Brian Zhang Larsen’s Blog

With catch phrases including terms like “in the new economy” or “for the information age”, these books often appeal to the less geeky and more business curious side of me. Lately I have enjoyed a lot of these ever so popular semi academic books on network economy, which most of them proclaim to explain a new theory or set of rules which can be used to explain virtually anything in the modern economy. The truth is that these books are easily digested; often direct substitutes with fictional literature. The good thing about reading these on behalf of fiction is the lack of guild. While spending too much time on reading fiction, I often get a sense of bad consciousness because I should be spending my time more efficient, like reading competence building books, analyze something or study a new API for an interesting web service. This is the cause to the effect that I rarely read fiction (although I enjoyed Haruki Murakami’s A wild sheep chase last week). Network economy books, doesn’t give this element of guild, but the feeling of learning something new. The “newness” of these books is though often questionable, and usually to a higher extend just brings a new term in the field, for a long known viral effect or a neat marketing stunt. Of the small selection of network economic books in my array, I recommend the oldest the most. Information Rules by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, describes the key elements of this term excellent, with little need to supplement with the newer bestsellers on the subject.

References:

I was browsing a Beijing bookstore for some interesting books, when I found Malcom Gladwells “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”. I had wanted to read that book for a while, so I was quite happy to find it. I can easily recommend that book for everyone in fact. It is about the point in time where something rare or unique becomes common. It tries to explain the mechanics behind social epidemics and (intended or unintended) viral marketing.

Well..next to that book, I found his first book, “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but I bought it too. It is not quite as good as The tipping point, but it also serves some very interesting points. It is about split second decisions, both good and bad.

The books refers to a test made by some scientist at Harvard. The test can show the implicit associations people have between certain groups of people and other things, like positive or negative feelings. The most interesting test is their race test where you have to categorize pictures of respectively black and white people, and certain words in the categories “black or negative” and “white or positive”. After a while the categories changes. What is interesting about the test is that a large portion of people have an automatic preference for white people, compared to black. Whether they like it or not, and want to admit it. I consider myself liberal and don’t see myself have a preference for some race to another. But nonetheless the test shows that I have a moderate or slight automatic preference towards white people. Even Malcom Gladwell, which is half black, had an automatic preference for white. So the test shows how much influence our social and cultural environment have on us.

I also tried their gender test, where the genders where compared with science and liberal arts. That test gave me this result:

“Your data suggest a strong association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts.”

You can try these tests here