David Zach, futurist

Reading list ASHRAE & APCO talks & Rockford IL Chamber event

At my recent talks (and conversations in the hallways) in Orlando to ASHRAE & APCO and to the Rockford IL Chamber, I discussed a number of books - and there were quite a few requests for a repeat of the books recommended. So here they are:

The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

How youth culture is changing the nature of capitalism. What I like about it is pointing out that a lot of young adults are approaching the marketplace with a new sense of how it works. As I put it in my talks, they understand the three part notion of economics today: Attention, Experience & Attitude.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Change by Design by Tim Brown

Design Thinking by Thomas Lockwood, editor

These three books are a good introduction to the rise of design and how design thinking is a counterpoint to more traditional MBA thinking. Design determines value. As we get better at understanding the potential of design thinking, we dramatically increase our ability to create & organize value.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I recall reading an article which said that a survey of high-tech executives believed that Neal Stephenson probably is the science fiction writer who best describes how the future will actually happen. I would tentatively agree because I keep thinking no matter what we imagine, increasingly it appears we'll be wrong.

Distracted by Maggie Jackson

My favorite read of 2009. Subtitled "The erosion of attention and the coming dark age." Yeah, it's that optimistic. I just don't understand how we can fritter away our most valuable resource and expect that the outcome will be what we've been hoping for.

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

I've not finished this book but I do like that it's sort of the opposite of Distracted - a few instructions on how to pay attention to one thing at a time - over time. I would finish it, if I could pay attention to it long enough ...

Last Child Left in the Woods by James Louv

This book begins with the quotation: "I like playing indoors because that's where all the electrical outlets are." The fact that we are denaturing our children has profound implications. I worry over the loss of understanding of natural cycles and a sense of the slowness of nature. We have replaced cycles and seasons with fads and trends. To slightly misquote Peter Pan, "Oh, the cleverness of us!"

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Modern economics and the fact of one damn thing leads to another.

Hip: A History by John Leland

A history of what's been cool, and how it got there. This is essentially a history of fads, but more than that, it's also a sense of the trend of importance of being hip and how that captures our attention in modern times.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

How people get caught up in cults of personality and mass movements. A great book for the early years of the 21st century. I find Hoffer and Chesterton to have been essential in the formation of my world view. Go here for more on Hoffer and here to find some of his great quotations.

In case you haven't gone to my website, it's www.davidzach.com

And, in the category, now why didn't I think of this right away, here are my books!

Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas by David Zach

Before we look forward, we should first look back to see what has been said and thought before. Don't try to invent ALL of the future, borrow the best from the past upon which you can build the hopes and dreams of today.

Zachronyms: funny words for funny times by David Zach

Back in the ancient days of the late 20th century, I worked at Northwestern Mutual as a trend analyst, and did a lot of reports on demographics. To spice up those talks and reports I would often pepper them with some of the funny lifestyle acronyms that had been popular at the time. Not just YUPPIES: Young, urban professionals, but how about PUPPIES: Pregnant urban professions, or better yet, SPORES: Stupid People On Rented Equipment. This book is full of it, acryonomicially speaking.

I also quoted GK Chesterton a fair amount. Go here to visit the American Chesterton Society.

(I'm on the board and will be speaking at their annual convention on August 5th, just outside of Washington, DC.)

800 CEO READ Blogs, etc.

800 CEO READ is a book distributor here in MKE with an international reach. Jack Covert, the CEO, has an exceptional grasp of the book business. 

Here are four links from blogs they manage. 

http://800ceoread.com/blog/

http://800ceoread.com/podcasts/

http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/

http://www.changethis.com/

Worth Remembering: New Book by Futurist David Zach

Here's my new book, Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas. It's a selection of about 300 from my database of quotations about the future along with about 70 pithy comments from me about the value of the quotation right about now.

This is intended mostly for my audiences, to presell it to the meeting planner so everyone in the audience can have their own little means by which to become a futurist in the privacy of their own home, but if you want a copy, it's available here from amazon.com

It's also available through the American Chesterton Society.  They can also be reached through those old-fangled things called telephones: 952-831-3096

Here's a sampler:

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward. Margaret Fairless Barber

Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. G. K. Chesterton

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. 
James P. Carse

History is a vast early-warning system. Norman Cousins

If the very old will remember, the very young will listen. Chief Dan George

Maybe we’re about to radically change the operating system of the human condition. If so, then this would be a really good time to make backups of our civilization. Bruce Sterling

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 
Matthew 7:15

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. Eden Phillpotts

Ray Bradbury as Inspiration for Local Futurist

In the fair city of Waukesha, WI they're not burning books. Through the Waukesha Library they're making an effort to get people to read them. It's an honorable goal.

For the month of October, they're honoring Ray Bradbury and the book Fahrenheit 451. On October 13 they're bringing in Sam Weller, Bradbury's official biographer to speak, on October 16, Elena de Costa on government repression around the world and then some guy named David Zach who calls himself a futurist is going to be speaking on October 29th. It seems that this Zach guy owes a lot to Bradbury. He was his favorite author when growing up in a small southern Wisconsin town.

Bradbury wrote about the future from the perspective of innocence, youth, small towns, trust, simplicity, and a simple trust in humanity and a simple trust in the future. We could do worse.

The defense of eloquence

G. K. Chesterton famously said that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. This was never to be a defense of the slipshod, it was a defense of the amateur. That the most important things in life should be left to the ordinary man [GKC's word - I won't change them.] and he included in such lists things like blowing one's nose, the rearing of the young, writing love letters and perhaps more importantly, the making of laws.

The word amateur comes from the Latin, amare, to love. The value of amateur efforts is quite often that the motivation is love– and that is eloquence.

GKC called it the democratic spirit. Certainly we want professional experts to do things like surgery, design microchips or maybe even design cell phone plans, but when it comes to more important things, such as trying to both ask and answer the question, "How shall we live?" this must involve the voice of the average and ordinary person to wrestle with and speak for what is important. This does not exclude the need for experts, but for the really important things, each voice has a chance to be heard.

At The Clairemont Institute website there's a review of two books regarding great American speeches. The defense of eloquence is not a contradiction to the spirit of democracy. Like any skill, speechifying is something that can always improve and thereby the ideas reach farther. One of the best courses I ever took at UW-Madison was a course called Great Speakers and Speeches. Being able to read (if not hear) the great words from our past is a marvel not to be missed.

On the other hand, as someone who makes a living with nothing more than words, I know better than most the fact that eloquence, professional level speaking ability, does not mean that the ideas contained within are always better than those found in a stubbling speech. The term snake-oil salesman did not slither out of nothing.

It was Robert Bernstein (formerly head of Random House books) who said that Only intuition can protect us from the most dangerous individual of all, the articulate incompetent. And, the average person may already know this. It is the more sophisticated audience that needs to be reminded to be cautious. They say that children often see through the acts of the magician, but adults knowing how to pay attention to things, miss what is obvious.

The eyes of the ignorant are more sophisticated than their ears.
William Shakespeare

Libraries to be more like Barnes & Noble

The New York Times tells us that libraries in order to compete are becoming more like bookstores - books clustered topically, comfy chairs, and even cafes. Rushing madly into the 1990s, but mostly because they got stuck in the 1970s. I'd say this is was a battle of who gets to be comfortable, the employees or the customers.

It would seem that libraries are finally realizing that they have more to offer than simply being a place for people to go who seemingly have no other place to go. As much as I love the main library building here in MKE, whenever I do go there, I am still just a little surprised to see a fair number of people who probably don't know how to read and one doesn't expect to see them in well-lit areas.

There's the inevitable trend of institutions responding to the need to capture and hold attention, even traditional institutions like libraries. With a thousand and one things to pay attention to at any one time, the only way . . . well, the only practical and modern way to capture attention is to keep upgrading the personal experience and thereby capture a positive attitude. Attitude is the filter for the experience economy. Good 'tude, they'll spend money and or time. If it's a bad attitude, there are always thousands of other things to do.

If libraries don't pay attention to how experiences affect attitudes, at what point in the not too distant future will we look at libraries the way we look at VFW Posts, various service club buildings, or for that matter, far too many churches. Drive through any medium-small town in the midwest and you'll see an IOOF or the like type of a building now used for something else - or empty. The time to defend something so you'll still have it in the future is not when it's about to close through lack of attention. One of my favorite quotes from G. K. Chesterton is that The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.

This library trend is one that I can certainly agree with. I love libraries, though I personally don't use them for current books because I have this really bad habit of always writing notes in my books and therefore have my own library. It's where I feel most at home.

Here's my library.

It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.
Henry Ward Beecher

What is more important in a library than anything else–than everything else–is the fact that it exists.
Archibald MacLeish

The library is the temple of learning and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
Carl Rowan

I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered . . .
Alexander Smith

My alma mater was books, a good library . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
Malcolm X

A library implies an act of faith.
Victor Hugo

My Library Thing tag cloud