Business 2010

This happens to be the first read after joining British Council Library in Chennai. Quite far from house sad part. As per the latest read the future belongs to machines for most of the tasks and humans would mainly deal with tasks which require handling other people. Writers call this as "Care Economy", accountants, adminsitration role would be all taken over by machines. Power shifting from those having capital assets to those having intellectual assets.Though while reading it seems a little far fetched probably wrt the time frame writers talk of in the next decade...the book was published in 2003 so ard 2013 time zone.

The book has been subdivided into 3 parts, no interconnection between any 2 , so one can read as per ones wish.1st part mainly covers the latest technological innovations and how it is impacting socially and economically. 2nd part deals with the implications of the new technology on business, politics and people.3rd part is relatively short and deals with how business can adapt to this upcoming transformation of how companies are run.

Authors point that current internet is still in its infancy and pretty soon cyberspace would have a big impact on all of us. It will become a big part of our lifes. there wont be needs for governments in future and there would be big societies formed in the virtual world which would be country size type.Cheap broadband fuelling the growth of cyberspace. No need for hard cash in future.

Why the information available on net is mostly free? Economic theory predicts that in a competitive market the price of any good will fall to its marginal cost of production.i.e the cost of producing one extra unit. In the case of information this cost is virtually zero.It is not surprizing then that much of the info available on net is free-that simply reflects its marginal cost.

One thing while I really found interesting is the emerging new field in engineering "Biomimetics" - which basically deals with taking good ideas from nature and translating them into our world.The writers have taken a good example of how ants search for food. Its on the very first page in Part1.

*Note- Writers have taken the approach with respect to the developed world countries.

Other reviews of the book can be found here.