Thankfully while my blogging has suffered, my reading time has held up well (the one saving grace of interstate commuting) and I’ve had a good run of very enjoyable books in recent weeks including “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz, “Stalingrad” and “Berlin” by Antony Beevor and “The Uninvited” by Geling Yan. So I’ve got a long backlog of freshly read books ready for blogging once I get some more free time.

The most exciting and blog-worthy arrival on my bookshelf in recent times however is my brand new shiny Amazon Kindle. I am a long time ‘early adopter’ of gadgetry, or as some have less charitably characterised it, a ‘prolific buyer of toys that I don’t need’. However, I have to say that so far I am especially pleased with my kindle purchase.

As a biliophile with hundreds of hard copy books on their bookshelf and a passion for stalking second hand book stores at every opportunity, I didn’t make the jump to e-books lightly. Given the (significant) upfront cost of a Kindle, you pretty well have to swear off buying hard copy books for quite a while to justify the purchase – a difficult sacrafice for someone with my proclivities.

However, after a lot of reflection during the extended period between the announcment of the international version of the Kindle and it’s availability for purchase, there were a few factors that ultimately tipped the balance in favour of taking the plunge:

Never having to pay for literary classics again

As an earnest young reader with pretentions of literary seriousness I’ve been slowly but steadily trying to work my way through the cannon of literary classics. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really not a library person – it feels like a fascist imposition to me to have someone tell me when I need to read a book – so every classic means another purchase. Even at second hand prices this adds up.

However, thanks to the joy of copyright expiration and the non-existent distribution costs of electronic books, there is a mindblowing number of literary classics available for free download from sites like Many Books and Project Gutenberg. Kafka, Camus, Dickens, Twain, Joyce, Austen, Bronte, Carroll, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov etc etc. There’s more than enough free content out their for the Kindle to keep you occupied for a very long time.

Savings on Amazon Shipping Costs

Yes, Kindle books retail on Amazon for around half their hard copy list prices (plus a 15% increase for Australian readers), but to my mind, the real savings a realised through not having to pay the exorbitant costs of having books shipped half way around the world to be delivered to Australia (not to mention the agonising wait!). There’s real potential for savings here.

Kindle’s Versatility

The final tipping point for my purchase was the fact that Kindle provides each user with an email account to which they can send documents for uploading onto their device. The benefit of this? Anyone (like me) who has a job that involves voluminous amounts of reading can easily email whatever documents they are working their way through to their Kindle for a portable, and more pleasurable reading experience. Instead of staring at an electronically lit rectangle for hours, or lugging around a bulldog clipped print out of the report de jour, I now transfer these documents onto my Kindle for my civilised consumption. I had heard a number of people in the US blogosphere spruiking this function for sometime before the Kindle’s release in Australia and was keen to take advantage.

The Reading Experience

What I couldn’t be sure of until I got my hands on one in real life was what the reading experience would be like. After a week’s reading I am happy to say that it is fantastic. The Kindle is light enough to be more comfortable in the hand than a paperback, but solid enough that you don’t feel like you’ll fumble it. I’ve already found myself strongly prefering it for reading in bed or on the couch where previously I needed to prop up books somewhere. The screen is very easy on the eye and if anything is a better experience than reading print on paper.

However, the most satisfying aspect of the Kindle reading experience was completely unexpected. Because the Kindle screen fits slightly less text than a paperback page, the more frequent ‘page turning’ gives you a satisfying feeling of momentum whilst reading. The progress bar at the bottom of the screen reinforces this effect and gives you a graphic appreciation for how much you’ve read in a sitting.

Gripes

As you can see, on the whole I love my Kindle. I do however have a few gripes – and they are pretty well all functions of being an international Kindle user. You really are a second class citizen as an international user of Kindle. No access to content that is widely used in the US: no blog content, a very limited library of magazine content (no Economist, no New Yorker, none of the literary reviews) and a sadly limited library of books for purchase. It’s not just Australian specific authors who aren’t available to Australian Kindle readers – but many major new release books. Hopefully this will improve with time as Amazon reaches agreements with Australian rights holders, but it’s far from ideal at present.

My Take: I’m not usually a fan of Science Fiction (and I’m NEVER a fan of fantasy. Yes that includes The Lord of the Rings – don’t even get me started). In my (admittedly limited) experience science fiction novelists too often submit to the temptation to invest too much of their imaginative skills in creating a fictional alternative world and not enough in creating depth and complexity in their characters. Similarly, to my mind, the ability to ‘make the rules’ in the fictional universe allows authors to imagine their way through some pretty improbable plot arcs. It’s a bit weak I know, but I just can’t see it as ‘real’ literature.

However, I make an exception for the Foundation series. It may be because I came upon him at a tender age, before I was overcome by my current insufferable pretentiousness, but for some reason I can forgive Isaac Asimov of the sins of science fiction writing. I can still see all of the usual shortcomings, but for some reason they don’t seem to irritate me. Go figure.

While Asimov wrote more than 500 books, and managed to get an entry into 9/10 of the Dewy Decimal System categories (striking out in the 100s; philosophy and psychology), the Foundation series are considered his best work. Will Smith and Robin Williams might have popularised Asimov’s ‘Robot Series’ in recent times, but for the Sci-Fi geeks, Foundation still reigns supreme. In fact, it was awarded the Hugo Award in Science Fiction for “Best All-Time Series”

The series tells a 500 year story arc beginning with the development of psychohistory, a branch of mathematics that could be used to predict the future at the macro-level (essentially it is like a kind of econometrics but with less grand claims). Interestingly, ‘Foundation’ has long had an appeal to economists and inspired the careers of Paul Krugman and Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google.

Using psychohistory, Seldon predicts the collapse of the current Galactic Empire (groan, I know) and the descent of man into a 30,000 year long dark-age. In an effort to reduce the time spent in decline to a mere millennia, Seldon establishes two ‘Foundations’ isolated and secluded planets tasked with preserving human progress to date and re-establishing civilisation.

How can this possibly be interesting reading if Seldon could see the future and therefore eliminate any prospect of failure for the Foundations? Well firstly, psychohistory only works at the macro-scale – it can’t predict the behaviour of small, isolated groups of people, which is exactly what is left after the collapse of the empire. Secondly, the citizens of the Foundations are not themselves aware of Seldon’s macro-predictions – such knowledge would affect the accuracy of his predictions. So the success of the Foundations in re-establishing civilisation is always in the balance – you’ll just have to read all seven volumes if you want to know whether the Galactic Empire is restored.

Highlights:

The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity:

1. The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory.
2. The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations.
3. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

Synopsis

My Take: Should be seen as one of the most influential books written in recent years. Neatly identifies and summarises the paradigm change in the economics of culture and commerce that has been brought on by the Web 2.0 world. I’d read the original article this book was based on a while back so I thought I was across the concept and I wasn’t in any hurry to read the extended version, but now I’m kicking myself for not having read it earlier. There are insights on every page.

Highlight: Some stunning facts about the history of media consumption including:

In 1954, 74% of houses with TVs tuned in to watch “I Love Lucy” (compared with only around 19% who watch the highest rating show on TV today – “CSI“).

When the VCR was introduced in that late 1980s, early 1990s, movie distributors tried to sell videos at retail for $70-$80 a pop! Unsurprisingly, high market power content providers have struggled to deal with all historic changes to their market.

Finally, the most amusing description of the skills of a DJ I’ve ever read “Clubgoers vote instantly with their feet, relaying their decentralised expectation and preference info to the DJ in aggregate”. ie they leave the dance floor if they don’t like the music! (To be fair, this sentence is in no way reflective of what is an extremely accessible book).

My Take: Ian Ayres is a great advocate. Perhaps the reason for this is that he divides his time and expertise between the law and economics (He is both the William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School and a Professor at Yale’s School of Management). As a result of these divided loyalties, as a writer, Ayres retains the enthusiasm of an amateur as well as a lawyer’s focus in prosecuting a case. This mix can produce some engaging and exciting advocacy, but it can also leave him somewhat blind to the limitations and obstacles to his cause. “Super Crunchers”, is no exception. In this book Ayres makes an enthusiastic and compelling case for the potential of data driven analysis, while completely overlooking the not insubstantial obstacles to realisation of this promise.

The core premise of “Super Crunchers” is a good one. The emergence of technologies that allow the collection of extraordinarily large datasets combined with the computer processing power that allows for the easy use of regression and randomisation trials to analyse these data sets does create an enormous opportunity for data driven decision making. And as Ayres demonstrates over and again in “Super Crunchers” the decisions informed by statistical algorithms frequently outperform those made by highly educated, but more intuitive, subject area experts.

The seminal example Ayres gives of how good data and a better algorithm can best the experts in the seemingly most subjective of fields is the story of Princeton economist, Orley Ashenfelter and his Liquid Assets wine newsletter. Armed only with an algorithm informed by time-series regression analysis Ashenfelter was able to predict the quality of Bordeaux vintages using only data on the vintage’s winter rainfall, average growing season temperature and harvest rainfall. While originally the subject of scorn and derision, Ashenfelter’s predictions proved to both gazump and better those of the connoisseurs on a consistent basis. Ashenfelter’s success and the publicity his cause attracted went on to inspire other data geeks to apply their statistical toolkits to other areas, most notably Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who applied the tools to the analysis of baseball prospects. Since the release of “Super Crunchers”, statisticians have achieved public success in a range of other fields including Daryl Morey, the General Manager of the Houston Rockets (“the Dork Elvis of the NBA”) in basketball and Nate Silver in politics.

However, while there are plenty of success stories and while the potential is real, the fact is that a utopia of ubiquitous, rational, data-driven decision making is a long way from reality (For a good Australian take on this see Andrew Leigh here). As David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times review of the book:

“Evidence-based medical treatment, to take one of his favorite examples, is still far from the norm in this country.”

While Ayres correctly identifies the potential of “Super Crunching”, I’m afraid he vastly under-estimates the social and institutional barriers to its proliferation.

For starters, there is a thicket of government regulation around privacy and data protection that stands in the way of data collection in a number of fields not the least of which, Medicine.

But moreso, the most significant barriers to the adoption of data-driven decision making are social and institutional. The ‘experts’ that Ayres anticipates being usurped by Super Crunching will not go slowly into the night.  These people currently hold positions of significant respect, power and influence by virtue of their ‘intuitive’ expertise. As has been seen in most of the examples that Ayres cites in his book, they will use their privileged and powerful positions to protect their current status whether via formalised professional standards or informal marginalisation of data geeks. While Ayres is cheerily optimistic about the ability for the demonstrably better Super Crunchers to naturally outperform and usurp the experts, I’m not as convinced. For the moment at least, the majority of fields of expertise are not quantitatively measurable. In a lot of areas, it’s not possible to decisively determine a winner and a loser in a contest between a Super Cruncher and a traditional expert. In these situations, the status quo will be a powerful obstacle to the adoption of wide spread data driven decision making.

Highlight:

“We are in a historic moment of horse-versus-locomotive competition, where intuitive and experiential expertise is losing out time and time again to number crunching.”

Synopsis: In/famous Clinton pollster, Burson-Marsteller CEO and Bowser look alike claims that small-scale, niche trends, identifiable through statistical analysis, are the key drivers for societal change. A long bow, stretched WAY too far for its own good.

My Take: Love him or hate him (and let’s face it, most people hate him these days), Mark Penn has played a pretty central role in progressive campaigning in the US over the past 15 years. As on e of the most influential pollsters/strategists of the Clinton wing of the Democratic party, Penn can claim to have contributed to the successes of Bill Clinton (in particular his identification of “Soccer Moms” as a key demographic in the 1996 US Presidential election), and the relative failures Hillary Clinton.

Microtrends is a bit of a microcosm of the good and the bad of Penn’s tactics in particular, but also pollsters and strategists in general (here’s a link to the Introduction). In a narrow sense, the basic principle of the ‘Microtrend’ is both sensible and important, if not revolutionary to any seasoned campaigner.  Penn reasonably defines a ‘Microtrend’ as:

a small but growing group of people, who share an intense choice or preference, that is often counterintuitive and has sometimes been missed or undercounted by the companies, marketers, policymakers, and others.

He similarly quite sensibly identifies the importance of these groups to political campaigning:

The art of trend-spotting, through polls, is to find groups that are pursuing common activities and desires, and that have either started to come together or can be brought together by the right appeal that crystallizes their needs.

…

It is those groups that can tip an election, make or break a business, or trigger a social movement. They make a huge difference, and yet many conventional commentators on society either don’t see them or deny them outright.

All of which I agree with. All too often political analysts confuse popular support for an issue with vote changing support. 15% of voters who are willing to change their vote on a single issue can be far more politically important than 85% of voters with an opinion on an issue,

Further, the 75 ‘Microtrends’ that Penn identifies are both amusing and illuminating. The book is probably worth reading just for these case studies. Incidentally, there’s a reasonably good promotional Facebook app you can run to see what ‘Microtrend’ you’re likely to fall into which is moderately amusing.

However, things start to go seriously astray when Penn begins to apply this sensible observation as a catch-all explanation of ALL social and political movements. For example, Penn claims that:

The whole idea that there are a few huge trends that determine how America and the world work is breaking down. There are no longer a couple of megaforces sweeping us all along. Instead, America and the world are being pulled apart by an intricate maze of choices, accumulating in “microtrends” – small, under-the-radar forcse that can involve as little as 1 per cent of the population, but which are powerfully shaping our society… Small is the new big.

This is where Penn loses me. It’s one thing to say that many people are strongly motivated by niche concerns that are common to few other people. It might even be fair to suggest that as a result of the emergence of a fragmented, ‘new media’, these ‘microtrends’ are more important than in the past.  However, it’s entirely another thing to say that there aren’t equally important, broader, society wide influences on voter behaviour.

In fact, it’s ironic that this book was released in the lead up to the 2008, US Presidential election, an election in which a single mega-trend, the mass voter movement towards the ‘Change’ represented by Barack Obama, largely determined  the outcome. You only have to read his claims in Microtrends that:

There is no One America anymore, or Two, or Three, or eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.

to see how out of touch Penn was with the US Electorate in 2008.  The fact is that electorates are more than just the sum of the individual interests of the various groupings within it. There are common issues (patriotism, justice, change, security) that cut across niches and influence votes across the electorate. Penn makes the fundamental consultant’s mistake of believing his own bullshit in Microtrends and as a result, blows their influence totally out of proportion. Which is a shame, because ironically, in a narrow sense, Microtrends has a lot of small, but interesting points to make.

Highlights: Some of the more interesting Microtrends Penn identifies:

Extreme Commuters

Among the millions of Americans driving to work every day, you’re pushing the limits (with 3.4 million others) by travelling more than 90 minutes each way. Whether it’s out of necessity or desire, you’ve taken discipline to the extreme, waking up at or before dawn to get to work. And you’re a key, niche consumer — you need ways to eat in the car, study in the car, and be entertained in the car. And boy are you interested in comfortable seats!

Caffeine Crazies

Life takes some extra energy, no? Lately you just can’t perform at your peak levels without a little help from those turbo-caffeinated, super-energy drinks. You’re part of a growing group who knows those drinks just fire you up for all the work and fun you’ve got to get done!

DIY Doctors

The biggest trend in American healthcare is DIYDs: Do-It-Yourself Doctors. These are people who research their own symptoms, diagnose their own illnesses, and administer their own cures. If they have to call on doctors at all, they either treat them like ATM machines for prescriptions they already “know” they need, or they show up in their offices with full-color descriptions of their conditions, self-diagnosed on WebMD.