10 Books That Have Stayed With Me

A low-intensity Facebook meme is going around, asking people to share ten of their favorite books.  Here's what I posted two days ago, with Amazon (mostly Kindle) links added here.

In your status line, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They don't have to be, "right" or "great" books, just the ones that have touched you. Tag five or more friends including me, so I can see your list.

- The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan
- The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) by Arthur C. Clarke
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (25th Anniversary Edition) by Steven Covey
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
- Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan
- The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work by Joanne Ciullla

American Science Fiction Inflection Point: The Challenger Explosion

The Discovery Channel is heavily promoting a cable television documentary to begin airing tonight on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that took place January 28, 1986. The day ranks among the handful of inflection points in the American psyche, right up there with the JFK assassination and 9/11.

At the time, the prevailing American vision of the near future included the idea of its citizens enjoying the spoils of the "space age," as thematically characterized by Disneyland's Tomorrowland (before it was revamped with a Jules Verne / Buck Rogers retro-style), and to a lesser extent, Arthur C. Clarke's landmark 1969 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey," and even The Jetsons cartoon series. Promises for what life in the U.S. would be like in 21st century America was especially emboldened by the momentous Apollo lunar landings and the advanced technology of the space shuttle fleet.

That optimistic, ambitious, and seemingly inevitable vision of the future was literally and figurative shattered the day the Challenger spectacularly exploded up high in that sunny Florida sky, and on millions of televisions around the world for the remainder of that day. Our collective expectations for the future was never to recover. 

The Challenger disaster not only killed seven brave astronauts, including the first teacher to be launched towards space, and halted the aerospace industry and the planet's largest national space agency, it also brought about a decline of space-travel as the dominant theme in science fiction. Another victim was a sense of optimism in America's future in science fiction.

Precedent setting films such as Terminator 2 and The Matrix ushered in newly dominant themes of oppressive artificial intelligence, imprisoning virtual reality, ubiquitous militarization, and a crumbling, dismal dystopia. Dreams of the future began to reflect the rising enthusiasm for computer technology and the concurrent fears of society in dramatic decline.

More recent shifts in science fiction towards global epidemic terrors, environmental chaos, and zombie apocalypses, are marks of a continuing trend in America's changing fears, first sparked by the televised fiery explosion of the space shuttle Challenger nearly 28 years ago.

Updated My Web Identity

I recently brushed up my web identity on

about.me http://about.me/masonwong

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/masonwong/

Rebelmouse http://www.rebelmouse.com/masonwong

Why We Hate The Tech Boom

Interesting article. I don't hate the boom especially since my business and career depend on it. But the sentiments described are real and out there.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/27/why_we_hate_the_new_tech_boom/

Touching Video: "Giving"

Vaccines fight airplane dispersed epidemics

Originally posted on Facebook in response to a KQED Forum radio topic on vaccinations with some parents opting out.

We have to consider not only the well documented science of vaccines (which show overwhelming benefit and little risk), and not only the responsibility of keeping diseases away from other children at school, but also today's ubiquitous transportation technology which enables potentially dangerous and dreadfully pain inducing viruses and bacteria to hop continents in a matter of hours before detection. Vaccines are the only balancing power we have to hold back epidemics and ultimately protect our children. Our kids are getting vaccinated on schedule.

Windows is Ancient

Last night I briefly examined a heavy Dell laptop running MS Windows 7 Professional on an Intel Core i7. 

The word that comes to mind: Ancient.

Good lord, having to deal with Windows is like falling into Mister Peabody's Wayback Machine and stumbling onto a stone age tribe of Neanderthals playing with sticks and fire.

If the zombie apocalypse ever begins, just issue them all Windows PCs to slow them down into obsolescence.

Chicago Should Bust the Teachers' Union

I am sick of hearing about the teachers' union and their continuing obstruction of efforts to genuinely improve schools. Chicago should not compromise any further with the ridiculous union demands, and work towards busting the teachers' union.

There are highly qualified professionals who would gladly join the ranks of honorable, good teachers in public schools, if only they would be subject to a management and compensation structure that was truly merit based, like the vast majority of professionals expect in the private sector and other jobs. Instead, the unions have forced schools across the nation to minimize management authority and eliminate merit from how teachers are paid, resulting in good teachers suffering along side equally paid bad teachers, who have jobs for life.

Today's teachers' union strike is a desperate ploy to garner public support for their dying cause. People are passionately supportive of teachers and almost universally mistake support for the union as equivalent support for teachers. To truly help the teachers, the union must be defeated.

The current situation with the strike in Chicago deeply hurts all the children and continues a long running pattern of harm to America's productivity, leadership, and global competitiveness.

The Social Recruiting Market Is The Recruiting Market

Josh Bersin recently posted "Social Recruiting goes Wild" on Forbes.com in which he provides a good, comprehensive list of web services in today's social recruiting market.  His underlying point that the social recruiting tools and services market is strongly growing, with LinkedIn as the shining beacon on the hill, slightly misses a more salient point that experienced corporate recruiting leaders, like myself, have known for some years now.

The social recruiting market is the recruiting market. Any recruiting tool or services vendor that does not have a social dimension has been losing relevance or has been irrelevant for years. The vast majority of recruiting tools and services vendors have either been focused on social or have added social to their core offering.

A few comments on some of the vendors he lists:

Jobvite: I am on record many times as a strong enthusiast and multiple repeat customer of this comprehensive corporate recruiting platform (including my applicant tracking system of choice since December 2007).

TalentBin: My most recent recruiting team took a swipe at using this service.  We found the concept to be innovative, but the implementation a bit tedious.

ViewsOnYou:  I am trying this out now. Too early to tell how well it works. Seems like a great concept, but it relies on me spamming my Facebook friends to respond in order for it to work. I hit up a bunch of my FB friends so far (all former colleagues) and am waiting to see how that goes before I spam any more of them.

BranchOut:  I was an early adopter and noticed they like to experiment with different ideas. The basic idea makes plenty of sense: leverage the Facebook social graph and build a professional network app to compete with LinkedIn. Their core problems are two-fold:

(1) The predominant flavor of FB is casual and non-work related (photo sharing, news links, random statuses), which leads to most users eschewing the mixture of their professional life into their FB login experience;

(2) BranchOut prioritized viral user acquisition over the fundamental stickiness of its app. As a result, they over spammed the entire FB user base, flushed their brand value down the toilet, and now the active user numbers are in calamitous free fall.

I am glad I did not spend any money on BranchOut, either as a corporate recruiting leader or as an individual user.  It was about a year ago that I spoke with one of BranchOut's sales people who gave a long winded pitch but never sent me the paperwork they said they would to set up a corporate subscription.

Bersin's summary analysis is generally correct. I also appreciate his inclusion of web services addressing the contract/temporary/part time talent market, which has been growing for many years. However, much like the iPad market is the tablet computer market, social recruiting is recruiting. To not say so leaves an elephant in the room.

Tapatio or Cholula?

Tapatio or Cholula? Choose wisely. Choose now.