Mini-Review of PULL

Years ago but right before the Web was woven, I had a vision. I'd been meditating on solutions to the problems of homeless people here. I knew the resources existed to help them, but help was often inaccessible for those who need it the most. It was and still is uncoordinated. Thinking about what little of the Internet I knew, I saw these discrete services circling the homeless, electronically interconnected so that from one dumb terminal or a fantastic PC, someone could customize a help plan for each person in need, providing the requisite paperwork, vouchers for transportation included.

"Why do charities have to duplicate efforts and waste so much money?" I complained to the only group that would (pre-blogs) allow me to publish my rambling rants, the local Mensans. Without leadership, sadly, any ad hoc collection of geniuses produces more hot air than hot action.

David Siegel has shown how this type of "cloud" computing is being realized to pull in the resources needed by a client-centered plan. In Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, Siegel explains in very approachable terms how businesses like the book industry are struggling to not only shift paradigms but transform themselves into more efficient and effective business models.

This is exciting/scary stuff! It is a clarion call for the transparency I've advocated for several years. I hate screen names and avatars as identifiers for people. Be who you are wherever you are, I've been saying. Soon it will become inevitable reality. What effect, I wonder, will it have on white collar crime that relies on computers to game any system, when the entire system becomes standardized? Only those intent of committing felonies have anything to fear from, say, RFIDs embedded in all products, pets, people.

Siegel predicts the end of dead-end jobs like cashiering at the local supermarket and predicts that large main libraries (like the one being shoved down San Diegan's throats while the homeless freeze on the sidewalk in front of the old one) will cease to exist in a few decades. At last! I cheer. Someone else who sees that libraries are for information, not physical books, which are all becoming digital anyway. He says:

Small branch libraries are the libraries of the future. They will provide a good place to sit quietly and research online , a place for kids to learn, and meeting spaces for learning-related events. They will have minimal staff and probably won't be open all day. [This is happening already with a fiscal crisis demanding cutbacks.] There may not be very many, schools will do just as well. Our monstrous downtown libraries with their stacks of books and huge staffs won't make it to the middle of the century.

I haven't finished reading the book yet, but the chapter on "Pulling Books" alone is worth the price. It provides a clear depictions of how the industry operates, which any author needs to understand. It will be available in the next couple of weeks in hardcover and for the Kindle. Pre-order at Amazon by clicking on the image at the right.

Any products reviewed on this site may have been gifts of their producers.

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