CIO & LEADER-November 2017 (1)

Feature
TThis is a list of some of the most relevant (in our
opinion) current books that we present here. Even
before we try explaining the selection, we probably
owe you some justification on why a list of books, of
all things—that too on cover?
Aren’t they so 70s? Google can virtually answer
anything that you want to know. Wikipedia can
explain a topic a little better. And if you are the active
advice/learning seeker type, the TED talks can give
you quite engaging content that gives you a different
take on a topic.
To survive, you need facts and information. Never
had information been available so easily. To grow
your professional career and do your job better, you
need knowledge. The new medium of Internet has
made it far efficient and convenient to acquire skills
and knowledge.
But to become a leader, you need to have a wellrounded
perspective. That comes through discovery
and introspection. For ages, books have been the most
trusted and effective aid in doing that.
“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away
my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My
mind now expects to take in information the way the
Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.
Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words.
Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski,”
writes Nicholas Carr, the leading writer on technology
and culture, in an article Is Google making us stupid?
Carr’s book on the subject The Shallows: What
the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a Pulitzer
Prize finalist and a New York Times bestseller.
The cognitive impact of Internet is a much deeper
discussion. What we want to point here is that books,
especially books that help you reflect and contemplate,
are as much a need for developing perspectives
now, as they were 100 years back.
All that we have done here is to create a list of such
books published in 2017 we think will help you build
a perspective.
Why 2017? Elementary. We do not think we are
qualified to make a list of all time books. We are trying
to do what we are committed to: reporting and
analyzing to make the knowledge a little more accessible;
we are clearly not into advising.
We are primarily reporting, extensively flipping
through many books, not even trying to read them
cover to cover. The idea is not to review them; but to
decide if it is worth reading.
That probably tells you a bit more about the reading
list. The books are not necessarily the books that
will help you in your everyday jobs or to develop
some leadership skills. That is the reason we call it
the not-so-essential reading list.
You can just ignore this list. It will not impact
you next promotion or next assignment even
slightly. However, we have kept the books relevant
to your work so that you can identify with the content;
not books on fine arts of films delivering similar
messages.
It is not exactly ironic—though neither was it intentional—that
the list starts with World Without Mind,
by Franklin Foer, a book that dwells on the same subject
of how Internet is making us duller; but unlike
Carr, Foer’s villain is not the medium per se but the
corporations controlling them—Facebook, Google,
and Amazon, in particular. You do not have to agree
with him, but he does provide a line of thought that is
worth following.
The books are classified into four categories—Big
Picture, Business/Management, Technology and
Self Improvement. By the way, we did the classification
after creating the complete list. The purpose is
to make the list slightly more usable—and nothing
more. You may even ignore the classification.
Some of the books are very much your everyday
business guides. But they are there because they
either make a new point or do ‘the connecting the
dots’ a lot better. The information about the books are
taken from Amazon.in. You may find different editions
outside India.
Happy Reading.
November 2017 | CIO&LEADER
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