Elastic

Zusatztext Absorbing. . . . [Mlodinow] skillfully weaves scientific findings with stories of people! events! and the natural world. The New York Times Book Review Leonard Mlodinow will make you smarter. Seth MacFarlane Ingenious . . . top-quality popular neuroscience. Kirkus Reviews Incorporating the most recent developments in psychology and neuroscience! award-winning science writer Mlodinow. . . elucidates how the human mind evolved a cognitive style he names 'elastic thinking.' . . . Fantastically accessible science writing. . . . Of particular interest to those wishing to understand how to cope with the pace of change in the modern world. Library Journal (starred review) Timely and engrossing. Elastic is a fascinating exploration of one of the most important topics: how the human mind deals with change. If you liked Subliminal! you'll love Elastic. Charles Duhigg! author of the best sellers The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better It's easy to describe the dizzying changes in our midstfrom the gushers of information that wash over us to a world grown ever more interconnected. Far harder is to offer guidance on how we should respond. In this wise and persuasive book! Leonard Mlodinow calls for a change in the very way we think. Using a deft mix of science and storytelling! he shows the limits of linear thinking and the promise of 'bottom up' thinking that embraces ambiguity! asks the shrewd questions! and pursues novel answers to complex problems. Elastic is a book that will help you survive the whirlwind. Daniel H. Pink! author of WHEN and A WHOLE NEW MIND "A fascinating! useful look into how the brain works. Perfect for neophiliacs and everyone else who's dealing with a changing world. Seth Godin! author of Footprints on the Moon In a world in which advancing technologies! omnipresent social media! and fiery political landscapes can make us feel helpless and paralyzed! Mlodinow shows us how our most human traits! such as novelty seeking and free-range imagination! have uniquely prepared us to thrive in an increasingly complex and ever-changing world. Most important! in the groundbreaking book he shows us how to make the best use of our most basic human talents to find true happiness and success. Dr. Rudolph Tanzi! Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology! Harvard University! and author of the New York Times best seller Super Brain A book of sparkling intelligence! written with humor and grace. If you read only one book of accessible science this year! let this be the one. Mark Williams! author of Mindfulness ! Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology! University of Oxford Informationen zum Autor Leonard Mlodinow Klappentext The best-selling author of Subliminal and The Drunkard's Walk teaches you how to tap into the hidden power of your brain. "Elastic is a book that will help you survive the whirlwind." -Daniel H. Pink, author of When and A Whole New Mind Named to the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Longlist In this startling and provocative look at how the human mind deals with change, Leonard Mlodinow shows us to unleash the natural abilities we all possess so we can thrive in dynamic and troubled times. Truly original minds capitalize when everyone else struggles. And most of us assume that these abilities are innate, reserved for a select few. But Mlodinow reveals that we all possess them, that we all have encoded in our brains a skill he terms elastic thinking-and he guides us in how to harness it. Drawing on groundbreaking research, Mlodinow outlines how we can learn to let go of comfortable ideas and become...

Auteur

Leonard Mlodinow

Texte du rabat

The best-selling author of Subliminal and The Drunkard's Walk teaches you how to tap into the hidden power of your brain.

"Elastic is a book that will help you survive the whirlwind."
-Daniel H. Pink, author of When and A Whole New Mind

Named to the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Longlist

In this startling and provocative look at how the human mind deals with change, Leonard Mlodinow shows us to unleash the natural abilities we all possess so we can thrive in dynamic and troubled times. Truly original minds capitalize when everyone else struggles. And most of us assume that these abilities are innate, reserved for a select few. But Mlodinow reveals that we all possess them, that we all have encoded in our brains a skill he terms elastic thinking-and he guides us in how to harness it.

Drawing on groundbreaking research, Mlodinow outlines how we can learn to let go of comfortable ideas and become accustomed to ambiguity and contradiction; how we can rise above conventional mindsets and reframe the questions we ask; and how we can improve our ability to solve problems and generate new ideas-critical skills for achieving professional and personal success in our quickly morphing world.

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction

The Demands of Change

On July 6, 2016, Niantic, a forty-person startup company founded by ex-employees of Google’s “Geo” division, launched Pokémon Go, an “augmented reality” game that employs a phone’s camera to let people capture virtual creatures that appear on their screens as if they exist in the real world. Within two days the app had been installed on more than 10 percent of all Android phones in the United States, and within two weeks it had thirty million users. Soon iPhone owners were spending more time each day on Pokémon Go than on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter. Even more impressive, within days of the game’s release, the words Pokémon Go drew more searches on Google than the word *porn.

• If you’re not a gamer, you might roll your eyes or shrug at all that, but in the business world, the events were hard to ignore: The game generated an astonishing $1.6 million in revenue each day from domestic Apple users alone. Just as important, it added $7.5 billion to Niantic’s market value virtually overnight, and within a month it had doubled the stock price of Nintendo, the company that owns the Pokémon trademark.

  In its first six months of existence, more than six hundred million people downloaded the Pokémon Go app. Contrast that with some of  the greatest successes of the early 2000s. Facebook launched in 2004, but it didn’t hit the thirty-million-user mark until 2007. The hugely popular World of Warcraft game, also released in 2004, took six years to climb to its peak of twelve million subscribers. What seemed like pedal-to-the-metal growth back then became, ten years later, life in the slow lane. And though no one can predict what the next big new thing will be, most economists and sociologists expect that society will only continue to morph faster in the foreseeable future.

  But to focus only on the speed of Pokémon Go’s ascent is to miss much of the point. The game’s massive success might not have been predictable, but neither was it accidental. In creating the app, Niantic made a series of innovative and forward-thinking decisions concerning the use of technology, such as piggybacking on the GPS and camera capabilities of a cell phone and leveraging cloud computing to power the app, which provided a built-in infrastructure and a capacity to scale. The game also took advantage, like nothing before it, of app-store economics, a business model that hadn’t even been invented when World of Warcraft launched. In that now familiar approach, a game is given away free of charge and makes its money by selling add-ons and upgrades. Maintaining that revenue stream was another challenge. In the interactive entertainment industry, a game can start out popular and still have the shelf life of raw oysters. To avoid that fate, Niantic surprised many with a long campaign to aggressively update the app with meani…