People are Media
Aldo Agostinelli & Silvio Mauzza
Digital technology has been disruptive even in this field. Nowadays, everybody can communicate with whomever they want, wherever they wish, for free and instantly… We are talking about a huge human capital which needs to be regulated, but also a potentially limitless market where to make business by interpreting big data and using the most refined and efficient storytelling techniques. ”
I hoped that this book would discuss how to exploit people as media. Instead it reads as a list of facts with no actual argument. My wife got half way through this book before she gave up and needed to rant to me about it. She did read the second half (no other books on offer at the time) which had more details and practicality in terms of what will happen next eg. ‘getting lots of likes’ is the way that things are heading.
One of the later chapters discusses the ‘Big Data’ of ads – you can give feedback that you already purchased it so that it can predict what you might like to buy. Google not only knows where you are going, it now knows where you park. This data can be used better, and at the moment isn’t good at cross-selling. He writes as if this is a bad thing at two two extremes: ‘everyone wants freedom & chaos’ and compares it to Singapore where ‘a lot of rules and tracking leads to fines when people do the wrong thing, but can also be used to improve traffic’. I don’t believe that the culture in Australia and the US would let the latter happen to us, because we like our freedom, and campaign hard to keep it.
We used to be so focused on keeping our data and information private. People used to be secretive and not even mention when they were going on holiday so that people wouldn’t rob the house! But now, we even let Facebook know when we are out to lunch. Technology already knows where I am all the time (with a phone in my pocket), now I’d just like to be more useful – so the only way forward is to improve the technology. The authors don’t feel this way at all – whoever has that data like Facebook and Google can monopolise and use it to control the world.
The authors are clearly Italian because they mention it a million times, but it’s not really relevant. With this in mind, perhaps it is typical that I comment on it not being written well with many long sentences a lot of commas. A lot of the paragraphs are a single sentence with no links or reasons for why particular things are mentioned, leading to it reading in a fragmented manner. Additionally, statements are randomly bolded – things that he seems to think are important – but they are just facts, not the point.
When you look at past inventions such as trains/planes it was new for the time and considered a huge innovation. The media selfie era is no different to what has already happened in the past. Because it is new to you in your lifetime doesn’t mean that it’s a unique occurrence! The statement of ‘When I was young…’ is something that can be applied to many things. When I was young, my grandparents told me that there were never books about cooking because everyone knew how to, and it was just passed on. Then in my time, and my parents time, cook books were popular. Now, it’s all on the internet. It’s a natural progression of things in my opinion.
The conclusion wasn’t a conclusion. It was just what you could have understood from looking at the front (there’s no blurb). The authors ask their rhetorical questions in the conclusion, but don’t actually answer how technology can be harnessed in a positive manner. The point of the book is that we should learn to harness the technology and use it to improve the world, but we have no hope of doing this until… ever. Apparently there is no hope of doing that.
This book wasn’t for me or my wife. I’m not sure who would enjoy it or find it useful – perhaps in its native language it is more relevant and well written. Don’t rush out to buy it, have a browse in the bookstore first.
What I thought I was going to get out of this book was a series of interesting, respectful stories about funerals Wilde had directed. Instead I encountered a memoir that aimed to dispel a negative ‘death narrative’ and restore a knowledge of death as inevitable, but not bad. While there are some stories, this book is more about how Wilde has changed his attitude towards God and religion since being a child afraid of hell through to being an adult who sometimes suffers from compassion fatigue.
Meg Jay has really delved into this topic with insight and sensitivity. Some of the chapters really resonated with me, even as I struggled with the concept of the horrible human circumstances that some people grow up with (eg. sexual/physical/mental abuse, neglect or alcoholism). The statistics on how many brilliant people come from adversity were really eye opening.
I put off reviewing this book because I wanted to cook some things out of it to really get a feel for its usefulness. In the end though, I didn’t cook anything out of it because I just didn’t have the motivation to go search out the ingredients, and I also don’t eat many of the items in it (like slices or some veggie dishes).
I started reading this book, and then put it down in favour of something else. When I picked it up again, I had to start from Chapter 1 because I honestly didn’t remember what came before that. That first chapter is one of the most interesting ones – what I would think of as true ‘shapeshifters’ such as the biology behind the myth of werewolves. After this there are discussions of pregnancy, menopause, tattoos and other body changes. Which are interesting, but just not what I expected.
I should have really enjoyed this book, but I sadly didn’t. What I mainly felt was a sense of envy that the case studies within the book had contact with such a fantastic, holistic MD. I am very grateful for the medical facilities in Australia, and I understand the importance of funneling resources, but the system sometimes makes it difficult to reach the professional you need.
I very happily read this book and described it in great detail to my almost-wife. She found it a bit creepy thinking about the fact that some people who are vegetative are actually in there, and can’t communicate! The technology is getting better, and maybe eventually we will be able to identify people who are still present in their helpless bodies.
If only Julio had been taught about money management from young age, and then perhaps he would have gotten as rich as he desired. I’m not familiar with the currency conversion, and of course the price of living is cheaper in Brazil, but I feel like he still could have done more. When he stated that he had left school at the age of 14, I understood that education was part of the problem. It is a systematic problem that led to Julio being able to lead a profitable life as a killer.
Despite the somewhat gory descriptions of Rhino poaching, this book is definitely suitable for younger readers interested in animals. I’m going to try it for a 9.5 year old girl who is passionate about reading and David Attenborough films. It’s a great primer about both the glory and the boredom of being a vet in practice.
It’s very difficult to review a book that is filled with images – you just need to see them for yourself. For example, there is an Escher tattoo and some visual puzzles that if the artist had gotten a tiny bit wrong, it would have been wreaked. There’s a kitten and a dinosaur, and you better believe every hair on that kitten is visible.