are also thought provoking. And the parts of the narration were we discover that the true essence of painting can be discovered only by blind painter. That parts of the book were very deep – and one could not avoid an analogy to Beethoven who was almost deaf when composed some of his masterpieces. And the mystical self-blinding of some of the book heroes in the critical events of the plot…

Pamuk explores the European influence on Islamic art, the opposition and admiration of it. In fact the attempt to apply European style of painting into Islamic illustrations becomes one of the key controversies among the characters of the novel. Rich parallels shed some light on wider context of the cultural connections between East and West, their evolution in the Middle Ages and the tolerant approach of religious Muslims of the age („Unto Allah belong the East and the West”)

I guess it is worth mentioning how beautiful and unusual writing instruments are used by Pamuk. For example there is a chapter were the narrator is a tree or a horse or a coin… And the chapters with have such unusual narrators, play an important role in this amazing book…

Finally, if you let yourself to live with this amazing book for a considerable amount of time, you start to feel the climate of the time it describes… And when you compare that feeling to the feeling we Europeans experience while reading „The Name of the Rose” or “The Book of Abraham” (Marek Helter) on the another – we lose our pride and typical conviction of the superiority of our culture over the ancient cultures of Judaism or Islam…

„My Name is Red” is a monumental book, the book that will stay with you long after you flopped the last page of it, or, as was in my case, when you switched your AudioBook off for a long time after it…

Finished in Woodbridge, UK.

Benjamin Britten Music ...

2011-08-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Out of my admiration to Benjamin Britten's music I travelled to Aldeburgh - a little costal English town on the North Sea shore...

Here is the sculpture sitting on the stony beach there:

And all the day I had Britten's music in my ears...

Mirek@Aldeburgh

„The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco

2011-08-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

When I noticed the parallels between „The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco and Orhan's Pamuk „My name is Red” I spent several hours with the former. It was my second encounter to the book (first in my mother tongue many years ago). However, fo a moment I will restrain myself from writing about it. First I feel un urge to publish first my review of „My Name is Red”, second, the version of „The Name of the Rose” I listened to was abridged version, and I do not want to review it from it. Already have the unabridged and it waits ...

Meanwhile, having my fascination of Umberto Eco prose returning to me, I read „Foucault Pendulum” again... The review will come one day :-)

My Name Is Red — The Mysteries of Books, Illustrations, Islam and Love ...

2011-08-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

This short note is not a review yet.
Contrary to my hopes, I could not find time to catch up with the growing pile of unreviewed book....
Maybe soon...

But I cannot withhold myself from telling you how fantastic is Orhan Pamuk's "My Name Is Red" novel.
It touches so many important matters — the Islamic philosophy and religion, importance of books and paintings, reaction to European influence upon Ottoman culture....

Deeply immersed in Islamic tradition, it reminds me about "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco... As the later was related to the importance of books to medival Christian/European culture, so the former was to Islamic culture of Ottoman Emipre...

I only hope I will find time soon to tell you more about it....

In paper ...

2011-07-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

The previous entry was about listening to the incredible "My Name is Red".

This is about real, paper book...

This is even more incredible "The Kuzari" by Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi....
More to come...

Tomorrow I start on 3 day solitary canoeing on my mystical Lupawa River in North Poland...
:-)

"Painting is the silence of thought and a music of sight"

2011-07-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

I still did not become warmer after freezing effect of 12 months of hard work on my blogging....
Yet I read. And this reading gives me peace and deep thought. "My name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk.

How deep are stories about the best illustrators and miniaturists that excelled to the highest levele only when turned blind ... When you paint while being blind - it's like Allah himself would paint...

The book of course, has much more in it...

Keep listening while biking and jogging in the Pomerania....

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life"

2011-07-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

I was about not to write any more reviews before going off to my place of summer holidays... But when I finished yesterday "The Painted Veil" (W. Somerset Maugham) I just could not resist a temptation to share with you my admiration and complete enchantment to the book...

This 1925 year novel is a masterpiece of prose, of author ability to paint scenes with words...
but there is something deeper - the plot that gave rise to the 3 movies (1934, 1957, 2006) was quite shocking to me today on a deep personal level...

And please don't ask me with what side of the triangle I sympathize the most ...
The only thing is that Maugham has an unusual ability to tell the most important truths of life without an jota of preaching or moralizing....

Perhaps , a longer review will come...

Backlog of reviews. III

2011-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well, seems I have no chance before vacation to write almost ANY review. The hardship of all my recent business trips, very long stay in Paris, super-short in Vienna and so much work, makes me dumb on my own blog...

So just to tell you — my backlog piles up (because I still read (or rather: listen to) like crazy) — I recently added to it:

„Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe” by Bill Bryson.

„Always On” by Brian Chen — the great book about social and business ramifications of iPhone revolution.

„The Estate” by Isaac Beshevis Singer — enchanting story about life in Jewish-Polish communities in Warsaw at the end of XIX century,

„The Painted Veil" by W. Somerset Maugham — the book that was used to make the movie under the same title — truly great prose...

Cheers :-)
Mirek

Beyond, above and below the text — the mistery of reading in "Proust and the Squid"

2011-06-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

This will be only a short note and certainly the review of this fine book will have to wait till I have some more time during the incoming summer holidays...

But I wanted to tell you how amazing this book is. By recalling the Socrates objection against written form of knowledge and looking, from this perspective, on the current transformation of paper based to digital reading, Maryanne Wolf writes an incredible apology of deep reading. And about many more....

Just fantastic and must read for all interested in the current culture...

Backlog of reviews. II

2011-06-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

My current backlog of reviews has the following titles:

Rabbi Jehoshua Ozjasz Thon — „Sermons” (in my mother's tongue)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón first novel „The Prince of Mist”
John Ratey's „Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”
Michael M. Lewis's „The New New Thing”
Amir D. Aczel's: „The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity”

and the new titles I did not review yet:

„Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely
„The Essential Talmud” by Adin Steinsaltz

I'm also reading now (on my Kindle software):

„Hitler's Willing Executioners” by Daniel Goldhagen
„Hackers & Painters” by Paul Graham

and in paper:

The english translation of „Kitab al Khazari” by philosopher and poet Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in the English translation by Rabbi Daniel Korobkin issued by Feldheim Publishers.

Hope I will be able to review them in the comming summer months :-)

Suspended time in Arkansas ...

2011-06-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

I was completely mesmerized and enchanted by John Grisham „A Painted House”. On the surface it is a story narrated by 7-years-old Luke, living with his parents in deep poverty on a cotton farm in Arkansas.
The story itself is simple, and at the first glimpse quite ordinary — maybe because of its apparent plainness and commonness. But when you read it (or listen as I did) carefully, you start to notice some light coming from the background, the light that makes this novel absolutely extraordinary. Is it for the honest and modest depiction of the harsh life in rural America in fifties? For the relation of responsibility and hard work and freedom? For poetic description of the nature and life in Arkansas? For the finest narration?

Maybe.... But I find in the book something out-of-this-world, something that escapes naming it and confining to this or that aspect of Grisham narration. Perhaps I must admit, that I do not really know what made me so deeply moved by this common story...

I will certainly continue with Grisham. It was my his first book.
You can find the typical summary of the book here.

Alone, Grand Alliance, Triumph and Tragedy — Churchill on II World War

2011-05-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I finished reading Churchill's multiple volume account on II World War. As I wrote before, Churchill narration is excellent and if you want to know the history of one of the most tragic periods of human history — his books are invaluable.

I do not support those who claim that Churchill was not „objective” in his relation of the war time. First, as we well know, there is no such thing as objectivity. History is played by people and is written by people. Their worldview and events they participated in always shape it. Second, I was amazed how honest Churchill was in his account. Of course, he toots his own horn, but he does not avoid writing about the sins and errors of his own nation and his own! It was the author himself, who wrote about his work: „This is not history, this is my case.” Well, I have many objections to the books, but I will write about them at the very end of this review.

In „Alone” (which, in the first edition, was called „Their Finest Hour”) Churchill writes about the Fall of France and about the two crucial battles of the II World War — the air battle of Britain and the sea battle of the Atlantic. Unfortunately for French people, his relation of French attitude to the war and to Hitler is shameful. He reveals the lack of any preparation to the war on French part, their lack of coordination and flat collaboration of many of French influential circles with Nazis. One of the most interesting parts of this volume
is about Dunkirk and the amazing evacuation of about 300 thousands soldiers (including about 120 thousands French) to Britain. Having in mind the power of Hitler at that time of the war (May 1940) that was indeed a miracle. The narration about the Battle of Britain and RAF bravery is fantastic. It is here were we can read, firsthand, about emotions and gratitude that led Churchill to the famous saying:

„Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.

We then move to the North Africa and Middle East, just to discover how important the region was during the war, and how big was Britain effort not to allow Hitler to grow too much there. Here comes the part about Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, the great British soldier. This account is special — because Wavell was in fact dismissed by Churchill after unsuccessful operation „Battleaxe”. Churchill writes about Wavell in high esteem. The book ends with the vivid arration about the treacherous behaviour of Soviet Russia in the war — until the later time, when they were attacked by Hitler, what was called „The Soviet Nemesis”. Reading this part, I was amazed how shallow is human memory... Today, Russia's role is remembered as the part of the great alliance that conquered Hitler. And that is fine and true. However, we tend to forget (with great aid of
Soviet, and later and even today, Russian propaganda) that it was for Stalin’s policy that Hitler could gain so much in the beginning of the War. Were they not attacked, they would stay on Hitler's side... It is amazing that we don't see Russian's afterthoughts about that shameful part of their history ...

„Grand Alliance” is an epic tale about the turn in the fate of war and the formation of the alliance between Britain, United States, and now on the attacked side, Soviet Russia. It is extremely detailed and fine written part. Sometimes I lost sense that it is historical account, because it reads like a novel.

„Triumph and Tragedy” describes the finale of the war and the German defeat. However, as the title goes, the joy of victory was spoiled by the tragedy of divided Europe, that was the result and, as Churchill suggests, the price of the war. As in many parts of the entire set, here we also get sincere admission to allies own blunders. Churchill seems to be an outspoken narrator of both the glory and the sin...

For example, when he writes about Poland and the tragic fate of Warsaw and the treacherous behaviour of Stalin and his puppet communist government (Lublin committee) it becomes clear that Allies simply indulged to Stalin’s whims and demands. BTW, I'm not entirely sure if Churchill did not try to exonerate himself from these sins in some way or another, but no one can deny he is honest in his narration...

However, there is deeply disturbing issue about the book, well, about all the books of the set. It is a complete silence about Holocaust... As we now know, Shoah, the mass murder of almost 6 million Jews during the war and about 5 to 11 million other ethnic or social groups was one of the major efforts of Germans, both logistically, politically and militarily. It is startling that Churchill does not write anything about it. I do not suspect him of anti-Semitism, though one of only two mentions about Jews in the entire set is a petty joke ..., but this ignorance is hard to understand.

There is no doubt that both Churchill and Roosevelt new about the systematic extermination well. Jan Karski, Polish underground fighter, informed western powers about that. There are evidences that both most important Polish Government in Exile figures, like Mr. Mikołajczyk had frequent talks with Anthony Eden, Churchill's right hand. So why such omission? Maybe it explains Churchill handling of the case of Jewish refugees coming to then being-born state of Israel?

I do not know, but this ignorance casts a deep shadow on Churchill's account, despite the paradoxical greatness of the books and the well deserved Nobel price in literature he won...

This review was written in Paris, between 25 and 29 of May, 2011 with lots of thoughts about France, Europe and the bad past they came through ...

The dark side of British handling of the Palestine just after the war - a story told by Yoram Kaniuk

2011-05-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

„Commander of the Exodus” by Yoram Kaniuk, Jewish writer and journalist is a book that shows the darker and much less known side of the immigration to Palestine of the Holocaust survivors.

It is a story of brave Palestine-native hero — Yossi Harel, who in the course of 1947-48 brought about 20000 Shoah survivors to Palestine. There would probably be nothing strange in the story if it was not for British Navy and, more generally, British Mandate authorities to actively oppose the coming of the survivors to their land....

Kaniuk, who demonstrates the unusual talent of combining true historical account with a great story telling talent, does not seem to be anvengeful or even biased against British. He just coldly relates the episode of the complicated history o the birth of the state of Israel. This relation is, nevertheless, quite disturbing and embarrassing for the British — who verbally declared support to the Zion Cause, but did very little to help the nascent State to start its life in peace. The ships coming to Palestine from Europe were harassed and often turn back, not without fighting, to Europe. In the most dramatic stories, some Holocaust survivors were sent back to Europe and deported to the former Nazi camps!

Even calling these events „ironic” seems to be outrageous.
I have found the article that tells the true account of these events. The following picture of „Exodus 1947” ship comes from it:

„Commander of the Exodus” does not even try to explain why the events had such a turn there and at that time. The book focuses on the valour of its main hero and the brave people who believed they come to their dreamed off homeland — but were met by hostility of those in whose hands the fate of millions was endowed...

I must admit that I write this review long time after I read the book. And I write it now, because the another great book — that by Winston Churchil („The Second World War”) — sheds some light on the matters, and I will be reviewing it shortly. I will try to give my own theory in that forthcoming review....

The third part of „The WWW Trilogy” — Just another flop ...

2011-04-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

I tuned to the audio rendering of Robert J. Sawyer third part of his famous „The WWW Trilogy”. After „Wake” — the opening part, „Watch” — the second tome, here comes „Wonder” — the concluding part.

Honestly, after „Watch” I already had suspicion that the trilogy could and should be reduced to the single „Wake” part and would stay in our memories ...

However, it is not a first time in the genre that the sequel or, worse still, the second and third parts — are a far cry from the first book.

As you can read in my previous reviews (Wake, Watch), the „The WWW Trilogy” is about the emerging artificial mind born out of existing Web infrastructure. The theme itself is interesting, touches many current trends like AI, Semantic Web, knowledge representation, mind-body relation etc.

Unfortunately, while wandering from „Wake” to „Wonder” it arrives to extremely naive, almost childish story, possibly good to kids in the preschools...

The WebMind starts to talk to politicians, overthrows China government, works for peace, health and prosperity of humanity and so on, so on....

At some passages it is easy to identify some strange episodes that make me think that the author indulges in „product placement” activity. Repeated references to „a single iPhone button” or the advice WebMind gives to US president to use FireFox instead of Internet Explorer — are explicit „signals” of such activities...

Well, why I read it after all ?

I tuned to it only to get something lighter and less serious than my recent war-time reading...
I now regret I spent several hours listening to it. There are better books to spend time with ....

What to do with a dove thrown into the nest of snakes ...

2011-04-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

I know this is a strange title. My language skills in the tongue which was not my mother's seems to be limited to express what I feel after reading this book. I will try to express it as clearly as I can:

It is about an incredible person. Probably the one among the best who was walking the earth ...
Yet his story left me in fear and sadness. It is about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And about the book: „Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich”. The author is Eric Metaxas.

Please let me warn you. Be that as it may, I truly admire Bonhoeffer. I was surprised how deep his religiousness was. And how deeply, being faithful to Christianity, he understood Jewish roots of his religion — what, among other things, brought him to total denial of German ant-Semitism amplified and explored by the Nazi. I could only wish there were more such priests and monks and Christian laymen...

I have to write about my admiration, because in the later part of this review I will be critical also of Bonhoeffer !
So why I have such strange feelings and thoughts ?

Let me now tell you few basic fact — I do not intend to write long, typical review. Eric Metaxas’ work is a very good record of the life and struggle and martyrdom of Dietrch Bonhoeffer. Dietrich was German pastor and theologian. He was born in 1906 in Wrocław (Breslau). He came from very prestigious family of Professor Karl Bonhoeffer, the neurologists and psychiatrist. His decision to become a theologian, and later the priest came when he was only fourteen. His other talents were in music (was a very good pianist) and in sports (was quite good athlete).

The story of Bonhoeffer's life tells the tragic truth about that dark period in German, and more generally, in human history. He opposed the Nazi regime, he did it long before the war and during it. Despite his apparent pacifism and priesthood he conspired to kill Hitler. For his involvement in the plot against Hitler he was sentenced to death and executed by hanging on April 9th, 1945, just few weeks before the end of the war ...

For all interested in details there is a very good article about him on Wikipedia.

Now, let me come to the essence of my feelings. The biography relates also what was the attitude of the Churches to Hitler and his Nazi regime. And here came first shock. How little we know about the “German Christians” whose coat-of-arms had Nazi swastika inscribed into the cross! And how popular that movement was among German Protestants of that times. How little we know about Ludwig Müller — who became Reich’s Bishop in 1933. And let’s not blame only protestants. Catholic Church with all its majesty entered into specific state contract with Hitler — The Concordat. This shameful act, negotiated by pope-to-be, Eugenio Pacelli, was signed when it became quite clear what are true Hitler’s intentions... Do we really know, that it was never revoked by the Holy See? How can we really think of WORDS in the Pius XI encyclical „Mit brennender Sorge” when the ACT was still in place?

Of course there were Christians who opposed Hitler, of course there were priests murdered by Nazism. But what is the shocking truth, is that even in “Confessing Church” the opposition against anti-Semitism was relatively week, and its famous Barmen Declaration even does not list anti-Semitism as a crime!

I know I will tell harsh and strong words here — but all that represents nothing less than a total failure of Christianity in Europe in XX century. When you know all that facts, and spend some hours contemplating on them — what do you think when some European politicians speak about “Christian roots” of Europe?

I will not give answers to these burning questions — I know they would be too blatant...

It seems to me, that Bonhoeffer knew about this total failure, and to me it is clear from his letters, where we can find the term that latter become, somehow improperly, an emblem of his theology: Religionless Christianity:

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the "religious a priori" of mankind. "Christianity" has always been a form--perhaps the true form--of "religion." But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religionless--and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war, in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any "religious" reaction?)--what does that mean for "Christianity"?

Many “Christian” critics of Bonhoeffer thought of his ill will in these thoughts...

Did they know the history? Did they know how many of Hitler’s Willing Executioners (a suggestio to the book is intentional) were devote Christians?

I think that the Bonhoeffer notion of religion which possibly could be built upon ruins of Christianity — is the only true hope for Christianity — at least this is my private, and certainly heavily biased, opinion — of the person who equally intentionally left Christianity years ago ...

On these thoughts I seem to be in line with the author of the biography, though he avoids making such strong statements as I did here.

But there is also something in this book that is even more disturbing. Several times in the book, almost casually, its author relates Bonhoeffer’s and his circles, including his family, opinion about the First World War and the “unjust” treatment Germans got in and after the Treaty of Versailles... Imagine — the people who caused the first round of horrors in XX century, and who, including its best people, to whom Bonhoeffer certainly belonged, did not even accept the historical punishment they got ! Were they blind ?

Are we all blind? Were there only few doves and all that remained was the nest of snakes ?

Written in Paris, London & Lodz....

Not all states are ready to admit their sins of the past... Russian Shame.

2011-04-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

I usually don't write here on current affairs, even less I am a political blogger...
But what happened today is a bad example of some states and nations inability to seek the truth and absolution from the sins of the past.

Here is what happened:

Tomorrow there is a day of remembrance for Poles who, on April 10, 2010 had lost their 96 political figures including the President in the plane crash near Katyn, the place of Polish POWs and intelligencia genocide committed by Soviet NKVD (Russian Secret police). The delegation was going there for 70 anniversary of the massacre. At the place of the crash there was a big stone and an inscription on a honours board explaining in Polish, who died there, when and what was the trip goal (i.e. commemoration of the massacre).

Just one day before the anniversary today's Russian authorities, under the cover of the night, removed the board and replaced it by another board with Polish and Russian inscription that writes the same... with the sentence about the goal of the trip (i.e. the mention of genocide) removed...

What problem it was for them? Was this small plaque able to change the classification of this massacre from war crime to genocide (what Russians vehemently oppose) ? Never. It is clear that it was a political act. But I'm not going to comment on that. I hate politics.

What is interesting however, is how week and frail is Russian's will to admit to their Stalin-era crimes.
Even if the only remainder of that crimes is a small plaque in Polish that would not even come noticed by many... Imagine ...

One could think that because they entertain some form of open society — the atonement for their PAST sins and totalitarian-era atrocites should be easy... It is not...Why ??? Is Homo Sovieticus still alive ?

Its a shame, but the shame that recently falls on many groups and circles in many countries. Take recent numerous pronouncements of German politician Erika Steinbach who promotes the view that Hitler was the only evildoer of II World War ...

Sometimes I'm worried. Badly worried. If nations, particularly big nations allow for the historical "forgetfulness" — the bad times are ahead of us....

Milestones of Disaster

2011-04-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading the first volume of four of Winston Churchill „The Second World War. Milestones to Disaster”. First and foremost, I was greatly surprised what a good writer Churchill was !
I must say that he fully deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature, he got in 1953. Some may argue about it and probably did, denying his literary merits. But I believe one can hold such views only until he or she discovers his narration. Was it not about the greatest tragedy of XX century, I would say it is really fantastic and captivating story.

The tome describes the years that led to the war and its beginning, sometimes called by the term that Churchill coined „Twilight War” (see Phoney War)

I'm not going to relate the content of the book in this review — but rather prefer to focus on the most important conclusion of the book: It is true that the Second World War broke due to the madness of Hitler and his willing German, Italian or Japaneese helpers, the German guilt for it and all its atrocities including Holocaust, is unquestionable.

But, as Churchill proves, it was possible also because of so many errors and forbearances and the fundamental moral weakness of the alies in the period after the end of the First World War...

The list of incredible and literaly stupid things the Allies committed is long. When Hitler started to grow into power, British entered into shameful Naval Agreement with Germany. Americans passed the infamous Neutrality Act. When Hitler defied both Versailles and Locarno treatises and entered with arms into RhineLand, both French and English have full legal justification for a prevention. Nothing happened, even to the amazement of Hitler himself...

Churchill writes about all these facts openly and frankly. There is no hidden agenda to show British as heroes. Oppositely, he plainly condemns these acts, and the overall tone of his narration is that of seeking the truth, not the good opinion about his own flock.

One of the most deplorable act committed by French and English just at the dawn of the tragedy, was the Munich Betrayal, where Chamberlain along with Daladier, essentially allowed Hitler to partition and annex Czechoslovakia.

The true value of the book lies in the fact that most of these facts are not well known or publicised. The media style of portaying the Allies as heroes has dominated and still dominates the collective memory of Europeans. Churchill debunks the cheap, pseudo heroism of his own nation. Of course, where and when the English and French soldiers fought, they deserved the admiration, and Churchill does not avoid it.

His demeanour can be a paragon of how any responsible politician should behave: first find your own nations sins, errors and attrocities — and speak about them openly an frankly and repent. Without such attitude the world can not become a better place...

All in all - „Milestones to Disaster” is a must for all who are interested in XX History.

Written in Paris, April, 3rd, 2011.

While there I also finished reading Eric's Metaxas „Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010)” and I'm deeply shocked by its implications. A review to come soon...

Why I do not write for a while ...

2011-02-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

In fact, I have recently read a number of good books worth reviews. But as it sometimes happens, I am in a period of some reluctance to the Web and electronic communication...

That was perhaps caused by an unexpected death of my friend Jan Bereza OSB (A Benedictine Monk) who passed away almost this hour last week ...

Here is Jan's:

For my dear readers, I have a stock pile of books read that include:
Jehoshua Ozjasz Thon's Sermons (in my mother's tongue)
Yoram Kaniuk's „Commander of the Exodus”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón first novel „The Prince of Mist”
John Ratey's „Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain”
Michael M. Lewis's „The New New Thing”

My current reading is Winston Churchil's „The Second World War: Milestones to Disaster”

Mirek@Munich

Black Swan — one of the best movies I've seen

2011-02-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

As you know, I rarely review films here. But for the „Black Swan” I wanted to make an exception. Probably one of the best movies of Darren Aranofsky, it tells an imaginative story of a ballerina (featured by Natlie Portman) by of the New York City ballet company. She is so deeply engaged in her role in „Swan Lake” that her entire life is turned around it, and ultimately consumes her entirely... It is however hard to relate the „plot” of the movie, largely because of the role of confusing, ambiguous turns of the action that flows on a brink between reality and dreams or hallucinations...

The beautiful filming, fantastic music and the great actor's craft make the movie one of my best ....

„Night” by Elie Wiesel

2011-01-30T02:49:00.000-08:00

It is a book that, just after I started reading, made me quickly to relinquish it. And I had real difficulty to return ...

Written by famous Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel prize winner, „Night” is very realistic account on the tragic fate of Jews during Shoah. But the realism it is written with is almost unbearable.

Don't take me wrong, though. I do not mean I could not read it or that it is bad book. But to apply a typical slogan „Great Book” or „Nice reading” is in fact an act of betraying the author ...

In short, it describes the events since the beginning of the war that happened in Sighet, through the liquidation of Ghetto in that Romanian town. We are taken on a journey to Auschwitz, Buna (Monowice —Auschwitz III) and to Buchenwald. Despite the fact that the fate saved the narrator of the book, he lost his faith in G-d, in humanity and in himself. As more about the book can be found in the good Wikipedia article, I will not elaborate on it more...

In fact, when I finished it I was in a kind of trauma for several hours...

See the ending of it:

„At six a clock that afternoon the first American tank stood at the gate of Buchenwald. Our first act as free men was to through ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge or parents, only of bread. And even we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge.
(...)
One day when I was able to get up I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the Ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as it gazed at me, has never left me...”

Paris, January 30, 2011

The pile grows ...

2011-01-24T22:51:00.000-08:00

Oh yes, the pile of books I have read but haven't reviewed starts to grow.

Quite recently I read John J. Ratey's „Spark” - a very interesting, grounded in science book about the importance of physical exercises for our ... brain.

And very recently I finished Michel Lewis 2000 account „The New New Thing” about Jim Clark.
Very well written and fascinating story of the Internet Era most admired entrepreneur....

On this pile (on its bottom) there is still Joseph Conrad „Nostromo”...

Hope to have some time on the coming weekend in Paris ....

Sense & Sensibility — Good Writership or Naiveté ?

2011-01-06T02:43:00.000-08:00

I just finished Jane Austen's first novel „Sense and Sensibility”. And I must say, I'm confused. It is a well written novel, no question. But the level of naivete, of narrowness of the characters' outlook of life — and what is more — of admiration of the gentry-mindedness and heroes idleness — keeps me away from writing a positive, or even any longer review. It also overshadows some passages of true irony and good comedy, that, perhaps give the true value to this book !

I'm not literary critic, so my opinion may not be taken too seriously. And I know, that many bright people (like Leo Strauss) admired Jane Austen's prose. Maybe, I could change my mind after reading some other of Austen's novel. But I still have in mind the another book of the genre and of Victorian age — Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Only 30 years between them, while the difference is of enormous proportions in favour of Bronte....

„The French Lieutenant's Women” — A Story — The Theses

2010-12-26T14:27:00.000-08:00

Who did not watch that movie? The top cast with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. The two stories on two planes: The Victorian — set in the XIX century England, apparently close to The Book, and The Modern, telling about the affair of actors who embody the heroes of The Book.

But, the close reading of The Book, uncovers dramatically different thoughts and conclusions and is worth reading — even more if you already watched the movie.

In this review, I will not relate the plot of the book. If you must read about it, see the respective Wikipedia article. I want rather to direct your attention to some specific aspects of the story and the its deep conclusions.

On the surface, the book tells a story of the unorthodox love between two people living in the Victorian Era and tightly bound by convenances and rules of their age and their society. But under the surface it is a story of universal importance and human choice: Charles, who is already engaged to a woman (with wedding date already known) meets another mysterious and interesting women, and falls in love with her. Something that happens and repeats itself across the time and cultures.

However, Fowles shows, that, as usually is the case, there is no one good happy end. In fact, book shows three possible endings and we can imagine all possible conclusions out of these three different finale. To do so, author distances himself from the plot and tries to describe how the different flows of action depend on human freedom of choice. In showing this, Fowles uses his top literary mastery. These three endings come natural, and have nothing to do with artificial „novel like” implement.

By distancing themselves from the limits of time and space, the author, however discovers that characters of his story live their own lives, and even though all is his imagination — there are constrains, and they are true and unbreakable:

„I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters' minds and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in (...) a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God. He may not know all, yet he tries to pretend that he does.(...) My characters still exist, and in reality no less, or no more, real than the one have just broken. Fiction is woven into all, as a Greek observed some two and a half thousand years ago. I find this new reality (or unreality) more valid; and I would have share my own sense that I do not fully control these creatures of my mind, any more than you control ...”

Paradoxically, by showing the three possible endings of the story, Fowles does not imply he is a god who creates the world for his stories. Reading it, while we contemplate all of the ends, we still have the notion of the frozen and unchangeable time of the past. On the philosophical or moral level, he shows how our choices create the reality that is permanently fixed — whatever we do....

I also need to relate, that, contrary to the movie, in two of the endings, one of the partners of the affair (in this case — She) does not play the fair card. We witness a women, for whom it is more important to observe her own needs (however lofty) than the true sacrifice of the man she was in love with. The last of the three endings is particularly hard to read after knowing about the vital and sincere choices made the man.
Don't take it as a hidden sexism of Fowles. In life it happens equally (or even) more often, that the man is the one who acts for his own sake. We have no sign the author of the book thinks opposite.

That was a great reading experience, and I particularly suggest it to all who watched the movie — it will elevate your experience.

Mirek
PS. After „The French Lieutenant's Women” I started to read Jane Austen's „Sense & Sensibility”. I already thought there must be some connection between the two authors and their novels. For example, the Lyme Regis pier: „The Cobb”, is the important object in both „The French Lieutenant's Women” and Austen's „Persuasion” ... Should I find some SIGN in that coincidence ?

Picture by Ian Usher

Translation of O. Henry story ...

2010-12-26T06:57:00.000-08:00

I was so moved by O. Henry „The Gift of The Magi” that I translated, to my mother's tongue, that little pearl of literature ....

It is here.

The two (not quite) Victorian novels

2010-12-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

It gives me true fun... Not long time ago I finished reading „The French Lieutenant's Woman” by John Fowles and was truly amazed by its depth (as compared to the movie of the same title), and now I'm in the mid of Jane Austen first novel „Sense and Sensibility”. I may seem naive to be a man of 50 and read such a literature as Austen's novels, but I do have true fun. I look from the different angles on the period in human culture called Victorianism (even though Austen formally lived in the preceding period).

Fowles delivers the contemporary account about Victorianism, and it analyses its dark sides at length, while Austen writes from the depths of the culture, believing in the values his heroes believed...

That's just a short note what I have been reading recently. Both reviews will come soon ...

O. Henry’s Christmas stories...

2010-12-15T16:02:00.000-08:00

I was amazed and delighted to read (i.e. listen to) O. Henry's Christmas stories.

I was deeply moved by „The Last Leaf” and by „The gift of the Magi”.

I can not write more tonight — ....

St. Placide, Paris, December 15, 2010

A Tale about Joy and Suffering ...

2010-12-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

You will not find this book in English. Written in Polish was most surely not yet translated to other languages. It is even hard to find any information about it author, Pinchas Menachem Joskowicz on the net. Some short posts were mostly related to his recent passing away in Jerusalem. The book can be found on Google Books though.

„A tale about Joy and Suffering” (In Polish: Opowieść o Radości i Cierpieniu) is the autobiography of Joskowicz. Born in Hassidic family that belonged to Ger Hasidic Dynasty, he was raised in Zdunska Wola, a medium sized town in Poland. His parents came from Lodz, where I live today ...

What makes this book amazing is the simple language and deep inner warmth it was written with. It is even more amazing when I tell you that it describes the most tragic period of Jewish history in Poland — that of Shoah... In first chapters he describes the world of Polish Jews as it was before the II World War, in all its glory and beauty. "To be a Hassid" is one of the first chapters where we can sense how amazing and splendid was Hassidic life there.

And, suddenly in just few years that world seized to exist. I guess it is the first book I read that reflects how tragic and catastrophic was German attack on Jewish communities in Poland. They were literally wiped out from the surface of earth...

Joskowicz was first sent to Lodz (Litzmannstad) Ghetto and from there, to Auschwitz. He survived only because he was sent, with some small number of prisoners to Germany, first for slave labour, next to Neuengamme camp. After few after-war years in Bergen Belsen, he arrived in 1948 to Israel, where he married and lived with his family. In 1988 returned to Poland after he was called to be Chief Rabbi of Poland, the post he held until 1999. So — he was the first Chief Rabbi of free Poland and he could witness and impact on the revival of Jewish life in Poland. This life however never he even reached a small scale of the life before II World War.

I probably cannot transmit in words of this review the true value of this little book. It is tragic as it describes the end of the world of Polish Jewery. But it also shows, how deep faith and humility can save human being from insanity — which for many was the only reaction to Shoah...

Like the title of it, Tale about Joy and Suffering, it tells about utmost suffering human can endure and about the joy found in life full of faithfulness to G-d...

I have the feeling I could not properly describe the beauty of this little book.

Yet, I read it from cover to cover in just few days, despite being extremely busy ....

The Short Stories of "Goodbye, Columbus"

2010-12-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

I did not tell in my previous post, that just after „Goodbye Columbus” Philip Roth published five short stories (The Conversion of the Jews, Defender of the Faith, Epstein, You Can't Tell a Man be the Song He Sings, Eli the Fanatic). Many reviewers and some public opinions criticised Roth for iconoclasm apparently emerging from these stories. Many called him "self-hating Jew". As was with „Goodbay Columbus” — I disagree with these opinions. The stories are full of good humour, and yes — of irony, but always told with specific deep tenderness and warmth.

The most beautiful of them is „Eli, the fanatic” who shows the transformation of the secular person to religious one in an incredible way — through ... clothing. Well, it is more complicated and deep than that. It is a tiny story that tells in a simple, unpretentious way, without any grandiloquent words — what it sometimes mean to receive The Call...

I suggest to read it — is short and glorious...

The portrait of self destruction - Goodbye Columbus

2010-12-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

I have just read Philip Roth's first novella „Goodbye, Columbus”. I did that because I liked the two other novells The Dying Animal and Nemesis and I was happy to read them.

I was surprised how deep and thought provoking the author first novel was, and, indeed, it confirms the greatness of the author.

The plot of the novella is simple. The narrator Neil Klugman, a poor 23 years old librarian of Newark Public Library falls in deep and true love with Brenda Patimkin, a daughter of wealthy family and student of very a good school. However, as the narrations unveils, we see that their relation has some intrinsic unuttered problems, probably related to the difference in social status of the partners. They finally break after the discovery made by Brenda's parents of their sexual relations.

But, contrary to many, I do not find this book to explore the "classism" or assimilation problems (both Neil and Brenda were Jewish).

To me it is a record of self destruction — or the destruction of true love, of true great values in life by the narrator. The amazing value of the book lies in the ability of author to stay behind the hero, to create such a narration where, on a surface, while we read, we support his acts and his decisions. And only after a short musing we can notice this deception. We clearly see that there is no excuse for the hero, that he, almost deliberately, kills the love of his life — having not a single spark of remorse, and even trying to excuse himself.

Was it unconscious ? Was is really deliberate ?

As with all destructive steps of our lives — the main reasons are inside us ....

Thomas Sowell latest book — a true face of intellectuals or gross exaggeration?

2010-11-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

The latest, full book of Thomas Sowell „Intellectuals and Society” will be read as the true enlightenment or as anti-intellectual tirade. Whatever you will find it — it is a book you just cannot ignore — it is absolutely essential for all who, even, occasionally, think of themselves as of „intellectuals”.

And one should, at least for the time span of the reading, forget Sowell's many controversial views and public utterances — like that about Obama speech to students. We should forget them and read carefully, because many of the examples of stupid intellectual's acts — are unfortunately true...

Sowell first defines whom he gives the name „Intellectual”. For good or for bad, he narrows the definition to those who generate or create — IDEAS — and leaves outside the scope of his interest those who contribute to the progress of science and technology, medicine etc. Of course, in many cases the groups overlap, yet what interests him are those who create or disseminate the ideas. And he is deeply critical about those he names that way! He gives many accounts of total misjudgement of the elite, mostly from XX century history. The key example is the role of French intellectuals in the aftermath of the I World War to promote unconditional pacifism in France, that almost directly led to the disaster of the II WW. With equal scrutiny he analyses the approach of many British intellectuals to Nazi Germany, matters of rearmament and disarmament and the like. One of the most striking example is that of Bertrand Russel, whose series of misjudgements, first about Hitler, later about Soviets, was particularly long...
The examples go further when he analyses the intellectual climate around cold war, and real wars of XX century, like Vietnam War.

The main reason, according to Sowell, of so many fallacies is complete lack of accountability of intellectuals. There is no „real world verifiability” that could be applied to the works of ideas, as it is with the other, more practical, activities of intellectuals. We can also find a profound ignorance of intellectuals outside their, usually narrow, area of knowledge. As the result they, quite often, create the climate of total misinformation. Instead of presenting evidence and using logic, intellectuals, according to Sowell, often indulge in „verbal virtuosity” with so many euphemisms, clever phrasing and pseudo-wise quotes.

Many will not agree with Sowell. Also, as he stands on the clearly conservative position (using US political terminology) , many will deny the value of his conclusions.

But, I will not. When I was reading the book, I could not forget about the another book about Intellectuals and their fallacies: „The Captive Mind” by Czeslaw Milosz. Even though it was written in 1953, and was probably unknown to Sowell — it provides a great support for his views and conclusions.

And — I could add so many examples from my life. I still cannot forget many teachers and university professors that openly supported communist regime in Poland and other Central European countries. Of course, there were also many intellectuals who opposed it — but the deep delusion in which so many lived and even promoted — was the key feature of my experience from the time of transformation from communist country to the free one....

So, if you think of you as of The Intellectual — read this book in earnest — and think and think and think — before you start promoting your ideas ...

BTW, here is the Sowell's incentive to read the book :-)

Maestro Górecki died ...

2010-11-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

Mikołaj Henryk Górecki was one of the greatest composers of our time. He certainly was famous on the worldwide scene for his „Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” that was a global hit comparable only to popular music hits. But all his works, including those commissioned by Kronos Quartet place him among the giants of music like Olivier Messiaen, Charles Ives, Arvo Part, John Taverner or Giya Kancheli. He practiced something I call, by the term I coined: „rich minimalism” — where the musical language is simple but the meanings and depths are rich.

If you haven't heard about Górecki, it is also for the fact that he was very modest and private person who always shunned publicity.

Here is the Górecki's obituary published by Guardian.

Nemesis by Philip Roth

2010-11-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

After „The Dying Animal” by Philip Roth, I knew that he is a great and deep writer.

However — his latest novel „Nemesis” is one of the best books I ever read.

It is a story of young man, the teacher of physical education and passionate javelin thrower. The story is set in 1944 during one of the worst American polio epidemics. As he could not go to the army, the hero was already discontent of himself when the plot of events related to the epidemics and the events of his personal life caused a major self oppression and the unbearable conviction of guilt.

It is a great book about insecurity a man can experience, about guilt and punishment and about human rebellion against G-d due to overwhelming sense of undeserved suffering of many...

And ultimately it is a book about the triumph of human freedom of choice...

In his short book, and in the simple words, Roth once again comes to the main theme of Job's bible book (without, of course, any direct reference to it) and to the most important problems that face humans — without pathos and sanctimonious deliberations...

THE great novel.

Cri de coeur over books — The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts

2010-11-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

I already reviewed a part of Sven Birkerts' influential book when I addressed his position on audio books. It is obvious that I was in disagreement with some of his opinions about this form of books.

Now it is a time to express my opinion about the book as a whole. It is a book about the change of our perception of literature and, in general, of books in the "electronic age" marked by shift from the deep perception of literature, experience of its meaning to the superficial, fast, „multilayered, multitrack ability to deal with the world” — characteristic to the electronic age.

The book is divided into three major parts. In the first „Reading Self” contemplates on the role of writing and reading for out inner life, our inner experience. With some autobiographical threads Birkerts main thought is the dialog between people that comes through writing:

„Every true reader, then, is a writer and every true writer is a reader, and every person engaged in the project of self-awareness is the reader and writer of himself. Writer and reader: They are the recto and verso of language, which is itself the medium of our deeper awareness.”

In the second part, „The Electronic Millennium”, Birkerts analyses the developments going on in the perception of literature and its importance in our times, and first analyses three important factors resulting from electronization of our literary experience: „The Language Erosion”, „Flattering of historical perspectives” and „The waning of the private self” giving all the factors deep explanation. One of the most important results of these factors is the danger of „societal totalism”, described as a „movement toward deindividuation, or electronic collectivization”.

Next, the author goes for the analysis of the impact of the pervasive external digital systems on our notion of wisdom and knowledge. Here the danger lies in the shift of our role in relation to knowledge:

„(...) we may choose to become the technicians of our auxiliary brains,mastering not the information but the retrieval and referencing functions” (...) „The leader of the electronic tribe would not be the person who knew most, but the one who could execute the broadest range of technical functions.”

It is hard not to agree with Birkerts — the danger is real.

Later in the same part, the author goes for analysis of audio books and hyperlinked systems. And here I came to conclusion that many his conclusions missed the true dangers and focused on some that are not really of any imminence. The first set of issues, related to audio books, I addressed before and I refer readers to that post. The second is related to hypertext. And here is where I disagree with the author very strongly. To me, he did not notice the true essence of hypertext. He focuses on potential non-linearity of reading on the web (true), on the difference on writing with the computer and a mouse, but misses the key point of the new communication enabled through hyperlinks. Some notes are good shots:

„Do we still call it reading? Or would we do better to coin a new term, something like 'texting' or 'word-piloting' ” or „Hypertext — at least the spirit of hypertext, which I see as the spirit of the times — promises to deliver me from this, to free me from the 'liberation domination' of the author”.

But generally, I must say, the Birkerts notion of hypertext is superficial and — that he also did not stress the real danger related to hypertext — the distraction it brings to frequent web readers...

The last part of the book, „Three meditations” contemplates the changes in literature and art. First, is describes the dissolution of the real audience („The isolated reader may remain, but the audience is gone and is not likely to reappear”) in the electronic era. Second, it refers to Alvin's Kernan's „Death of Literature” and analyses the eroding role of the literature and more generally, of art. The apparent reason of it, according to Birkerts, is in the ”entirely inhospitable” electronic environment to the „stuff of art”. Finally he worries about the degradation of the very role of author:

„It assumes, too, that people will, out of a vestigial craving for meaning, or out of a sinking dread at what their lives have become, turn again to writers for the news they need. If nothing like this happens, then the writer will take a place beside the scrimshow artist in the museum of hallowed but ultimately useless crafts.”

The book is concluded by a code with the significant title „The Faustian Pact”. Birkerts uses the devilish allegory and warns us about the full enodorsment of the electronic way of life:

„From deep in the heart I hear the voice that says, 'Refuse it'”

There is also an interesting author afterword, written by the author 10 years after the first edition of the book. He seems to ease his „Faustian Pact” dilemma: „It falls to us individually, one by one, to decide how we will face up to the seduction of the new — how much of it to use, how much to refuse”.

I must admit, that when I first read this book, several months ago I had a bit concerned opinion than today. Maybe it was after my reading of Nicolas Carr's "The Shadows" when I started to appreciate Birkerts "Cri de coeur" more...

Job book revisited in XXI century — „When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by H. Kushner

2010-11-07T12:41:00.000-08:00

For many reasons this very book waited very long to be reviewed on my blog. And I will abstain from the explanation: why? ....

From the superficial point of view Harold S. Kushner book „When Bad Things Happen to Good People” is as the other tens if not hundreds of books of Motivation & Inspiration or Spirituality genre ... There is the something though, that adds to its solemnity — the dedication to Aaron Kushner, the author's son who died at the age of 14... Having this said, despite my compassion for the author, I must admit I was rather suspicious about the book and its message. Always, when a book devoted to the most important matters is acclaimed as a „National Bestseller” I grow suspicious...

But I was wrong. Entirely wrong. Rabbi Kushner wrote a book that can be thought of as the contemporary, and very personal — commentary to Job's Bible book.

He asks the fundamental question: „Why do the righteous suffer?” and going through typical contemporary answers, rejects them. He finally states:

„All the responses to tragedy which we have considered have at least one thing in common. They all assume that God is the cause of our suffering, and they try to understand why God would want us to suffer. … There may be another approach. Maybe God does not cause our suffering. Maybe it happens for some reason other than the will of God.”

Then Kushner goes directly to the interpretation of the Book of Job.

The Book of Job to many is one of the most important and most mysterious books of the Bible, because it rises the question of the reason and sense of human suffering. For many, the very presence of Book of Job in K'tuvim (Writings) is a sign. And I believe it is. It is very brave and very atypical book...

Kushner's interpretation of Job is very unorthodox, although on a different level — he concludes that the fundamental message behind this important biblical narrative is:

„If God is God of justice and not of power, the He can still be on our side when bad things happen to us. He can know that we are good and honest people who deserve better. Our misfortunes are none of His doing, and so we can turn to Him for help. … We will turn to God, not to be judged or forgiven, but to be strengthened and comforted.”

This and many other's passages and chapters of this small book, make the traditional idea of all powerful G-d less compelling to the idea of G-d Good and Just and respectful to the human freedom:

„This is what it means to be human 'in the image of God.' It means being free to make choices instead of doing whatever our instincts would tell us to do. It means knowing that some choices are good, and others are bad, and it is our job to know the difference…. But if Man is truly free to choose, if he can show himself as being virtuous by freely choosing the good when the bad is equally possible, then he has to be free to choose the bad also. If he were only free to do good, he would not really be choosing. If we are bound to do good, then we are not free to choose it."

Kushner makes a lot of historical references, also to Holocaust. His understanding of this calamity is far from „punishment” interpretation:

„When people ask 'Where was God in Auschwitz? How could he have allowed the Nazis to kill so many innocent men, women, and children?', my response is that it was not God who caused it. It was caused by human beings choosing to be cruel
to their fellow man. (...)
I have to believe that the Holocaust was at least as much of an offense to God's moral order as it is to mine, or how can I respect God as a source of moral guidance? … I have to believe that the tears and prayers of the victims aroused God's compassion, but having given Man freedom to choose, including the freedom to choose to hurt his neighbour, there was nothing God could do to prevent it.”

Can we think of all fatalities of our lives as an „exercise” ? As the trail brought on us to bring us higher? Kushners' answer is: no, we can't:

„The conventional explanation, that God sends us the burden because He knows that we are strong enough to handle it, has it all wrong. Fate, not God, sends us the problem. When we try to deal with it, we find out that we are not strong. We are weak; we get tired, we get angry, overwhelmed. We begin to wonder how we will ever make it through all the years. But when we reach the limits of our own strength and courage, something unexpected happens. We find reinforcement coming from a source outside ourselves. And in the knowledge that we are not alone, that God is on our side, we manage to go on.”

I know that Kushners' views are perhaps unorthodox, but I can tell you , my reader, the following:

Any time I visit the places in Poland like nearby Chelmno, and I feel all the horrors the innocent people came through there (and in hundreds of such places) I can not, just can not think of this loss of life of unimaginable proportions as of the punishment. Anytime an unimaginable disaster or accident happens, I have no words to utter. I only tend to think that G-d, by his own powerful choice, made the human free will really FREE. Free for Good and for Bad... Free to err and free to trace and follow G-d's message...

Backlog of reviews ....

2010-11-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

Despite some little success of writing 4 quite long reviews of the books I have been reading since holiday time, the backlog of reviews still has the following titles:

Sven's Birkets — „Guttenberg Elegies” (already done, see above)
Joseph Conrad — „Nostromo”
Harold Kushner — „When Bad Things Happen to Good People” (review written, see above)
Douglas Adams — „The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”

I'm not sure if I will be able to write any review of the last despity standing up and shouting „Fun, Fun, Fun !!!” :-)

As for the rest — we will see. I'm getting phyically better, so I'm not sure I will have time for more reviews soon....

Marek Halter's Saga — The Book of Abraham

2010-11-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

I have been reading this amazing book (in paper) since June. It is a thick 800 pages tome, and the very first impression one gets is of the important physicality of books. Still important...

„The Book of Abraham” is partially factual partially fictional saga of Marek Halter's family. Marek Halter is Polish born French-Jewish writer and activists. For Poles he is famous for working toward reconciliation between Jews and Poles. He was also very active anti-communist activist (the first independent radio station used by Lech Wałęsa in 1980 was smuggled by Marek Halter to Gdańsk).

The book tells the story of Jewish family with origins in Jerusalem AD 70 during the destruction of the Second Temple. The forefather of all generations is Abraham the Scribe. We follow the paths of his progeny, and on the way we learn the history of Jewish Exile that started in the beginning of the first millennium and ended in XX century. The inseparable companion of the family through the ages is the scroll where the names of the family members are written and transmitted through ages.

Fascinating, colourful plot takes the reader to Alexandria, to Hippo, Toledo, Cordova, Narbonne, Troyes, Strasbourg, Benfeld, Soncino, Salonika, Constantinopole, Amsterdam, Lublin, Żółkiew, Paris, Warsaw and Oddessa... The destiny meets the family ancestors with many important historical figures like Bishop Augustine of Hippo, famous Torah commentator Rashi (at Troyes) or Gutenberg during the time of the invention of books. The stories are told by a very good and captivating narration. If author did not announce it, the reader would not be able to discover where the fiction ends and true account starts.

One of the most important motives of „The Book of Abraham” is about importance of writing and printing and devotion to books. Books are no longer only to be read — they become important elements of family survival, they shape generation by generation, they instil the meaning of life into the hearts of descendants.

For Europeans, who are convinced about superiority of their culture and civilization it is not an easy book. Even though Marek Halter did not write martyrology of Jews, it is hard not to think of the family dole as of martyrdom. Most of the history of Jewish exile is the constant escape. Even in Poland, where the Jewish life flourished, their lives was far from safety. We witness the relatively unknown and senseless Warsaw's Pogrom, and hostility toward Jews before the war, despite their effort to form the military units (many were formed) to fight against Germans. Even though Marek's and his parents’ life was saved by brave Pole during horrors of Warsaw Ghetto, when they returned after the war to then communist, Russian subjugated Poland — they were greeted with a mixture of hostility and contempt. So it is difficult experience for Pole or European to read passages about it. Yet — it is not Halter's invention. He writes in truth... I know it also from my family and my friends families war time and post-war time stories....

I was happy that in the days and years of distraction due to Web and eBooks, in months when I was listening to many audio books, I could find days and hours to dive into this fantastic book and commit o truly deep-reading :-)

Sarah's Key — Still Small Voice ...

2010-11-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

There are almost no European nation that did not participate in Holocaust. Ages old hatred and hostility to Jews, the eternal Others — created a situation of common acquiescence to Nazis devilish plan. Of course, the degree and the kind of the sins vary from nation to nation. It takes generations to rise publicly recognizable people, writers and artists to conduct a true nation's heart-searching and uncover, often with pain, the naked sin. Sin that has no explanation...

For me, French writer Tatiana de Rosnay's „Sarah's Key” is one of the most important books about Holocaust and the current awareness of it — in the most european of European's countries — France. While most of Nazi's horrors of Shoah happened on Polish soil, the fate of Jews in France was of specific, because it was in hands of highly coordinated French policemen of the legal French government. Such action was unusual in the WWII Europe.

The book's two parallel plots interweave the past (1942 France) and the present (2002 Paris).
In the past thread we read about operation Vel' d' Hiv' when 13000 Parisian Jews were packed into Velodrome d'Hiver (cycle track) and kept there indoor in horrible conditions, before being sent to concentration camps, first around Paris (Drancy) and then to Auschwitz.

The hero of that thread, young girl Sarah, in an attempt to save his brother, saves him from French policemen, but not from peril of death. When she escapes from a camp, and with help of French family comes back to Paris, she discovers what happened — and the event cast a shadow on all of her future life ...

In the contemporary thread, Julia, an American journalist married to a Frenchman, discovers the connection of her husband’s family has to the events of 1942...

She relentlessly goes after all possible tips to find what happened to Sarah and to understand what was the attitude of French to the Holocaust. It is good it was written by the French writer. Still Small Voice....

The book is also a very good page-turner (or ear-defender if you listen to audio), so I recommend it, even though as for war time books, it is not as deep as Zusak's „The Book Thief” ...

I read this book quite long time ago. For many reasons I could not write this review for a long time. Meanwhile I visited the place of Velodrome d'Hiver. The monument is not very easy to find. Finally my daughter found it and made the pictures of this moving monument:

You can see more monument pictures made by Jola.

Political Mind - prophetic or controversial ?

2010-11-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

When I read first chapters of the George's Lakoff „The Political Mind” during this year holidays I was almost elated. It played the tune that sounded true not only in American tuning but also in European one and in my Polish tuning as well. I found it almost prophetic and eye openning.

Having the subtitle „Why you can't understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain” the book uncovers the role of specific language and its structural forms in politics and shows that this role is much deeper than we usually think — that it goes deeply into our brains and moulds our minds...

The book starts by the recall to Anna Nicole Smith case. Of course her life and death story was not the main reason of the interest. Rather the typical "frames" and "scripts" within which her story was told, are of the author interest. The frames and scripts of Anna Nicole Smith life were mostly untrue. Yet they spread to such extent that many people identified with them, despite their almost obvious unreliability. The narrative about Anna Nicole Smith was so important that Lakoff cites David Rieff: „understanding the importance of Anna Nicol Smith will help us understand politics”. And this leads us to interesting part of the book where „conceptual frames”, „semantic fields” or „specific scripts” are used to understand a phenomenon instead of the more deeper knowledge about the phenom itself.

This is typical to politics. And in the XXI century politics with pervasive use of digital media, these frames and scripts spread even faster than before. Lakoff tries to prove that it is not self-fuelling process. Behind most important political frames and narratives of American politics stand the conscious and systematic activity of conservatives. The book lists many examples where certain popular narratives (like that about „war on terror”) were just created to serve a particular goal. When Lakoff speaks about American politics, it is clear he stands on democratic (or how he called them "progressive") positions. He sees his mission, the mission of this book in uncovering the problem:

„Conservatives have excelled at articulating their values and ideas. It is time for progressives to do the same. My job here is to unlock the cognitive unconscious, to take progressive thought off the leash and to draw an accurate picture of conservative thought for the sake of comparison.”

He first finds the source of the polarisation in the family values. By almost equating the empathy with progressive values and authority with conservatives values, Lakoff tries to explain how our family upbringing can lead us to take a specific position on the political scene. Behind this conclusion is the assumption of the deep role of specific brain structures amplified by the specific family models (like Strict Father Model or Nurturant Parent Model) so that we select empathy or authority as the ground of our certain political choices.

This way of thinking is then extended in the analysis of the role of the brain in Political Ideologies. He uncovers certain metaphors that are used by politicians (purity, rottenness, light, darkness) when speaking about morality — and shows how deep is the importance of these metaphors in the formation of political ideology. The working of these metaphors is very often unconscious and some of them have deeply „embodied” aspect.

The central part of the book shows Lakoff way of thinking in practice. He analysies the role of some traumatic metaphors like „The War on Terror” or „Privateering” or some media created stereotypes (e.g. „sons of the welfare queen”) in politics and in achieving certain political goals.

To this moment I liked his book. Certainly its main purpose, i.e. to wake up our awareness of the the role of certain brain activities, particularly — unconscious activities and their role in our political decisions — is achieved. And I'm thankful to Lakoff for that. When I looked through his eyes on my domestic, Polish politics and discovered how many frames and (invented) narratives started to live their own life and influenced politics, even if they were based on false stories. Take the metaphor of „undercover agent” almost synonymic with an evil-doer of communist times and using this metaphor against Lech Walesa by his political opponents....

But on that level, or at these kind of reasoning the value of the book ends...

Let me now list issues which I have against the book. These issues are serious and, in my opinion, they diminish the value of the book — which could be a great contribution to the current political discussion. Could be. But is not.

First, I understand George Lakoff is scientist. While there is nothing bad in scientists to have political opinions and express them openly, it is quite disturbing when the certain political views and biases put shadow on the science the scientists cultivates. As an example take the way in which Lakoff calls political oponents of the US scene. He does not call them „democrats” vs. „republicans” or even „liberals” vs. „conservatives”. He calls the first „progressives” and the later — „conservatives”. By making this delicate and almost unnoticeable shift, he puts a certain frame and certain narration into motion. He tries to amplify his own political agenda by the scientific method (brain science and linguistics) he tries to say it is objective! His „progressive” narration about Democrats is like many narrations and metaphors a bit untrue, to say the least. It ignores the fact that the first, and only one by name, Progressive Party was actually formed by a split in Republican Party! Of course, we can't call today's republicans „progressives”, but we shouldn't speak about political opponents using certain frames and labels that are not quite true... (BTW, I am, like Lakoff, on the side of Democrats :-) )

Second, I'm very sympathetic to the current progress of brain science. I'm far from the understanding of the mind as something disembodied and purely logical. But the current state of the brain science does not allow now for many conclusions that Lakoff makes. For example by literally painting the metaphors as the results of certain synaptic connections — and speaking of abstract context as of result of the another physical connections is such great oversimplification that authors conclusions (even after his acknowledgment of the oversimplification) about important political consequences of brain structures seems to be naive.

I'm not a brain scientist. I'm physicist and chemist. But I read a lot about brain science and I know the simple fact — our current science is still very far from understanding the mind and the brain — its home and cradle. The way Lakoff reduces politics to brain mechanisms is naive — to say the list.

Finally, I was shocked by the naivety of the final chapter „What if it works” where Lakoff gives quite bombastic predictions how fantastic would be the politics if we all apply his way of thinking about brain and politics. This is perhaps the worst part of the book, and in some sense it close to the bombastic parts of Neuro Evolution... I know it was typical to scientists of Enlightenment age (which, ironically, he critisises) to predict bright future if their theories worked ...

But we also know from history how it often ended, despite beautiful words and lips full of empathy. This is why I find the book controversial to the same extent as it is prophetic ....

Last warning — Nicolas Carr's "The Shallows"

2010-10-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

How many of us, heavy Web users, haven't noticed something strange that recently has happened to us and to our ability to concentrate, to focus for a longer time, to our power for deep reading? I'm sure not many.

So when I started reading Nicholas Carr's „The Shallows. What the Internet is Doing to our Brains” I immediately knew that this is one of the most important books I recently read. Not for being just „interesting”, but for forming the very strong, and maybe — the last — serious warning...

„I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or a lengthy article. My mind would get caught up in the twists of the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spent hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel like I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

This is deeply true. I feel it myself. Even when I listen to my audiobooks, I have that feeling very often, too often...

So what has really happened?

Nicolas Carr's book tries to answer this question. And is doing it in a very deep and convincing way. To write the book, the author almost had to cut his strong ties with digital world, move to mountains of Colorado, and drastically limit all distractions coming from the excessive use of the net...

He first recalls the famous Marshall McLuhan book „Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. It was McLuhan, who first noticed and explained the famous inference: „The medium is the message”. It was he who proved that on a longer time scale „the medium's content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act”. It was McLuhan who discovered that „The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts. Rather they alter patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance”.

McLuhan, who died in 1980, did not witness the birthday of Web in 1989. Yet his insights based on the analysis of media existing in sixties and seventies are actual in the Web era.

What exactly does it mean?

To understand it better, Carr recalls the idea of our brain adaptabillity and plasticity first proposed by William James in XIX century. It was James, who in his „Principles of Psychology” wrote: „ ... the nervous tissue seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity”. This idea was endorsed by Freud in 1895 in an unpublished manuscript where „he argued that the brain, and in particular the contact barriers between neurons, could change in response to a person's experiences”. Such views were later dismissed and criticised and almost forgotten, until late seventies, when, thanks to many researchers, and among them Michael Merzenich, proved the brain plasticity in a series of experiments. The strong support for the brain plasticity theory came from Nobel prize winner, Eric Kandel, whose landmark research of Aplysia (the sea slug) resulted in conclusion that „synapses can undergo large and enduring changes in strength after only a relatively small amount of training”.

Having said so, Carr analyses the history of the „Tools of the Mind”. He explains how cartography has changed our perception of space in the past, how clocks did so to our perception of time, and the Guttenberg invention — to our knowledge and to the oral tradition.

Coming to XX century computers, he calls them „The Medium of the most General nature”. And its true as „Everything from Beethoven's Ninth to a porn flick can be reduced to a string of ones and zeroes”. And here we come to the net and its most important difference from any mass media — it is bidirectional. People are no longer passive receivers of messages — they can send them! And this interactivity makes the net exceptionally attractive... However, the very nature of online information deeply changed our perception of text:

„A page of online text viewed through a computer screen may seem similar to a page of printed text. But scrolling or clicking through a Web document involves physical actions and sensory stimuli very different from those involved in holding and turning the pages of a book or magazine”

The most important factor changing our brains is related to the nature of hyperlinks:

„Links don't just point us to related or supplemental works; they propel us toward them. They encourage us to dip in and out of a series of texts rather than devote sustained attention to any one of them. Hyperlinks are designed to grab our attention. Their value as navigational tools is inextricable from the distraction they cause”

What is more, this distraction, this silent stimuli we offer to our brains when we are online is almost unnoticeable. We are unaware of it. It does not pain. Paradoxically, we tend to think about the Web, called by Cory Doctorow an „ecosystem of interruption technologies”, about blogs, tweets and FaceBook notes almost only in positive sense. Yet we do not notice the danger:

„The Net's cacophony of stimuli short-cuircuts both conscious and
unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brains turn into simple signal-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back again.”

Even more profound changes happened in our perception of books. Carr devotes a distinct chapter to books, and their transformation from paper to electronic books. And he notices the dangers here, as well:

„I fear that one of the great joys ofbook reading — the total immersion in another world, or in world of the author's ideas — will be compromised. We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.” (Steven Johnson)

There is also a big change in writing style. Authors stray from typical narration to a sort of presentation, where they even do not expect readers to read the book but to skim through it...
Carr seems to say, that some of these changes are not so bad, but — are we really sure they are not ? Are we able to assess their net result ? Certainly we are not. At least not yet. But I'm worried the results will not be good for our culture ...

The danger of Google

The one of the most frighteing chapters of the book is entitled „The Church of Google”. He first notices the close proximity between the Taylorism and Google faith in software algorithms: „Google doesn't believe that the affairs of citizens are best guided by experts. It believes that those affairs are best guided by software algorithms”. This approach, confronted with Google mission „to organize the world's information” , backed up by Google's almost messianic faith in its cause, and powered by Google conviction that it „is more then a mere business; it is a 'moral force'” — is really dangerous. And we witnessed this 'moral force' in action many times...

One of the case was related to Google Books. In this very case we could see how this 'moral force', working hard with its lawyers could get the practical monopoly over millions of so-called orphan books....

I do not see Carr as specifically biased against Google — he only points the most important aspects of this greatest and the most dangerous monopoly ever created — monopoly over human knowledge ...

Depending on the direction Google will take in the near future, on their approach to potential AI development, we, as civilization can both profit or sustain a big loss ...

„Google is neither God nor Satan, and if there are shadows in the Googleplex they're no more than the delusions of grandeur. What's disturbing about the company's founders is not their boyish desire to create an amazingly cool machine that will be able to outthink its creators, but the pinched conception of the human mind that gives rise to such a desire.”

What's going on with our memory?

The yet another danger comes from the degradation of human memory that is the result of the totalization of the influence of global search engines (and of course of Google as the most improtant player) and milions of devices (like common GPS driving aids) and software programs. Don't take me wrong: Carr DOES NOT say not to use them. He says we just may not abandon memory and memorization, because of their fundamental importance:

„The offloading of memory to external data banks doesn't just threaten the depth and distinctiveness of the self. It threatens the depth and distinctiveness of the culture we all share.
(...)
Culture is more than the aggregate of what Google describes as „the world's information.” It's more than what can be reduced to binary code and uploaded onto the Net. To remain vital, culture must be renewed in the minds of the members of every generation. Outsource memory, and culture withers.”

Are machines as we are?

In the last chapters of this amazing book, Carr describes human reactions to the software initiatives aimed at Natural Languge processing and imitating the primitive AI. In particluar he writes about ELIZA software, created by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. The striking fact was that reactions to Eliza were as it was almost human! „What shocked him was how quickly and deeply people using the software „become emotionally involved with the computer,” talking to it as if it were an actual person.” Later, when Weizenbaum expressed his views (and his warnings) in the book „Computer Power and Human Reason”, most of leading computer scientists called his views as heresy! One of the strong proponents of AI, John McCarthy wrote a mocking review calling it „an unreasonable book” protomting unscientific „moralization”...

This and other examples (like British Edexel — automated marking of exam essays), illustrate the great danger the humanity faces, if it does not counter the effects of digital and computing technologies by „meditative thinking”.

„The tumultuous advance of technology could, (...) drown out the refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise only through contemplation and reflection.”

Carr ends his book by the very deep observation, that is also an unintentional tribute to the wisdom of Clarke and Kubrick:

„... people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”

So far, this was my longest review I ever wrote. And this was one of the most important books I ever read....

Carl Orff & Brahms ...

2010-10-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Whenever I can, I listen to music on Saturdays. Today, my musical experiences were under the spell of German composers. I started with Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. This cantata was written in 1937. On the textual level it is based on secular German poems, embracing the nature of life, joy of nature, common pleasures and perils. „Wine, Women and Song” was the title of 1884 publication of the most of the poems contained in the cantata.

This is beautiful music, no question about that. However, always after I listen to the great German music, particularly of the early XX century music, I cannot avoid deep question how this highest emanation of culture could live with the silent acceptance of all Nazis atrocities committed at that time. What is the value of culture, music and literature, if it cannot help people to resist the blatant crime?

How can we listen to beautiful tunes and chords of great musical works when we know that their authors, openly supported the regime that coldbloodedly killed millions of people?

How can we enjoy it when:

„...German music, which had sought sublimity, transcendence, disengagement from the ordinary world, must bear responsibility for what happened down below as it roamed through higher realms. Mann hinted further that this very “musicality of soul” was the key to Germany's fall; the aesthetic had triumphed over the merely human. In Nazi Germany, music became either a weapon of hate or an opiate of indifference.” (Alex Ross: World War II Music)

So, while I enjoyed it, I had the feelings that spoiled my experience....
It is hard to forget that Orff, accepted Nazis' commission to write a replacement score for Mendelssohn's “Midsummer Night's Dream” — what certainly was one of the darkest deeds in all musical history.

Later today, I switched to older German music. Johannes Brahms and his symphonies. Dramatically different world — warm and great. Melodious and architectural. And listening it under the baton of Leonard Bernstein — is always a great experience....

Why? Is it because Brahms lived long BEFORE the dark times? Is he better than Orff and Strauss who openly collaborated with the Nazis? If so — what to think about Wagner?

I think, that the deep reflection on the German culture, its music, its literature, in all its highs and lows has been, and still is, the very important part of our intellectual life...

In this context, it is worth to read the entire Alex Ross article: "In Music, Though, There Were No Victories". You can find it here....

Science fiction, philosophy or ... teology ? 2001 — A Space Odyssey

2010-10-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

As usual, it is extremely hard to write a review about the book or a movie that deserved and received thousands of reviews. So it was with Arthur C. Clarke's „2001: A Space Odyssey” for me. Yet there are some aspects of this novel, that seems to be overlooked by many.

First let me shortly recall, that the novel is less well known in the popular culture than Stanley Kubrick's famous movie, that has been and continues to be — one of the best movies ever done. I'm sure not many of my readers would disagree. However, both the movie's screenplay and the novel were created almost concurrently, and the novel was published after the film public release. So, while the movie's visual and verbal narrations have their own life and are great achievement of the great writer and the great filmmaker — the narration of the novel extends the main message of the film and goes much deeper.

The final sequences of the famous movie show the transformation of the main character into an older and older person, and then upon the influence of the monolith — to the child. The very last scenes reveal the symbolic „return” of the child to the earth or its orbit.

The novel is more textual at its climax: we know that the mind and memory of the main hero are being transformed from his physicality into a „mind” which, while still incorporated in the child, is clearly the omnipresent mind with the deep insight and awareness about everything it/he wants. In the last scenes of the novel the child (mind) comes back to the earth at the right moment, at a brink of a nuclear war and saves the world by destroying the warhead of death.

The last sentences of the novel read:

„He had returned in time.

Down there on that crowded globe, the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens, the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies - and history [as it had hitherto been known] would be drawing to a close.

A thousand miles below, he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken, and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit. The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him; but he preferred a cleaner sky.
He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent detonation that brought a brief false dawn to half the sleeping globe.

Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers.
For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.

But he would think of something.”

On the surface, and out of context it sounds naive, but when you read the book — it is not. Clarke's parable is in fact a philosophical speculation on the idea of linking religion with external intelligent life. While I'm not in favour of such speculations, it is hard not to see the elegance and wisdom which Clarke puts into his allegory. Just muse over the penultimate sentence: „For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next” ....

The Neuro Revolution - Two reviews in one post

2010-09-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

I have just read Zack's Lynch „The Neuro Revolution”. As before — seems to me the full review will come in due time :-)

However, I must say, that I have very mixed impressions. And I must say frankly, it is quite bombastic, utopian book with very little knowledge about the field itself ...

It is perhaps characteristic, that I found the similar tendencies of utopian thinking in this book, as it was in Lakoff's „Political Mind”...

If there is some value in reading the book, it is in really good number of references to significant events and other books and other people of the field...

Going to Munich today... No more time ....

Two weeks later:

I honestly tried to add a bit more about the book, but finally I didn't find it reasonable...

Particularly, in the light of another book related to brain science I read ("Shallows"), I found Lynch's book quite naive and utopian...

When he writes about such things like neuroenablers, oxytocin or concepts like neuroteology or neurocosmetics, he does not deliver any deeper information, but a kind of superficial hype of pseudo-science...

See, as an example, how he writes about the potential of neuroscience for business and society:

„In a neuro-society, corporate wealth will flow in a more lateral way, decreasing the gap between the haves and have-nots bolstering the middle class and reducing poverty. That development will add to our social capital making prosperity last longer. Neurotechnology will also provide new tools for management, it will become less seed of the pants and start being something of the science.(...) But many people who get to be managers, are often the fiercest competitors and they don't always have a good emphatic skill set. In the future more people will have better tools in training, perhaps in neurofeedback even in exquisitely targeted neuropharmaceuticals ....”

Not only Lynch's visions are utopian and inhumane but also scary ... All of this seems to be very strange, even more, when one discovers how active Lynch is on the public scene and how high is his influence (See his blog...)

So what is the book's value? Is there any?

As I wrote before — there is some value in it as a source or collection of some very good references.

For example, thanks to the book I found an interesting TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor and discovered for myself great scientist Vilayanur Ramachandran. The another reference was to an article about Neuropsychology of Religious Experience.

Some books, referred to by Lynch, like Steven's Mitchen:
„The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body”
, „Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth” by Andrew Newberg, or „Proust was a Neuroscientist” by Jonah Lehrer will certainly be on my next-reading list !

So, I suggest not to read it from cover to cover but to harvest it for indeed quite good references :-)

The utmost surrealism in a realisticly told tale about unreal world ...

2010-09-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished "Nostromo" by Joseph Conrad...
I do not know what to say. This is ulitmate book, the ultimate literature experience.
Through all the book the shiver of someting out-of-this- earth pierced my ears and my mind...

I hope, I will write a true review, but I just wanted to tell you now that this great book is a must...

Victor Hugo on human nature, history and philosophy ...

2010-09-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly coming back to my regular writing of reviews for the books I read and/or listen to.

Don't ask me please what has caused this, almost 2 months long, silence. There were reasons, but I wanted to keep them away from digital world, as all the thoughts and feelings caused by them ...

So my first very late review is for Victor's Hugo „Les Miserables” which reading I shortly reported here.

After „Notre-Dame de Paris” (here and there) I knew that Les Miserables will be THE book of my 2010 reading. And it was. It seems that writing any new review for the masterpiece of literature, which received thousands of excellent reviews, makes little sense. So it is, and let me only very shortly to tell you what is a historical fiction which plot starts in 1815 in France and lasts for about 20 years. The main story of the novel is about ex-convict Jean Valjean and his attempts of expiation and redemption against all odds. It later evolves into a love story in the second generation after him, however, placing his personage always in the context.

Even if it was written in XIX century, the storytelling in the novel is excellent and is still superior to so many later „epoch works” ....

However, I want to stress some other aspects of this enormous (1900 pages) work. It contains a lot of deep philosophical passages about the nature of law, ethics, politics, religion and French history. Set in one of most tumultuous periods of the country history (like defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo or Spring of Nations), it examines the nature of historical and philosophical dispute between royalists and republicans. And in all these, philosophical, historical, sociological analyses, Hugo shows incredible level of maturity and, I could say, professionalism. He does not merely „philosophize" — he goes deeply into the nature of the problem, yet his language remains simple and direct:

„Conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life! ”

And the last, but certainly not least matter: Hugo created the fictional world that still lives in us and in our culture. See around and you will quickly find Jean Valjeans, Fantines, Javerts, Cosettes, or little Gavroches. In operas, movies, theaters and songs... It is enough to remember this one ...

[the post finalized in Beavais, France in a cafe in front of monumental XIII century cathedral]

Long backlog of reviews ...

2010-08-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

For reasons I want to keep out of digital world, I was unable to keep posting reviews of books that I read recently. So, the pile is composed of:

Victor Hugo — „Les Miserables”
Sven's Birkets - „Guttenberg Elegies”
Tatiana Rosnay - „Sarah's Key”
George Lakoff - „Political Mind”
Arthur C. Clark - „2001: A Space Odyssey”

and... currently reading Marek Hartel's "The Book of Abraham" and listening to Conrad's Nostromo ....

I hope I will manage to review each item from my list soon ....

Mirek@Stockholm

The past that haunts the present - Sarah's Key

2010-08-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

I have just finished Sarah's Key by Tatiana Rosnay. Amazing, enchanting yet sad and tragic book. For another tragic reasons I want to keep me out of digital world, so I will not write a review today. Time will come and I will ...Maybe

Brains, Heart and Courage - my holiday's reading

2010-07-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

There is a book, the book that belongs to the realm of great literature, that shows and leads us in our striving for more knowledge and understanding, for deeper love and emotions and for stronger braveness in our life.

Its author tells a good story, fascinating for some us, naive for the rest, but the story that shows, without ostentation and cheap morality how we can find these virtues. They lie inside us — always in the depths of our souls, and no one can truly give them us, if we don’t start believing we can get them.

And he teaches that there are people and situation that can ignite, even if by a substitute, the fire of brains, heart and courage. However — they can ignite ONLY , never truly GIVE them to us.

The book makes also a case about humbugs and posers, and says, that sometimes they can have some merit. Contrary to the traditional thinking, and somehow against the common sense — the merit of some humbugs is in promoting good and welfare. Of course only if good is the essence of their humbuggery, not the evil...

And the book says much more; how a pauper can truly become the leader, a coward — the headman, and how a strong desire to live a normal real life among close family and friends and the resignation from splendours is, at the end, rewarded ....

This author is Lyman Frank Baum. This book is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz published in 1900....

Some used to say that the book was politically motivated, and that its characters ridicule some political figures. I don’t buy such interpretations.

The story for our children and grandchildren but not a childish fairy tale at all....

It was my holiday reading this year...

Close Listening by Sven Birkerts — What is the problem with audio books ?

2010-07-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

I was so deeply moved by a chapter of Sven's Birkerts „The Gutenberg Elegies” named „Close Listening” that I decided to commit a post — just about this chapter. As for the book itself, I hope to finish and comment on it during holidays, i.e. next week.

It is apparent, from the first sentences of the chapter, that Birkerts is against audio books. He gives a number of strong arguments. Let's see them here....

Passivity of audio books:

„Books, for me, have always been about covers and pages and grappling with the syntactical rigors of stationary prose. The passivity of listening seemed to me on a par with the passivity of television watching. How could it fail to reduce any work of merit to, at best, a companionable blur, a string of easy cadences in the ear?”

Confusion of experience.

He criticises the special effects that are sometimes added to the recordings (calls them tacky effects); but was is more important criticism is the confusion of our physical experience during listening, experience of driving, walking, commuting with the imaginative world of the story we listen to.

Limitation of the medium.

Sven maintains that certain literature is well perceived only through text:

„Our more serious literature incorporates levels of difficulty — in narrative sequence, referentiality, syntax, and linguistic density — and presupposes a reader who is free to hover over a phrase, reach for a dictionary, and dart back.”

Irrelevance of the recording pace to the text.

Sven gives examples, where the pace of narrator reading, being regular and uniform, was completely irrelevant to the meaning of the text. Descriptions, dialogues are usually fine, but when a book turns into some philosophical conjectures — the same pace is just unbearable:

„We don't just speed a thought through our neural network — we inhale it, hold it, wait for it to send ripples through the whole of our being. Rewinding the tape is no solution.”

Difficulty with deep reading.

„Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulses; the term I coin for this is
deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. (...) Deep listening to words is rarely an option. Our ear, and with it our whole imaginative apparatus, marches in lockstep to the speaker's baton”

Powerlessness of the listener.

Sven claims that when we hear a book we are deeply silenced by the vocal tyranny of the narrator:

„The listener is powerless against the taped voice, not at all in the position of my five-year-old daughter, who admonishes me continually, "Don't read it like that, Dad." With the audio book, everything — pace, timber, inflection — is determined for the captive listener. The collaborative component is gone; one simply receives.”

Sexless voicing.

The books read by male narrator lose the female character, if it is of importance and conversely, the manly dialogs read by a woman sound strange:

„Cheever's prose is as imprinted with his gender as Virginia Woolf's is with hers. Nor could I get past the bright vigor of the performing voice; I missed the dark notes, the sense of pooling shadows that has always accompanied my readings of the man.”

Abridgement of books kills their message.

Svens notices that too many of audio books are just bad abridgements. The arbitrary selection what to include what to leave out is usually killing the perception of the book. He gives an example of „Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry:

„Lowry had meant his novel to turn like a wheel; everything in it is keyed to the concept of circularity, making chapter one absolutely indispensable . No amount of civilized gnashing by reader Christopher Cazanove could make up the
deficit.”

Multitrack sensibilities required.

Listening to audio book, requires a good deal of multitracking sensibility. This is in opposition to „single-track tasks demanded by the silent page”. What is more, it can create a shift or change in the way authors write today: „... is is not farfetched to suppose that a good part of future of literature will be bound up with the audio process.”

Despite all these remarks, the chapter ends with some positive remarks.

Sven recalls listening to James Joyce „The Dead” which he found great in the audio format. Basically he values the rendering of some short stories (by authors like Updike, Welty and Carver) in audio. He also notices that sometimes the good reader opens the deeper understanding:

„An evocative reading can capture the shifting tension that exists between sound and sense; it can unearth the overlooked sentence rhythm and whet the blade of irony. Reading is different from listening, yes, but in listening's limitations I have found unexpected pleasures.”

He ends it with these words:

„In the beginning was the Word — not the written or printed or processed word, but the spoken word. And though it changes its aspect faster than any Proteus, hiding now in letter shapes and now in magnetic emulsion, it remains. It still has the power to lay us bare.”

What do you think?

I'm passionate audio book listener, so this chapter requires me to comment and, more specifically to argue. But I will do it at some later time, maybe after your opinions...

Reading before holidays ...

2010-07-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

I am particularly tired and exhausted before these, 2010 holidays. This is why I'm less active on my blog...

But to tell you what's going on, here it is, shortly: after enchanting „Les Miserables” I returned to Lakoff's „Political Mind” and, in paper, to Birkerts „The Gutenberg Elegies”. Both deserve posts, and I promise to deliver them when I settle in my little cottage on the shore of Baltic sea, i.e. next week.

I will also post my recollections and records from 2010 Literary Festival in Paris.

Despite the exhaustion, I was able to create a few play lists on YouTube related to this Festival. The one worth seeing features Philip Pullman and another one David Hare.

So... Keep visiting me ...

Cheers
Mirek

End of Seven Weeks in an another world - Les Miserables

2010-07-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

I was reading, or to be precise, was listening to Victor's Hugo „Les Miserables” for the last 7 weeks. More than 1500 pages of text, rendered to more than 70 hours of fantastic story-telling (in a literal sense) by David Case (aka Frederick Davidson).

I will not write my review tonight. I'm still in the mood, despite the fact that during this reading I was also reading other books, listen to music, visited exhibitions.

I must think what and how to write. Les Miserables has caused hundreds of thousands of other reviews — so why I must write my own ? But I will wait, will wait until the incredible world created by Victor Hugo start to fade a bit, and my emotions start to sediment in the basin of forgetfulness ....

Les Miserables is so important that we almost forget it is a great book.

Who of us have not wept when little Gavroche died as a hero on a Parisian barricade of the Spring of Nations, who of us was not mesmerized when Susan Boyle sang Fantine's song... Who have never thought about a power of the qualms of conscience which had driven Jean Valjean to silent and troubled heroism; who did not imagine how beautfull was Cosetta and her mother Fantine...

That's all for tonight. If you haven't read it yet — do it please — it is more important than 1000 TV shows, more than hundreds football matches ...

I will write my regular review when the time will come....

Social Platforms for Enterprise - Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee

2010-07-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

No one can dismiss the importance of Social Networks for the global culture. The simple saying goes: "Web connected documents — Facebook connected people". Although I'm not in favor of the role that FaceBook plays today, I cannot ignore its utmost importance for our civilisation. (For good discussion about it see here) .

When Internet brought Web to life, corporations started to use it internally and INTRANETs were born. So is today, with ESSPs - Emergent Social Software Platforms to follow Web 2.0 trends. These solutions bring a completely new setting for Knowledge Management in a corporate world. And they are the subject of the Andrew McAfee book „Enterprise 2.0. New collaborative tools for your organization's toughest challenges”.

The book is not technical at all. The author does not even try to list the software packages that deliver ESSP functionalities for today's corporations. Instead it starts from the analysis of the opportunities, often missed opportunities of the group work, goes through the definitions of Enterprise 2.0 to the concrete recommendations for corporations which would consider implementing ESSP.

On the surface we feel what the ESSPs are. We could pronounce the names of most important Web 2.0 solutions, from Wikis (Wikipedia), through social tagging (Delicious) to Social Networks (Twitter, FaceBook). But we sometimes do not notice their "free form" features like being optional, free of imposed structures, egalitarian and data format neutral. They share the important features that are best described through the acronym of SLATES: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. It is easy to map specific solutions available today to any of these features.

One of the bast parts of the book has the title "New Approach to Old Problems" where he applies the concept of SWT — The Strength of Weak Ties (1973 - Mark Granovetter - American Journal of Sociology) to understand better why social networks inside corporation do matter.

The concept of SWT helps to formulate the Bull's Eye theory of the importance of Social Systems. In this theory we use SN systems to maintain Strong Ties, but we also maintain Weak and Potential Ties:

These interesting considerations form Part I of the Book. In Part II McAfee considers the difficulties related to implementation of ESSPs today.

The first paradox related to their introduction is a typical Red Herring case: "I've noticed that concerns around Enterprise 2.0 fall into two broad categories: fears that people won't use the newly available ESSPs, and fears that they will". This diverting, usually "committed" by management, masks the fears of the same management. Sometimes, the fears are justified. Corporations have their secrets, they protect their information from free leaking. However, as many bright examples show (European investment bank DrKW or US Directorate of National Intelligence) there are ways to protect what is to be protected while using all benefits of ESSPs !

The second problem is that everybody wants to implement ESSPs quick, but in fact it is a task for a long period of time — true Long Haul project! McAfee lists certain qualifications that can impact the adoption, like the ability to make quick relative evaluations, understanding of the status quo and deep understanding that people are loss-averse. He concludes with the words of Gourville: „ ... to be successful companies must anticipate a long, drawn-out adoption process and manage it accordingly”

The book concludes with two great chapters. „Going Mainstream" contains a true Road Map for implementation of ESSP in a corporation. It stresses the role of early adopters (believers), and the most important challenge for management: "Communicate, Educate & Evangelize”. It also puts stress on measuring real progress rather than on calculation of ROI...

„Looking Ahead” tries to predict a future of Enterprise 2.0. The most interesting forecast the author makes is the shift from „Model 1 behavior” to „Model 2 behavior”. The concepts come from Harvard professor Chris Argyris, who in 1996 book „Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice” (with Donald A. Schön) layed out a framework for successful strategies of large organisations. „Model 1” strategy relies on the unilateral design and management of the work environment, on protection of one's position and protection of others and on grasp and control of organizational tasks. In contrast, „Model 2” strategies assume high participation and joint task control, bilateral protection of others and orientation toward growth.

Using these concepts McAfee makes the conclusive remark, that is worth to quote:

„I am deeply interested in Enterprise 2.0 not because its component technologies are novel, innovative, and powerful (although they are) and not because I believe that ESSPs will fundamentally transform how enterprises are designed, rendering hierarchy obsolete (I do not believe this will be the case).
I'm most interested in the use of ESSPs because they can help organizations move from a Model 1 to Model 2 theory-in-use. These tools can change the nature of collaboration and discussion within an enterprise, giving people the ability both to contribute their perspective to a dialogue and to inform themselves by incorporating multiple perspectives. In short, they can help organizations move from defensive to productive reasoning.”

And this quote is the best climax of the book and of my review...

Crime and Punishment in Musée d'Orsay

2010-07-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

Books and music are not all acts of culture that I admire ...

During one of my last trips to Paris I visited Musée d'Orsay. This museum is one of the best art museum in Europe, and its collections of impressionists are just superb.

However, that time I was able to see the special exhibition „Crime and punishment”. It was an incredible collection of mostly paintings that addressed the theme of crime, death and penalties.

Starting with depiction of the forefather of all criminals —Cain, we go through the history of art with the focus on the dark side of human race. We can witness how the reaction of artists varied in time of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism and Surrealism.

We could witness how the nascent press devoted it columns to crime (Le Petit Journal) , we could see the modern ideas for prisons (Panopticon), and contemplate upon artistic debate over death penalty...

One of the objects on the display was the real guillotine, dressed in a vail ...

The exhibition was depressing ... but it was still worth to see.

The untold story of Jesus/Christ by Philip Pullman

2010-07-03T00:11:00.000-07:00

Philip Pullman is very well known storyteller. His „His Dark Materials” trilogy has become a great success — so far I only have read the short, enchanting prequel to it: „Once upon a time in the North”.

His latest novel „The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ” is probably one of his most important works. Despite a controversial title the book is a remarkable modern retelling of the Gospels.

Pullman makes the split between Jesus and Christ real — they become two real people — the brothers. Jesus is passionate, good, unorthodox in his teaching, yet Jewish Rabbi (he certainly was), whose message is directed to Jews, not to Gentiles.

Christ is on a mission. The mission to build the church. Instigated by an unknown stranger, whom he called the Angel, he takes notes of Jesus teachings, first on tablets, then on Scrolls.

He participates in Jesus' arrest and witnesses his crucifixion to take the important role in building a myth of his resurrection. When the myth has been built and started to spread he vanishes from history, to live so called normal life....

I relate the story shortly, as I do not want to spoil it to future readers. On the layer of the plot, the novel is just excellent — you will not regret the time spent on it.

The title itself annoys me a bit — not for any sense of anti-church insults it might awake, but for the fact that Christ is portrayed there as a tragic figure, and the way he ends his story is far from that of a scoundrel...

The essence of the novel is in different dimension. It shows how the certain narration, created in right time and with right means, can become a big movement, a new religion, a new civilization...

Jesus, the real, knows about the attempt to create the story out of his deeds. Called „The Truth” shaping „The History” is recorded by Christ — and it is obvious from the beginning that it is not the true relation of The Events. Jesus rejects it. Christ indulges in it, until the very end of the plot.

The story Christ helps to create leads to the creation of Church:

„ 'I am ready, sir.
' You and I know that for the Kingdom to flourish, it needs a body of men, and women too, both Jews and Gentiles, faithful followers under the guidance of men of authority and wisdom. And this church — we can call it church — will need men of formidable organisational powers and deep intellectual penetration, both to conceive and develop the structure of the body and to formulate the doctrines that will hold it together.”

Jesus despises the idea during his prayers in the Garden at Gethsemane:

„Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That is should wield no authority except that of love. That is should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive....”

This long prayer is one of the most remarkable parts of the novel, full of humility and full of doubts reaching far into modern culture discussions about G-d, his existence and his nature ...

My channel on YouTube features several films of Pullman's talk I recorded during Literary Festival in Paris, organised by Shakespeare and Co. There is more about his motives of the book.

There is an interesting review about the novel in Guardian.

Why silence ?

2010-07-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

For those of my readers who are surprised that I'm not publishing new posts recently: I'm deeply in Victor's Hugo „Les Misérables”.

In parallel, after a meeting with Philip Pullman during my last visit to Paris, I'm reading his latest novel...

I also owe you my account on Literary Festival in Paris I attended two weeks ago.
There are few films on my YouTube account, more to come soon....

Sebastian Horsley dies ...

2010-06-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm depressed and devastated.

It's no more than a month since I was in a concert in London's HMV with Current93 and his guests.

The concert announcer was famous English celebrity and artist, Sebastian Horsley.

See his intro:

He died two days ago...

What more could I say...

Few day passed and our sorrow is no less.
What we know now is that he hasn't take drugs for long time recently, but the funeral of his long friend Michal Wojas turned him into it: „The 47-year-old reportedly hadn't used heroin for several months but the death of his close friend Michael Wojas triggered a fatal drugs binge.”

Let me add Sebastian Horsley's own quote:

„I have been punished by a God I don't believe in and he has thrown me off the cross for impersonating his son, for being an atheist, and for being a disaster. I have made a complete fool of myself.”

[9news: Horsley generated a storm of controversy after he had himself nailed to a cross in 2002. His hands were torn during the process after the foot support he had been standing on collapsed.]

Reading Lakoff ...

2010-06-12T23:24:00.000-07:00

It is really amazing, but by some sort of luck I started to read George's Lakoff „The Political Mind”.

(It was while reading Les Miserables when my player went astray and I had to switch to an older one and I could not continue on Hugo (for some another strange reason). So I switched to Lakoff — don't ask me why :-) )

George Lakoff is one of greatest living linguists. Pupil of Noam Chomsky, he first tried to extend Chomsky's theory of grammar by unification with formal logic. But later, he started to build his alternative theory. He developed or elaborated on several important concepts like „embodied mind”, „conceptual metaphor” or „strict father model” (the later in relation to political science).
He was also in a fierce dispute with Steven Pinker — the another linguists I admire ...

The Political Mind has significant subtitle: „You can't understand 21-st century American politics with 18th-century brain ...”

This is not a review yet, this just a harbinger of, I believe, one of the most important books of the beginning of XXI century....

This is what I see just from the first chapters....

A breath of fresh air over 150 years old Book ...

2010-06-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

I'm reading, in fact — re-reading again (first time in my school years) Victor Hugo „Les Misérables”. And it is a very good reading. I sometimes marvel over old classics literature — what makes its reading experience so fresh ?

Trying to justify this phenomenon, I could perhaps say, that what makes it universal is a kind of fundamental dilemmas, choices and tragedies that face humans and are described therein. The time — XIX century, and the place — post Bonaparte France are, in this respect, no different from the present time, and from any place of the today's world...

I'm now deeply in the book, just have finished Volume I... So this is not a review yet... I'm also not sure if I would dare to write one for such a book !!!

So there may come some short notes ...

If one of you read it — I would be happy to know your opinion.

"Music releases us from the bonds of gravity ..."

2010-05-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

I used to make posts about my favorite classical or modern music (see this set of posts). But this weekend I took (or was taken by) my son (22) and his friends to London to HMV Forum for two nights of amazing music.

The concerts' star was British band Current 93, and the concert was organized for its leader, David Tibet birthday.

For the readers of my blog — this was a kind of music I was not used to listen to, though I knew from my son, that it is as deep and ambitious as the kind of music I used to enjoy.

But these two concerts changed it all. I guess I will not say to much. Instead let me quote the intro to the concert uttered by Sebastian Horsley:

David is poet - and a poet is someone who looks at the world in the same way that a man looks at a woman. A poet is someone who stands outside and rises his fist and hopes that lightning strikes it.

Music releases us from the bonds of gravity, takes the most innermost part of us and puts it outside. We connect heaven with earth by its thread. No other art form or activity provides such a reliable antidote to life, just so long as we bring to it the necessary surrender. And surrender this evening you must. Music has saved more lives that God and Samaritans put together.

Rock music used to be sung by young people to offend old people, now it's sung by old people to embarrass young people.

But there are exceptions to the rule, and Current 93 are one of them....

There was also the legendary Comus, Nurse with Wound, Rameses III and others.

It was just gorgeous....

We have recorded many (beware: low-quality) videos using my plain camera. Here is my son's recording:

and here is my:

As we were told — there will be DVD edition of of this concert.

Is "Power of Pull" the Cluetrain of the second decade ?

2010-05-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have been reading "The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion" in about the same time I was finishing reading of „10 years anniversary edition of ClueTrain manifesto”. And not long time after I proclaimed that the famous „Groundswell” was a ClueTrain fulfilment !

Today, I found the another concept and, in fact, another trend, that is the realisation of ideas inseminated by ClueTrain 11 years ago ...

Written by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison who form „The Center for the Edge” of the famous consulting giant Deloitte, is the book that is as important as is the „Grundswell”.

So — what is the Pull ?

„Pull is the ability to draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges. Pull gives us unprecedented access to what we need, when we need it, even when we’re not quite sure what “it” is.

Pull allows us to harness and unleash the forces of attraction, influence, and serendipity. Using pull, we can create the conditions by which individuals, teams, and even institutions can achieve their potential in less time with more impact than has ever been possible.”

As such, pull is the opposite of push — the ideology of traditional business, organized in top-down manner. „Pull is about expanding our awareness of what is possible and evolving new dispositions, mastering new practices, and taking new actions to realize those possibilities. ”

The great value of the book lies in the very practical approach to the main theme. You can almost find prescription how to create an environment of pull in your company or organisation.

Let me name here just a few of concepts elaborated in this book. First I call triple A path: Access, Attract, Achieve — as the strategy to implement Pull in an institution or in a business. Next would be the need for creation spaces and connection platforms to help serendipity (yes — serendipity) to be a driving force of the organizational change.

The authors deeply analyze how things and ideas that are on the EDGE of the current business can transform it deeply. Disruptive innovation strategy is probably no longer a buzzword for many progressing businesses and organizations.

When it comes to knowledge — they underline the importance of "Tacit knowledge" and passion — and everything they write there about them — is deeply convincing.

The personal profiles used as illustrations to the book are well known — yet when you read about them in the context of "pull" — it is just amazing. For example, the way Shai Agassi transformed S.A.P. is just breathtaking. Or Yossi Vardi with his deep listening technique.
Or Ellen Levy — just to name a few ....

So — do you know why I call it Cluetrain of the second dacade?
The clue train has arrived, are you going to take the delivery?

The book's website is here.

ClueTrain Manifesto - 10 years after ...

2010-05-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

As I promised almost a year ago, I read the new edition of „The ClueTrain Manifesto” issued as 10 years anniversary edition in 2009 with the introduction written by the authors of original Manifesto. This very introduction is exactly what makes this edition so interesting.

Let me however, start with short summary about the original book. When it was first published in 1999 it was like a storm for corporate marketing strategies. Long before Web 2.0, and starting with 95 thesis it predicted the revolution brought about by blogs, forums and all open communication platforms that started to appear.

We were reading it and holding our breaths — it had such a powerful impact. We were almost certain that the ominous slogan: „The end of business as usual” will come true in the next 2-3 years ...

So ... what has happened after these 10 years... Certainly we do not yet see the end of business as usual ... and as one of the authors asked: „Did the original edition of CLUETRAIN commit the Fallacy of Hyperbolic Subtitle?”

As it usually happens, the answer is not straightforward and simple. From one point of view we do have Web 2.0 and socionomics, on the other hand „Huge corporations still stalk the earth. We still report to hierarchical structures that cut us paychecks in exchange for obedience” (DW)

The events of last 10 years show that the path to the new way of doing business is paved with obstacles — and the delicate interplay of successful prophecies with false once is the essential content of the reflections upon the decade after Cluetrain...

If I was to summarize, what are the authors feelings, I would probably say:

David Weinberger — is positive and full of hope and optimism. However his matured optimism knows that we must fight to defend optimism. It is certainly not automatic...

Doc Searls — is positive, but with a grain of salt. He admits the value of growing number of relationships, he sees the potential of his VRM vs. old CRM — yet he admits that „attention economy” still grows in power — only with changed medium: „Transaction we already have. Conversation we are only beginning too develop. (...) Relationship is the wild frontier. Closed "social" environments like MySpace and Facebook are good places to experiment with some of what we'll need, but as of today they're still silos. Think of them as AOL 2.0”

Chris Locke — seems to be less optimistic. „Between the Bubble and the Towers, business cooled considerably in its fanatical whoring after e-commerce billions”. He mocks of certain events of the decade (like Oprah Winfrey and some of her almost occult programs) . He ends his sarcastic essey by a quote from Bob Dylan song: „Don't follow leaders. Watch your parking meters” :-)

Rick Levine — is perhaps also a bit moderate. „How does it taste”? He asks — because he knows we can't ask such questions easily other the net. While he notices the positives (access, data scale, usability and participation) but as he expresses it: „The details we neglected (in Cluetrain prophecy — note by MS) to address were manifest”. It seems Rick rediscovered the power of physical relations between people — and knows well that this is unattainable in the Web...

So — 100 years later — and we have quite mixed impressions...

And we must fight for optimism...

BTW, the 10 years edition finally explained the name of the original book:

„Doc was reminded of a Silicon Valley company about which a friend had said, „The clue train stopped there four times a day, and they never took delivery” :-)

Heidegger case ...

2010-05-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is not a review yet. This is just an announcement that I started reading, the excellent book by French philosopher Emmanuel Faye: „Heidegger. The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy”. Probably it will take me some time to read it, and maybe I will be posting more posts while reading it — because it seems so important.

Of course, we know that Heidegger's „Being and Time” is one of the most important philosophical books of XX century. And although Heidegger was accused of sympathy to Nazism — his thought continues to inspire philosophers. But, does it rightly, though ?

Emmanuel Faye says: no. He thinks, that not only Heidegger's Nazism was not an accidental affair of his life in Nazi Germany, but that his entire thought is saturated with inhuman ideas.

„Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare.”

Let's read the Preface to the book:

„We have not yet grasped the full significance of the propagation of Nazism and Hitlerism in the domain of thoght and ideas — that mounting tidal wave that sweeps up minds, dominates them, and eventually overcomes all resistance.
Against it, the military victory was but the winning of a first battle — a vital one, to be sure, and a costly one for humanity, since it took a world war. Today a different battle, more protracted and sinister, is unfloding: a contest in which the future of the human race is at stake. It calls for a heightened awareness in all areas of thought, from philosophy to law and history.

Whatever we are considering the case of Heidegger, Schmitt, Jünger (in many respects), or Nolte, these main propagators of Nazism in the life of letters have taken the time to refine their strategy of reconquest after the defeat of the armies of Hitler's Reich.”

I'm sure it will is very important book. It was just published in English. I hope for high temperature discussions...

My „discovery” of Douglas Noël Adams

2010-05-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

I probably should not admit to it - but Douglas Noël Adams was not quite known to me, until very recently. The author of „The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” was an English writer, comedian and dramatist. He was also a musician — close friend to bands like Pink Floyd or Procol Harum.

My first Adams's book is „The Salmon of Doubt”. It is a set of posthumous Adams's writings, collected, edited and published in 2001 — one year after Douglas Adams sudden death.

The most important part of the book — „The Salmon of Doubt” itself is only a part of the book. To me it is totally surrealistic, absurd, satiric story that has — as always with Adams — deeper philosophical sense — as it describes absurdity of our life and our habits...

But my deeper attention was directed to the „Is there an Artificial God?” speech Adams gave at Cambridge in 1998 — which is also a part of the book. In that speech Adams recapitulates his views on religion. He was a devout atheist and based his atheism on logical thinking and the belief in science.

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let's try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he's begun to take a little charge of; he's begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he's made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment.
(...)
Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god.

I must say — that is some sense I like his opinions. Although I'm not an atheist, well, I'm strong believer — I value his thoughts — because what they ridicule and oppose is not the true faith — but it's typical distortion...

However, I must also say that Douglas's arguments, as well as most atheists arguments are also very superficial...

They usually (and so is Douglas doing) build their arguments on the fact that since Darwin and all other scientific discoveries — we no longer NEED G-d's idea. Certainly — we no longer need it !

We, indeed, don't need the idea of G-d which is the last resort for our failing minds and ideas ...
But we (those who believe) don't think of G-d as the EXPLANATION — we think of him as of the "who — who is calling” ....

To all those who do not seek for philosophical tones — it is fantastic, homourous and witty book. Strongly recommended.

Suresnes @ Paris @ France, 6.15 May 9th, 2010

Dalai Lama meets western business culture

2010-05-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

„The Leader's Way” by His Holiness Dalai Lama and Van Den Muyzenberg is the book of unusual meeting. It describes the important, yet metaphorical meeting between 14th Dalai Lama (Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso) and the modern businessman who was consultant and business developer for many large corporations. The book shows how one can practise buddists doctrines in the modern world of corporate citizenship.
It shows that practicing Buddhist Perfections (Generosity, Ethical discipline, Patience, Enthusiastic effort, Concentration & Wisdom) gives enormous benefits to responsible business practices.

But what was very interesting in this book, was the sincere admission by Dalai Lama, that in the past he was fascinated by socialism and its ideas. He used to read Marx and was sure that socialism/communism was the right way for humanity happiness. He also describes how he slowly discovered the plain untruth in communism. He then read Adam Smith and his rendering of this author's thoughts is just amazing. The important part of the book is then devoted to the importance of freedom — Dalai Lama describes deep reasons why the lack of freedom cannot balance the prosperity in nation's search for hapiness. There are also some strong between-the-lines references to Tibet.

He also have noticed how important European Union „project” is in human history....

These two last thoughts of Dalai Lama, i.e. the initial fascination with socialism and approval of the greatness of EU - I dedicate to all who used to blame many people for the choices ot their youth and to all sceptics of EU - who are so many among us....

Where does Internet goes - aftermath of Steve Jobs explication

2010-05-01T23:28:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs published his poignant explication why Apple will not endorse Flash. Jobs is quite right when he lists the reasons why Flash is not most liked standard. We can only support him in saying that Flash is proprietary standard owned by Adobe, so it is not Open Standard, that full web experience (including video) should not depend on proprietary pieces of code, that Flash has some security and privacy issues (e.g. Flash Cookies), that it consumes too much of processor time, that interaction model of Flash is bound to personal computer (keys & mouse) paradigm....

But when he utters his final „why” it makes my spine tingle. The problem is in the fact that Flash is cross-platform, and even worse: because it has cross-platform development tools:

„This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms.”

I'm shocked. Of course, Adobe could make Flash better, could open source it. For lack of these steps, I personally, don't like Flash very much. But what in fact is Steve Jobs saying against Flash can be easily said about HTML, and literally against ANY standard, de-facto commercial standard or true Open Standard.

The world according to Jobs is the world of software specifically written against Apple devices, the software that will run only on the devices — and which always give Jobs 30% of revenues...

Come on. This is not the vision of Open World, personal computing and Internet.

Want to see comic version of my denial? See this.

UM224VQ6Y2Z4

Is the World truly flat?

2010-05-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

The relatively short book by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu „Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of Borderless World” is absolutely a MUST for all who speculate, philosophize and ponder about Internet. It should also be read by all who hold quite naive concepts about globalization — or are sometimes against it.

In essence, it demonstrates, that contrary to popular views, Internet IS controlled by nations states and their policies. What is more, the authors argue, that this control is not only bad thing, not only it is not a censorship, but it is the imposition of law, which benefits the Internet.

The book devotes a lot of thoughts to the initial revolutionary movement for the freedom of cyberspace — the freedom from nation states governments. The analysis of John Perry Barlow famous declaration, in the framework of new, post-territorial order is amazing. We all still think of John's declaration and his EFF movement as ours ! While thinking this way we almost overlooked the DNS struggle, a fight of famous Jon Postel („If the Net does have a G-d,” wrote the Economist (1997), „he is probably Jon Postel”) with US government over the control over DNS. Not long time ago, in 1998, Jon tried to detract the impact of US government on the DNS system — but fe failed and the control was resumed, and is such to this days. We sometimes tend to forget it. Is that really bad ? Who knows ?

Technically, even with wireless and 3G networks — they are technically very (geo) localized, so not only with naming, but also with transmission — we are bound within boundaries — the fact we so often tend to forget ...

But the most interesting parts of the book deal with legal aspect of the net. From the initial successful French litigation against Yahoo (for allowing of nazi memorabilia to be sold online by Yahoo), to the incredible Dow Jones vs Gutnick case (won by Joseph Gutnick) we have a spectrum of cases that prove the one simple thing — despite seemingly „borderless” world of Internet — when it comes to content — it is in fact confined to state borders and their laws !!!

The analysis of music distribution on the net, from revolutionary Napster, through lawless Kazaa to Apple iTunes — shows the evolution toward the respect of copyright and its associated laws.

The same conclusion can be drawn when we read about eBay. Here the discovery of the positive effect of legal means of coercion against fraud and indecent hucksters is even more obvious. The facts about WHERE eBay does business are even more striking — it does not in Russia !
One can easily conclude why...

On more general level — when it comes to ecommerce itself — we observe that Internet did not remove the middleman — it just changed its kind !

The book is somehow paradoxical — it shows how important is localization for Internet, how important are physical, cultural and legal borders — but it says it is positive !

The ramifications of this book themes go somehow in a different directions than those of „The World is Flat” or „Lexus and the Olive Tree” — I guess I must again rethink it all....

Before reading it — I probably could argue against. But today....

What do YOU think ?

The review of WWW: Watch

2010-05-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

As promised few weeks ago, here is my review of WWW: Watch.

Robert J. Sawyer second part of his sci-fi WWW trilogy (my review of the first volume is here) continues the story of WebMind — a spontaneous emergence of conscious AI-like mind on the Web. The intelligence and later consciousness grown out of cellular automata created by "lost" packages of data on the net. I must say, that I was very positive year ago, when I read the first volume. Unfortunately, the second volume does not stand up to the challenge of convincing description or plot related to Artificial Intelligence. The WebMind becomes too human-like mind with too many naive dialogs and scenes. The introduction of top secret government watchdog agency, which, after the discovery of the intelligence tries to kill/stop it, is in the aura of today's sci-fi genre (oh these bad guys from Avatar...) - and is, unfortunately very superficial. The author even did not try to elaborate on the nature of the danger for the officials from the emerging AI.

The only plot that is fine, is that mysterious one about Hobo, the intelligent chimpanzee/bonobo crossbreed. In same sense, these plot - that points us to the future, third volume, was the for me like a lifebuoy during the reading.

The book ends with extremely naive invocations to peace, humanity and beauty. Come on - that was not what I expected...

Finally, let me say at least one good thing - it is real page turner or ear defender (if you happen to listen to it as I did :-))

Why so many gossips about our national targedy ?

2010-04-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

What I see in media, both official and unofficial, social and non-social — about recent Polish crash – makes me truly mad.

Despite such calls like:

„Let's not hurt those who suffer with our renditions of the tragedy. Let's leave a detailed explanations of all contentious issues to competent commissions.”

wrote one of Polish bishops recently.

I wonder why so many people, particularly those, who should pay attention to such authorities – just ignore their calls for moderation ?

Unfortunately, so many conspiracy theories, malicious gossips and specious, pseudo-concerned "questions" circulate now, that it became unbearable to read daily news.

To those who impeach good intentions of hard working investigators of the crash — I kindly wanted to remind, that in some cases it takes years to find the truth of a plane crash. I almost witnessed the crash of TWA 800 when I was in States in 1996. Yet, It took four years of extremely hard work to discover the irrefutable truth of the cause of that crash ...

So - let us display more restraint in our opinions...

Is the Internet truly borderless ?

2010-04-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

This is a harbinger of the full review....

The second part of WWW Trilogy ... not as good as the first...

2010-04-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

While the first book of the "WWW" trilogy (by Robert J. Sawyer) was quite good - I cannot say this about the second part "WWW: Watch". It is more naive and less philosophical. I was also negatively struck by the bombastic and pompous ending that has a form of quite phony sounding summons about the universal consciousness.

I will soon publish full review of the book here. Stay tuned.

Irrational man ...

2010-04-20T11:39:00.001-07:00

Stuart Sutherland 1992 book "Irrationality" explores the vast areas of irrational thinking omnipresent in human judgments and decisions. Sutherland was professional psychologist, hence the book is not a set of novel-like digressions about human nature. It is scientifically grounded analysis of sources of our mistakes and misconceptions. For example, it explains how skin-deep obedience, false conformity, biased impressions or communal follies bring disaster to many organisation, from army units (he comes back to the Pearl Harbour attack) through government organisations to business organisations. Some of the examples he gives are just hilarious...

There is a lot about medicine and irrationality there, about false diagnosis that can lead to death and about modern superstitions that still pervade the popular medicine (like homeopathy).

The book is full of examples, explanations and recommendations - how to avoid the irrational thinking in our life. The true goal of the book is - of course - the promotion of true and well based rationality!

Every chapter of the books end with a "moral" - a digest of the chapter content in a form of few most important "sententia".

See some of these "morals":

Never base a judgement or decision on a single case, no matter how striking.

In forming an impression of a person (or object) try to break your judgement down into his (or its) separate qualities without letting any strikingly good or bad qualities influence your opinion about the remainder. This may seem cold, but it is important in situations, such as interviews or medical diagnoses based on a range of symptoms, where the judgement may seriously affect the person being judged.

When exposed to connected material, suspend judgement until the end: try to give as much weight to the last item as the first.

Try to avoid obtaining information that would bias you: for example, in judging whether an article or a book should be published, remain ignorant of the author’s name until you have formed your own opinion of the work.

Reading this book is a must for all decision-makers...

And, last but not least - it is also beautifully written - so you read it as a good novel :-)

A week of mourning in Poland

2010-04-11T00:17:00.000-07:00

The terrible tragedy happened in Poland. Yesterday, about 9 AM, the plane carrying most important Polish officials, including the country president has crashed while landing at Smolensk airport. The tragedy is of enormous proportions.

Even more immense is its symbolic meaning.

All the people on board were going to Katyn - the village in west Russia, where in 1940, Soviets have murdered more than 20 thousand officers of Polish army and Polish intelligentsia, including many Priests and Rabbies. Until freedom came to Russia, for almost 50 years Soviets denied the crime...

Because of this tragedy, I changed colour of this blog and will not post any review until next week.

What connects Conrad to Naipaul ?

2010-04-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

A dedicated reader cannot get any better prize when his own discoveries are confirmed by giants of literatures.

From the beginning on my reading of "A Bend of the River" I was sure there must be a connection between Joseph Conrad and VS Naipaul. In fact, after reading "Heart of Darkness" I switched to "A Bend ..." which was long on my "next reading" list.

These two books are linked on many levels. Both play their action on or close to Kongo river, yet both don't name it. Both don't name the country identity nor its figures. Both deal with human nature more then with anything else....

So, imagine my joy when I read the following words from Nobel prize committee, when, in 2001, VS Naipaul was selected to win:

Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished.

"A Bend in the river" is the story of Salim, a Muslim of Indian origin, who lived in unnamed city on Africa East. At some moment in time he bought a store in the midland of the continent on "a bend in the river". His story is from now on related to the political turmoil of the country (possibly Congo) caused by its dictator - the Big Man - most likely Mobutu Sésé Seko. What is the most important in the book, is the impact the dictatorship had on the people - how it changed their minds. How it attracted people, and how it betrayed the in the end.

The book shows, how troubled Africa is. How difficult it is for Africa to emerge the democracy, to disavow violence and corruption - how deep these problems are - and how they cast shadow on human souls.

The book has also a beautiful love story plot....

VS Naipaul forms a conclusion and writes his conclusion ... at the very beginning of the book:

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

I was first shocked by the sentence, and by some interpretation of the book - as totally pessimistic. It seemed to me that there was a lot of hope in the book.

I thought like this, until I read about "Second Kongo War" ... it claimed almost 6 million victims...

What is Africa today? Can you tell me ?

Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks - the border music between Northren and Slavic climate

2010-04-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Today's concert at Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic brought to us the climate of Baltic countries - countries suspended between Scandinavian and Slavic nature, culture and in particular - their music.
Famous Arvo Pärt - Estonian composer, who for many years has been my favorite composer of our time, composed Lamentate in 2002.

This 10 part suite was composed as a homage to Anish Kapoor and his famous sculpture "Marsyas" - the largest sculpture ever displayed at Tate Gallery. The music is special and in some sense it dwells on another boundary - between typical Pärt's minimalism and much richer orchestration of his later compositions. The beautiful piano part, has much of a space between sounds, so much of silence - and is just breathtaking.

In perception it is indeed as from "lamentate" but lamentate for living - not for dead.

For this concert, the conductor, Daniel Raiskin asked Ralph van Raat to replace ill Alexei Lubimov (famous pianist known from original ECM recording). Ralph's performance was just great and deep - so unexpectedly but luckily we had chance to meet this great pianist.

The music of Latvian Peteris Vasks was new to me. I must admit - I never heard before about him. So today's discovery is of some mysterious significance. His music, though secular on the surface, is deeply religious in a very broad sense - not being tied to any particular creed.

Lodz's Rubinstein orchestra played his Symphony No. 2 . I can't express in words the beauty of this symphony. As in the title of this post - the music is a kind of bridge between cultures. I heard notes of warm Slavic folk music overlapped with cold minimalism of the North.

Peters Vasks was in the concert hall. He was called by Daniel Raiskin to the stage - and we all were deeply moved and affected by his modesty and unpretentiousness....

This was great concert...

Soulful music at Lodz Philharmonic

2010-03-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

Spring time has its spirituality. Ester for Christians, Passover for Jews and Noahides, revival of life for agnostics, hope for all...

This year series of spiritually motivated concerts at Lodz's Philharmonic had an amazing emanation tonight.

Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of its artistic director Daniel Raiskin played three compositions. There was Wojciech Kilar "Veni Creator" composed as his tribute to his wife Barbara. It was good piece of music, but, I must say, it was not as great as his incredible Exodus and multiple of his other pieces.

However, the next piece was surprising and fantastic and deeply emotional. Joep Franssens composition Sanctus (it was its 10th live performance) was great. Kept in the tradition of ArvoPart or Gorecki minimalism, the piece was calm but powerful.

The last composition was absolute hit. It was Styx composed by famous Georgian composer Giya Kancheli. Styx is a piece for viola, symphonic orchestra and choir. The piece was dedicated to Avet Terterian and Alfred Schnittke - Giya Kancheli friends. It is incredible piece - full of marvellous almost silent moments placed between powerful fortissimos of orchestra and choir.

The viola part was beautifly played by outstanding violist Lars Anders Tomter.

The concert was great also because, thanks to organizers, both Joep Franssens and Giya Kancheli were present in the hall. It was great pleasure to be there with them and see them happy to have their music in Lodz's Rubinstein Philharmonic ....

Mahler XVII Symphony - second time live in Lodz

2010-03-24T14:24:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago I had a chance to listen to Mahler's VII Symphony live in my town. It was a performance of Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of famous Zubin Mehta. That was the event that triggered my almost narcotic clinging to Mahler's music. See these posts.

Today I had a chance to relive this incredible music again. We had the chance to listen to Deutsches Symphonie Orchester (DSO) from Berlin under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, here in Lodz.

This was great performance. Ingo Metzmacher was passionate and energetic. He conducted in most like Bernstein's style - and the result was astonishing.

Mahler's VII Symphony is a special piece of symphonic art. I once called it "No programme - sheer beauty" Symphony - and this seems to be true - for all of this piece performances.

Mahler tells us some story - "shaken" and disturbing story - yet the story of immense beauty...

If you have a chance to listen it - I strongly recommend it....

How could these events happen ?

2010-03-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

I still can not quite come around my thoughts after reading "No one would listen" by Harry Markopols. Well, OK, here is a short review. The book was written by the real person and is, as far as I can gather, completely real story of real life events. It describes ten years long hunt conducted by the author after Bernard Madoff and his investment fund. It started, when his bosses at Rampart company wanted him to invent a financial product which could compete with Madoff double digit returns. However, when Markolopos, equipped with excellent mathematical knowledge, started to investigate Madoff strategies, they appeared to him as bogus. He quickly discovered that Madoff could run Ponzi scheme or was involved in an illegal practice of front running:

"This is a fraud, Frank," I told him. "You're an option guy. You know there's no way in hell this guy's getting these returns from this strategy. He's either got to be front running or it's a Ponzi scheme. But whatever it is, it's total bullshit."

The book than describes the series of failed attempts to inform market supervisors, mainly SEC about the fraud. It is incredible history of ignorance and neglect by the regulator.
It is also the story of human naivety, about the incredible ease with which we sometimes trust in people who are just untrustworthy.

As I wrote before - the most horrific conclusion from reading of this book, is not the Madoff evil nature - but the complete lack of true, deep supervision by SEC and other US and international authorities.

The book ends with chapters that look like advice for authorities - how to improve SEC and make it true regulator and true protector. In this spirit, the author's lawyer, Dr. Gaytri Kachroo has offered a speech at World Legal Forum. It's audio version is available here.

We must ask the rethoric question: "Do they listen now" ???

Finally, when writing about Madoff it is hard not to contemplate on his distorted and depraved mind. Not all know, that he embezzled a lot of money from Jewish charitable institutions, Jewish educational institutions (like Yeshiva University) and foundations. See this as one of the most critical examples....

Deep devastation after "No one would listen"

2010-03-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

The video below seems "funny", but after reading Henry Markopolos "No one would listen", I'm devastated.

We all heard about Madoff Ponzi crime, but few of us knew that it is not only his crime, but the complete failure of the most advanced regulator - SEC - what makes this story horrible.

Full review will come - on the weekend.

Meanwhile, watch this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Harry Markopolos

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Darkness of the Soul in the Heart of Darkness

2010-03-14T04:21:00.000-07:00

I must admit that the second reading of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad was extraordinary experience. As it was with "Lord Jim" it is hard to write a review about the book that deserved and rightly received tens of thousands of reviews.

So let me point only these matters, that were so important to me.

"Heart of Darkness" to me is about the nature, the human condition and the dark side of our souls. It is also one of best written short novels I ever read, using intense, suspended language - with many symbolic connotations and special constructions related to its form of "frame narrative". For all language lovers - those who like the pure construction of phrases - this book is like good poetry.

Nature - Conrad shows how important nature is for us, the nature that is almost forgotten today - it was already almost forgotten in the beginning of XX century:

The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep--it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf--then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well.

The pervasive nature is contrasted with human affairs and our constant jabbering:

The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the back creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, gittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself.

or in this fragment:

The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart,--its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

The tragic human nature is projected onto the nature, but Conrad does not make it dull and naive. He does not meditate on humans thrown on the nature. Rather he is able to show the authentic tragedies, deceptions and deep unshaken love:

'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her--from which I could not even defend myself.

Finally, the book shows how easy is to lost our own inborn sagacity, how easy is to deprave oneself. What we usually need - is just a bit too much power, too much wealth and too much domination over others...

I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.

I know that there are many more interpretations of this incredible book, some even accusing Conrad of racism. Nothing is more far from the truth and from the author intentions. His portrait of the relations between whites and blacks in the book are in fact, accusations of imperial era. As it is in the most famous movie adaptation of the book: "The Apocalypse Now" ....