Remarkable Reading #48: Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil and Ryan Williams The Influencer Economy - How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age
The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.
Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself and belong directly to the author. The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.
Top topics and themes:
1) How to launch a recent idea in times of economic uncertainty and a fast emerging world of AI and robotics
2) Why we need to be extra careful with "big data"
I've blogged earlier about entrepreneurialism here, here, here, here. It is an area I have studied in depth across 10 years. In today's day and age, more and more entrepreneur's are entering the market with a new idea within the internet start-up arena. It is an area not to be taken lightly at all, and is increasingly becoming harder and harder to succeed in, however with the right reading, right consultant who has done his study and research within the area, and the correct education, you can succeed.
Ryan William's The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a illuminating, educating book that is equally entertaining to read. If you're someone who is about to launch a new idea in business, and are wanting to succeed with the idea, then Ryan William's The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a book you cannot afford to miss.
Ryan Williams style and the manner is distinguishing and he infuses his own experience with hundreds of case studies, as well as ensuring that his writing style moves at a fun pace. Whether you're working for a large corporation or doing your own small start-up, The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age succeeds in teaching you about the power of influencers in a digital age.
Ryan Williams has a deserving, credible and meritorius writing style and one that is entertaining and amusing at the same time. It is a book that is easy to finish in one seating despite it's complicated subject matter, and one that comes full with bursts of facts and understanding that will certainly help your business. Ryan Williams draws references to some of the best authors from the new digital revolution including the spectacular Seth Godin and the enchanting Tim Ferriss. Whether you're working with influencers, or are an influencer yourself, The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a book you want to read before you approach your start-up business.
One of the key rerasons on why this is a book that is worthwhile is the manner in which the book oscillates between being a book that draws upon distinctive experiences of his own merged with teachings and learnings from some of the best teachers in the market right now - it is contemporary, modern and very relevant. Ryan Williams candidly comprehends his theme and topic with craving and adoration.
I very much anticipate Ryan Williams next book.
Some key takeout's include:
Page viii & ix: "Whether you have a day job working on a side passion project, or have gone full-time with your idea, the lessons and actions of this book will give you a business launch framework for the digital age"
Page 12 - "To succeed in any endeavour, you need to find what drives you. There are certain parts of our lives that fire up our bellies in the morning. These things drive us and keep us going throughout the day. These are the ideas and motivations that we geek out about"
Page 13 - "Pasions are important when thinking about any idea; however the market has to dictate if your passion can be turned into a business, a passion isn't going to pay the bills"
Page 22 - "The pace of the Internet is quick. Ideas come and go at a rapid speed. In the culture of the Internet, people forgive and forget quickly when you make mistakes"
Page 46 - "Marketers are often full of BS. You need to focus on content, not on social media. Pick a channel like blogging, video, audio, or anything else that results in an actual piece of content. You want a system where people can easily subscribe to something you create on a regular basis"
Page 49 - "Naming your idea can be an exhausting yet rearding process. It's definitely not something that happens overnight. Naming your idea takes time and usually a few trial runs before you lock it down"
Page 53 - "When launching your idea, you likely won't have the budget to hire a team or pay a staff, so you'll have to spend all you free moments doing it all. Your pritorities will include programming, coding, project managing, marketing and PR, community building, graphic design, copywriting, and everything else involved with launching your own idea. It is really hard work"
Page 54 - "When you finish your book, your work isn't done. You have to promote it. Even if you don't have the reach of people who have built up their audience over several yearsyou do have your own version of a community that you must tap".
Page 64 - "With the Internet, mobile devices, and social media, you can bounce back from rejection and create your own success and potentially reach a global audience in seconds. But it's also a very noisy time in that you need to make your voice heard admist the clamor of the Internet, so when you launch you need to have your ducks in a row. It's all on you to get your work to the people"
Page 70 - "In the digital age you need to treat any idea, from a blog to a YouTube channel to a podcast, as a start-up. Entrepreneurship has allowed creative people to own their ideas".
Page 161 - "But in his book The Dip Seth Godin writes that you "never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment." You need to stay on course"
Page 187 - "The thrive in the Influencer Economy, you also need to transcend your online relationships and transfer them into bigger in real life (IRL) friendships. Sure, thesde days everyone accessible via e-mail, social media, or other digital connections, but it's important to connect IRL to forge deeper connections."
Page 212 - "In the digital age, we have more power and choice in who we work with than ever before. We are more empowered to choose our projects and jobs based on our terms, and often that includes partnering with people whom we like to work with".
As social media as experienced monumental and gargantum growth, big data has exploded! There is now more data about us and being shared by us than ever before in any point in history. This has led to more streamlined services, more efficient customer service, rise in human intellect and intelligence, more empowerment and more inspiration with more data, however there is also an angle to big data that we need to be more conscious of as time goes on. Cathy O'Neil's WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION - How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy is a rare book that educates us on the dangers of big data and how it can contribute to creating a more inequal society. Cathy O'Neil writes like she truly cares, and this reflects in her writing. Right from the start she makes it clear that "Big data has plenty of evangelists, but I'm not one of them. This book will focus sharply in the other direction....".
Cathy's O'Neil's writing style is honest. Her material is extremely well-researched, thorough and the manner in which she conveys her message is with authenticity. If you're working in big data, it is vital for you to realize what the implications & impact is of big data. Every tweet you send, every Facebook status you LIKE, every #hashtag on Instagram, and every YouTube video you watch are all contributing to big data, and whilst it is a societal change that has been bought upon by advances in sophisticated hardware technologies (mobile, GPS), as well as advanced social sharing networks like Facebook and Instagram, it would be naive for us to think that everything is 100% good with advances in big data. Understanding the pitfalls of big data will help in not only creating a more robust, effective, efficient, and equal society, but also one that is pleasent to live in.
Cathy O'Neil's WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION - How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy is perhaps not a business book, but more a social conscious book. For someone working in marketing and big data it is perhaps not a book you will "enjoy" as such, or necessarily agree with if you're a technologist, however it is important and pertinent that you understand the wider implications of big data.
Kudos to Cathy O'Neil for embracing a complicated subject and writing about it with transparency and authenticity.
Some key take-out's are:
Page 33 - "Even the smallest patterns can bring in millions to the first investor who unearths them. And they'll keep churning out profits until one of two things happens: either the phenomenon comes to an end or the rest of the market catches on to it, and the opportunity vanishes. By that point, a good quant will be hot on the train of dozens of other tiny wrinkles"
Page 46 - "The refusal to acknowledge risk runs deep in finance. The culture of Wall Street is defined by its traders, and risk is something they actively seek to underestimate. This is a result of the way we define trader's prowess, namely by his "Sharpe ratio", which is calculated as the profits he generates divided by the risks in his portfolio"
Page 55 - "He admitted that the most relevant data - what the students had learned at each school - was inaccesible."
Page 60 - "Our entire society has embraced not only the idea that a college a college education is essential but the idea that a degree from a highly ranked school can catapult a student into a life of power and privilege."
Page 65 - "The result is an education system that favors the privileged. It tilts agsinst needy students, locking out the great majority of them - and pushing them down a path toward poverty. It deepens the social divide"
Page 75 - "But for many direct marketers, whether they're operating on the Internet or through through the mail, a 1 percent response rate is the stuff of dreams. After all, they're working with huge numbers. One percent of the US population is more than three million people"
Page 75 - "With machine learning, a fast-growing domain of artificial intelligence, the computer dives into the data, following only basic instructions" The algorithim finds patterns on its own, and then, through time, connects them with outcomes. In a sense, it learns."
Page 76 - "But with the Internet, people across the earthhave produced quadrillions of words about our lives and work, our shopping, and our friendships. By doing this, we have unwittingly built the greatest-ever training corpus for natural-language machines. As we turned from paper to e-mail and social networks, machines could study our words, compare them to others, and gather something about their context"
Page 101 - "As technology advances, we're sure to see a dramatic growth of surveillance. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that once thousands of security cameras in our cities and towns are sending up our images for analysis, police won't have to discriminate as much."
Page 123 - "Workers at major corporations in America recently came up with a new verb: clopening. That's when an employee works late one night to close the store or cafe and then returns a few hours later, before dawn, to open it."
Page 173 - "My point is that oceans of behavioural data, in coming years, will feed straight into artificial intelligence systems. And these will remain, to human eyes, black boxes. Throughout this process, we will rarely learn about tribes we will rarely learn about the tribes we "belong" to or why we belong there. In the era of machine intelligence, most of the vcariables will remain a mystery".
Page 204 - "In a sense, our society is struggling with a new industrial revolution. Ands we can draw some lessons from the last one. The turn of the twentieth century was a time of progress."
Whilst both books cover varying topics, and have distinctively unique writing styles, but crossover is really fascinating in understanding what is impacting our economy now, where there is room to improve and refine our entrepreneurial start-up's, how to effectively utilize the tools at hand to garner maximum results, and juxtapose it with understanding what impact big data is having on not only our employment, but our day-to-day lives.
You can purchase a copy of The Influencer Economy - How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age here, visit The Influencer Economy website here, you can follow Ryan Williams on Twitter here.
You can purchase a copy of Weapons of Math Destruction here, you can follow Cathy O'Neil here, and visit the website for Weapons of Math Destruction here.
Thank you,
Praz aka Prashant
Top topics and themes:
1) How to launch a recent idea in times of economic uncertainty and a fast emerging world of AI and robotics
2) Why we need to be extra careful with "big data"
I've blogged earlier about entrepreneurialism here, here, here, here. It is an area I have studied in depth across 10 years. In today's day and age, more and more entrepreneur's are entering the market with a new idea within the internet start-up arena. It is an area not to be taken lightly at all, and is increasingly becoming harder and harder to succeed in, however with the right reading, right consultant who has done his study and research within the area, and the correct education, you can succeed.
Ryan William's The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a illuminating, educating book that is equally entertaining to read. If you're someone who is about to launch a new idea in business, and are wanting to succeed with the idea, then Ryan William's The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a book you cannot afford to miss.
Ryan Williams style and the manner is distinguishing and he infuses his own experience with hundreds of case studies, as well as ensuring that his writing style moves at a fun pace. Whether you're working for a large corporation or doing your own small start-up, The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age succeeds in teaching you about the power of influencers in a digital age.
Ryan Williams has a deserving, credible and meritorius writing style and one that is entertaining and amusing at the same time. It is a book that is easy to finish in one seating despite it's complicated subject matter, and one that comes full with bursts of facts and understanding that will certainly help your business. Ryan Williams draws references to some of the best authors from the new digital revolution including the spectacular Seth Godin and the enchanting Tim Ferriss. Whether you're working with influencers, or are an influencer yourself, The Influencer Economy: How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age is a book you want to read before you approach your start-up business.
One of the key rerasons on why this is a book that is worthwhile is the manner in which the book oscillates between being a book that draws upon distinctive experiences of his own merged with teachings and learnings from some of the best teachers in the market right now - it is contemporary, modern and very relevant. Ryan Williams candidly comprehends his theme and topic with craving and adoration.
I very much anticipate Ryan Williams next book.
Some key takeout's include:
Page viii & ix: "Whether you have a day job working on a side passion project, or have gone full-time with your idea, the lessons and actions of this book will give you a business launch framework for the digital age"
Page 12 - "To succeed in any endeavour, you need to find what drives you. There are certain parts of our lives that fire up our bellies in the morning. These things drive us and keep us going throughout the day. These are the ideas and motivations that we geek out about"
Page 13 - "Pasions are important when thinking about any idea; however the market has to dictate if your passion can be turned into a business, a passion isn't going to pay the bills"
Page 22 - "The pace of the Internet is quick. Ideas come and go at a rapid speed. In the culture of the Internet, people forgive and forget quickly when you make mistakes"
Page 46 - "Marketers are often full of BS. You need to focus on content, not on social media. Pick a channel like blogging, video, audio, or anything else that results in an actual piece of content. You want a system where people can easily subscribe to something you create on a regular basis"
Page 49 - "Naming your idea can be an exhausting yet rearding process. It's definitely not something that happens overnight. Naming your idea takes time and usually a few trial runs before you lock it down"
Page 53 - "When launching your idea, you likely won't have the budget to hire a team or pay a staff, so you'll have to spend all you free moments doing it all. Your pritorities will include programming, coding, project managing, marketing and PR, community building, graphic design, copywriting, and everything else involved with launching your own idea. It is really hard work"
Page 54 - "When you finish your book, your work isn't done. You have to promote it. Even if you don't have the reach of people who have built up their audience over several yearsyou do have your own version of a community that you must tap".
Page 64 - "With the Internet, mobile devices, and social media, you can bounce back from rejection and create your own success and potentially reach a global audience in seconds. But it's also a very noisy time in that you need to make your voice heard admist the clamor of the Internet, so when you launch you need to have your ducks in a row. It's all on you to get your work to the people"
Page 70 - "In the digital age you need to treat any idea, from a blog to a YouTube channel to a podcast, as a start-up. Entrepreneurship has allowed creative people to own their ideas".
Page 161 - "But in his book The Dip Seth Godin writes that you "never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment." You need to stay on course"
Page 187 - "The thrive in the Influencer Economy, you also need to transcend your online relationships and transfer them into bigger in real life (IRL) friendships. Sure, thesde days everyone accessible via e-mail, social media, or other digital connections, but it's important to connect IRL to forge deeper connections."
Page 212 - "In the digital age, we have more power and choice in who we work with than ever before. We are more empowered to choose our projects and jobs based on our terms, and often that includes partnering with people whom we like to work with".
As social media as experienced monumental and gargantum growth, big data has exploded! There is now more data about us and being shared by us than ever before in any point in history. This has led to more streamlined services, more efficient customer service, rise in human intellect and intelligence, more empowerment and more inspiration with more data, however there is also an angle to big data that we need to be more conscious of as time goes on. Cathy O'Neil's WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION - How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy is a rare book that educates us on the dangers of big data and how it can contribute to creating a more inequal society. Cathy O'Neil writes like she truly cares, and this reflects in her writing. Right from the start she makes it clear that "Big data has plenty of evangelists, but I'm not one of them. This book will focus sharply in the other direction....".
Cathy's O'Neil's writing style is honest. Her material is extremely well-researched, thorough and the manner in which she conveys her message is with authenticity. If you're working in big data, it is vital for you to realize what the implications & impact is of big data. Every tweet you send, every Facebook status you LIKE, every #hashtag on Instagram, and every YouTube video you watch are all contributing to big data, and whilst it is a societal change that has been bought upon by advances in sophisticated hardware technologies (mobile, GPS), as well as advanced social sharing networks like Facebook and Instagram, it would be naive for us to think that everything is 100% good with advances in big data. Understanding the pitfalls of big data will help in not only creating a more robust, effective, efficient, and equal society, but also one that is pleasent to live in.
Cathy O'Neil's WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION - How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy is perhaps not a business book, but more a social conscious book. For someone working in marketing and big data it is perhaps not a book you will "enjoy" as such, or necessarily agree with if you're a technologist, however it is important and pertinent that you understand the wider implications of big data.
Kudos to Cathy O'Neil for embracing a complicated subject and writing about it with transparency and authenticity.
Some key take-out's are:
Page 33 - "Even the smallest patterns can bring in millions to the first investor who unearths them. And they'll keep churning out profits until one of two things happens: either the phenomenon comes to an end or the rest of the market catches on to it, and the opportunity vanishes. By that point, a good quant will be hot on the train of dozens of other tiny wrinkles"
Page 46 - "The refusal to acknowledge risk runs deep in finance. The culture of Wall Street is defined by its traders, and risk is something they actively seek to underestimate. This is a result of the way we define trader's prowess, namely by his "Sharpe ratio", which is calculated as the profits he generates divided by the risks in his portfolio"
Page 55 - "He admitted that the most relevant data - what the students had learned at each school - was inaccesible."
Page 60 - "Our entire society has embraced not only the idea that a college a college education is essential but the idea that a degree from a highly ranked school can catapult a student into a life of power and privilege."
Page 65 - "The result is an education system that favors the privileged. It tilts agsinst needy students, locking out the great majority of them - and pushing them down a path toward poverty. It deepens the social divide"
Page 75 - "But for many direct marketers, whether they're operating on the Internet or through through the mail, a 1 percent response rate is the stuff of dreams. After all, they're working with huge numbers. One percent of the US population is more than three million people"
Page 75 - "With machine learning, a fast-growing domain of artificial intelligence, the computer dives into the data, following only basic instructions" The algorithim finds patterns on its own, and then, through time, connects them with outcomes. In a sense, it learns."
Page 76 - "But with the Internet, people across the earthhave produced quadrillions of words about our lives and work, our shopping, and our friendships. By doing this, we have unwittingly built the greatest-ever training corpus for natural-language machines. As we turned from paper to e-mail and social networks, machines could study our words, compare them to others, and gather something about their context"
Page 101 - "As technology advances, we're sure to see a dramatic growth of surveillance. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that once thousands of security cameras in our cities and towns are sending up our images for analysis, police won't have to discriminate as much."
Page 123 - "Workers at major corporations in America recently came up with a new verb: clopening. That's when an employee works late one night to close the store or cafe and then returns a few hours later, before dawn, to open it."
Page 173 - "My point is that oceans of behavioural data, in coming years, will feed straight into artificial intelligence systems. And these will remain, to human eyes, black boxes. Throughout this process, we will rarely learn about tribes we will rarely learn about the tribes we "belong" to or why we belong there. In the era of machine intelligence, most of the vcariables will remain a mystery".
Page 204 - "In a sense, our society is struggling with a new industrial revolution. Ands we can draw some lessons from the last one. The turn of the twentieth century was a time of progress."
Whilst both books cover varying topics, and have distinctively unique writing styles, but crossover is really fascinating in understanding what is impacting our economy now, where there is room to improve and refine our entrepreneurial start-up's, how to effectively utilize the tools at hand to garner maximum results, and juxtapose it with understanding what impact big data is having on not only our employment, but our day-to-day lives.
You can purchase a copy of The Influencer Economy - How to Launch Your Idea, Share It with the World, and Thrive in the Digital Age here, visit The Influencer Economy website here, you can follow Ryan Williams on Twitter here.
You can purchase a copy of Weapons of Math Destruction here, you can follow Cathy O'Neil here, and visit the website for Weapons of Math Destruction here.
Thank you,
Praz aka Prashant
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